Why do the innocent suffer?
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Introduction
Why do innocent people suffer?
This is perhaps the biggest question of all. A survey in England showed that this question was the biggest hindrance to people having faith in God.
Christians frequently answer this question by saying, “There really is no answer – we simply do not know.”
I am really not sure that is an adequate answer. There are many things that we do not know, and I will come to those at the end. But there are a number of rational explanations that we can certainly understand that show us why it is inevitable that some innocent people will suffer. A number of these are related to the nature of our planet.
I am so glad to live on this world. I hope you are too – there is no Planet B.
I have been privileged to see some of the great sights of this world.
I have sat in the revolving restaurant at the top of Schiltzhorn, made famous by James Bond, and looked at the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau.
I have stood on the floor of the valley at Yosemite and looked up at the granite massif of El Capitan where, even through binoculars, climbers look like ants clinging to the cliffs.
I have spent many months among the wild animals of Africa in Kruger, Etosha and on the Caprivi Strip.
I have been to Namibia and seen the magnificent gemsbok against the red dunes.
I have camped frequently at Storms River Mouth, surely one of the most spectacular coast-lines in the world.
I have lived in Hermanus and made friends with whales.
The one place I haven’t been is to the moon. This famous picture was taken by Apollo 8 and was called “Earth-rise,” and became a symbol for the beauty and fragility of our world.
How our world is made
In order for this World to be the self-generating life-giving planet it is, it had to be covered three quarters by water. And it requires a tremendous source of power to energize it. We have this source of power in the sun – a ball of nuclear energy 1,4 million times bigger than the earth.
If it were any closer, we would be burnt to a crisp. If we were any further away, we would be as frozen as a chicken in a deep freeze. Without it, life could not exist.
But when the energy from the sun strikes the atmosphere and water of our world, it creates very powerful natural forces.
These will sometimes lead to hurricanes, storms, lightning and floods, and some innocent people will suffer. It is the unavoidable consequence of the laws of physics essential to the survival of the world.
In order for us to exist, we need land. If all of the rock in the world were the same density, it would form a perfect sphere – very stable, but the world would be totally covered by water. In order for land to exist, there have to be heavier rocks that force the lighter rock to the surface to form continents and islands.
This process unavoidably causes earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, and some innocent people suffer. It is the unavoidable consequence of the laws of physics that make it possible for us to have land to live on.
Some people ask, “Why doesn’t God just stop hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes?”
This is actually an Alice in Wonderland idea. For God to do this, he would have to make certain parts of the world disobey the laws of physics.
Now that would be an unpredictable world!
It is, of course, absurd.
This thing called life
For us to have life, we have to be part of an ecosystem complex beyond belief. David Attenborough has started to show some of the wonder of this complexity, but he has only scratched the surface. It is estimated, for example, that there are 3 to 30 million species of insects that have not been named yet.
And insects are childs-play compared to the variety of microscopic creatures – bacteria, viruses and microbes. There are about one hundred trillion species of microbes on Earth, and 99.999 percent of them have yet to be identified.
Did you know that within your own digestive system you are host to 100 trillion bacteria and viruses, without which you would not be able to digest your food? For these microbes to survive, they have to have a remarkable ability to mutate in order to adjust to their environment.
Sometimes they mutate into harmful bacteria or viruses. Fortunately God has given us an amazingly powerful immune system to cope with this. But every now and again, a microbe comes along that we do not all fight off successfully, and innocent people suffer.
It is the unavoidable consequence of biological processes essential for the continuation of life on earth.
Christopher Reeve (the one-time Superman) who broke his neck when a horse failed at a jump put it beautifully: “I chose to interact with the powerful forces of this world and it went wrong. No one is to blame.”
The essence of being human.
It is a wonderful thing to be a human being: To possess such a wonderful mind capable of philosophy, mathematics, appreciation of art, love, complex relationships, inventiveness and all kinds of intelligence.
Above all it is a privilege to have the priceless gift of free choice: the right to choose what I do, where I live, who I love, who I marry, and whether or not I will follow God. This is the essence of being human.
But there is an inevitable consequence of free choice. It is not possible to have the gift of free will without opening the possibility that some will choose evil. Sadly, some people do, and innocent people suffer.
Again, it is easy to say, “Why doesn’t God just stop evil?” I can think of two ways that God could do that. He could simply whisk people out of the world as they are about to choose evil. That would be like living among popcorn, and wondering who would pop off next. I hope that I would survive! Of course it leaves no opportunity for anyone to repent. All God could prevent evil by taking away our free will. But then we would no longer be human beings. I, for one, am very glad he has left us the gift of choice.
The Spirit world
And then there’s the spirit world. It’s a world of which we are largely unaware, but it is as real to them as ours is to us.
We are not the only beings to whom God has given freedom of choice. He also gave it to millions of heavenly beings, commonly known to us as angels. Again, it is not possible to have the gift of free will without opening the possibility that some will choose evil. And about a third of them did. As a result we are in the midst of a cosmic warfare, ranging around us and above us and beneath us, of which we are almost totally unaware. The book of Job and the book of Revelation make clear to us that this warfare impinges into our world, and many innocent people suffer.
Again, we could ask why God doesn’t just do away with the evil angels. But now we are really entering the world about which we know nothing and in which we have no answers. All we know is that a lot of innocent suffering is caused by forces opposed to God.
God's answer to the problem of suffering
And so we have seen a number of reasons why innocent people suffer. I believe they are good and rational reasons, and they certainly satisfy a large part of my intellect.
Nevertheless, however rational these reasons may be, we still sometimes find ourselves dissatisfied and asking God for better answers.
Imagine you were God’s publicity agent. You would say to him, “God you really do need to give an answer to the question of why the innocent suffer. It’s causing a lot of people not to put their faith in you. It would improve your image greatly if you would give a proper answer.”
But you can read your Bible from cover to cover. and you will find that God never gives an answer to the problem of suffering.
If ever there was a book that God could have used to give an answer to the problem of suffering, Job was that book. God allows Job and his friends to rant and complain for thirty-seven chapters, telling God how to run his universe.
Then, in chapter thirty-eight, God starts to speak, and he speaks for four long chapters. And he gives no answers. He simply asks question after question – seventy of them – all with one purpose: to show us how small we are and how little we know, and to show how arrogant it actually is to question God.
God never gives an answer to the problem of suffering. He will not be put on trial at the bar of his creatures. He is so far above us, and his thoughts so far above our thoughts, that he has to speak to us in metaphors and baby language to try to make himself understood. He never does give us an answer to the problem of suffering, and even if he did, we would not understand it.
Conclusion
God never gives an answer to the problem of suffering.
He could have swept away this universe and called it all a big mistake. Instead, he has chosen to do something infinitely more loving and creative. He has chosen to allow this universe to run it's course, and to let us live out our lives, with all the attendant possibilities for joy and pain. He doesn't magically save us from all pain. Instead he promises to be with us in our suffering – to feel our pain and to give us grace and strength and a sense of companionship. He feels every pain; he knows every human being. That is God's commitment to us.
This commitment reached its apotheosis in the Cross of Christ where Jesus he took on himself all the suffering and sins of the world, and showed us once and for all God's compassion and identification with us in our pain.
And by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we know that for those who trust in him, this world is not the end. When we have endured, we will see the new Jerusalem coming down from God, where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. He will wipe every tear from our eyes, and we will see him. And we will know even as we are now known, and we will feel no need to ask any more questions.