It was Jürgen Moltmann, the distinguished German Lutheran theologian, who after thousands of his compatriots had died in a firestorm in Hamburg when RAF was bombing Hamburg in July 1943, wrote: “My question was not, ‘Why does God allow this to happen’, but ‘My God where are you?’” Jesus on the Cross asked a similar question: he called out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.38).
Suffering is the chief reason for people becoming atheists. As the British theologian James Martin wrote: “Probably more people lost their faith in God through what seems to them a maladjustment of providence through any other cause”. In 1961, when a question about God was included in a survey by the National Opinion Polls, 91 per cent of Britons expressed belief. By 2018, according to the British Social Attitudes survey, that had fallen to 55 percent of the population, for the most part because of the problem of suffering.
The Apostle Paul addresses this problem in Romans 8.18-30: “We suffer at the present time” (8.18). Paul had first-hand experience of suffering. He knew what it was like to suffer from a physical disability. In 2 Corinthians 12 he describes it as a “thorn in the flesh”. Some suggest it might have been recurrent malaria – alternatively he may have been plagued by poor eyesight. We don’t know. Christians are not immune to suffering. When a person becomes a Christian God does not promise to wrap us in a plastic bubble. The health, wealth and prosperity teachers are wrong. Christians are as likely to get leukaemia as anybody else. But suffering will not have the last word. Yes “we suffer at this present time” (Romans 8.22), but there is a new world coming. Paul goes on to speak of “the glory that is going to be revealed to us” (Romans 8.22).
In the meantime God is with us in our present suffering. “The Spirit”, says Paul, “comes to help us weak as we are” (Romans 8.26). God does not leave us to cope in our own strength. What is more, Paul goes on to say, that “in all things God works for good with those who love him” (Romans 8.28). Do note, however, the translations which read “all things work for good” are wrong. The drunkenness of a drunken driver, which robs a young family of its father or mother, brings anything but good. The abuse of a young child by an adult whose mind is warped, doesn’t bring any good. These things are evil. We cannot attribute suffering, pain and injustice to God.
Where God is at work, there good can come, however dark and difficult things seem to be. We see that in the Cross of Jesus. Evil did its darndest when men crucified the Son of God. None who stood at the foot of the Cross could have dreamt that the day would come when people would speak of that day as ‘Good Friday’. What was true of the Cross can also be true of your life and mine. However, unfair life may seem, the outlook is never hopeless.
What is more, even when we do suffer, there can often be a positive ‘spin-off’ if we do not allow ourselves to become bitter and angry with life or indeed with God. For strange as it may seem, we can become better and stronger people, for in the ‘crucible’ of suffering God can ‘refine’ us (see Malachi 3.3); indeed, James even suggests that for those who “endure” can become “perfect” (James 1.4). I am not sure I would use the term ‘perfect’, but what is true is that suffering can be character-forming. Certainly this was my experience when after a particularly tough patch when some of God’s people treated me very unfairly, I became a better pastor. Up until that point I had lived a relatively trouble-free life. I now knew at first hand what it was to experience pain and suffering, misunderstanding and rejection. As a result I was able to empathise in a way I had never previously been able to do with many of those who in one way or another had had their world turned upside down. I had become what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung once described as a ‘wounded healer’, and so was better able to help people.
But to return to where we began. God is with us in our suffering. Indeed, in his Son he suffered for us the rejection and cruelty of the Cross. As a result he knows and understands what suffering entails. Whenever I see people visiting Chelmsford Cathedral I always point them to the huge figure of the Risen, Ascended and Glorified Christ. I say, “Look at the marks of the nails in his hands and in his feet”. He has first-hand experience of suffering. What is more by his Spirit he is present with us in our suffering and helps us to cope if we but open ourselves to him. Then we have the encouragement that one day suffering will come to an end, and that we shall be with him in the glory that is to come. In the meantime when we suffer, we have the assurance that our “troubles will not overwhelm us” for God has promised to be with us (Isaiah 43.2). Furthermore, precisely because we have suffered, we can be better equipped to help other sufferers.
One of the problems with the question of suffering is that our response to it is primarily emotional rather than intellectual. And of course it needs to be, for otherwise we would have no empathy with those who suffer, no compassion for them. But I some times wonder what the world would be like if nothing could ever go wrong, if no one ever got hurt, if we always knew we would be safe, healthy and happy. Logically, death would be even more tragic and disastrous than it is, for no one would ever want life to end. Or would they?
Julian Barnes wrote a short story in which the narrator had died and gone to Heaven, where he spent his time doing all the things he had always dreamed of doing (holes in one, scoring the winning goal in a Cup Final and so on). Until that sort of enjoyment began to pall, and in the end he wished he could die again.
God has deliberately made the world risky. Since it is not a world where nothing can go wrong, the only alternative is one where anything can go wrong. This makes it harder for us, but also more fulfilling – God has chosen to give us responsibility.
The things that go wrong fall into three categories. Firstly, there are natural disasters which we are not able to foresee. Some of these can be ascribed to human agency, as is becoming apparent with the continuing climate change, but others are due to phenomena such as tectonic plate collisions, or meteor strikes, for which no one can be blamed. Some of these are becoming more predictable with the advance of science and technology, but at present, even where they are, it is impossible to say when, or exactly where, they will occur.
Secondly, there is the suffering that arises from human error or negligence. There is no intention to inflict it, but it should not occur. This kind of suffering understandably produces a great deal of anger, with consequent litigation and official inquiries, but the basic cause is that no one is perfect, and we all make mistakes and misjudgments. Where the Devil most frequently gets in is when such mistakes and misjudgments occur in the context of an institution (e.g. the police of the NHS) and the responsible authorities close ranks and hide behind bland assertions that “lessons have been learnt”. Those to whom God had given specific responsibility must shoulder it.
This is not, of course, to exonerate the drunken driver who is perfectly well aware that he is over the limit when he gets in his car, or the mother who leaves a child alone in the home to go out on the town.
But thirdly, there is pure malevolence – relatively rare, but horrific when identified. We can all think of a few notorious cases – only explicable by a diabolical desire to abuse, control or destroy others for the individual’s own gratification.
So yes, where is God in all this? It’s easy to say that God created a perfect world, as described in chapter 2 of Genesis, and that human beings ruined it because they thought they knew better than he did, and have been thinking so ever since. That’s true, but it over-simplifies the situation. An imperfect world, with all its perils, is, in my view, still preferable to a secure but sterile existence with no need for compassion or room for improvement. Jesus introduced us to the concept of the kingdom of heaven – not Shangri-La!
I agree with all you have said about suffering enabling us to empathise with others, but going through suffering is hard and the teaching of meditation that we need to recover the childlike capacity (seen by some mistakenly as weak) to be loved through it all seems to me to be helpful.