Evil and Suffering are Used for God’s Glory

Today we look at chapters 34 and 35 in the book titled If God Is Good by Randy Alcorn. This section looks at how Evil and Suffering are Used for God’s Glory.

I hope this book study has been beneficial and gives you peace that passes our human understanding. You can find a listing of previous chapters under the heading Bible Studies in the menu above. Unless otherwise noted, the Scriptures Alcorn uses are from the NIV Bible.

Chapter 34 -Pain and Suffering in God’s World

• “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1
• “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” – Genesis 1:27
• “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” – Genesis 1:31

In the beginning, God created pain for humanity’s good. Based on the design of the human body, Randy Alcorn believes pain existed in Eden and that it protected Adam and Eve from doing what could have injured them. Before evil entered the world, the body’s nervous system, including its ability to detect pain, made-up part of a creation God called “very good.”

However emotional pain as we know it presumably did not exist in that world where wrongdoing, bad motives, suspicions, and a history of damaged relationships did not exist.

Under the curse, physical pain, such as childbirth, intensified. But even now, post-curse, pain often serves a good purpose.

Leprosy

Leprosy proves that bodies that can’t feel pain are terribly deprived. Someone once asked Father Damien at his leper colony on Molokai what gift he would pray for his patience to receive. Without pause, he answered, “Pain.”

Leprosy prevents the body from feeling pain, with disastrous results. That’s why leprosy specialist doctor Paul Brand, with co-author Philip Yancey describes pain as an “ingenious invention.”[1]

Leprosy, also called Hansen’s disease, desensitizes nerve endings. The lack of pain allows the sufferer to do himself serious damage without realizing it. Such things as walking on a broken leg or not withdrawing their hand from a fire. The warning system of pain guards our health. Without it, we would either have to be made invulnerable to our environment or would have to be made inhuman in order to survive. Ironically, painlessness is one manifestation of the curse.

Similarly, in this fallen world, if we felt no emotional pain we would live as relational lepers. We would never understand the harm we inflict upon others and ourselves. Without feeling the consequences of our evil and others’ evil, we could not see our fallen nature and our desperate need for Christ’s redemptive work.

God uses pain to get our attention and dissipate the illusion that all is well. Worse things can happen to us than dying young of a terrible disease. We live in health and wealth, but if we die without Christ and go to hell, or if we know Christ but fail to draw close to him, this is immeasurably worse than the disease that gets our attention and prompts us to look to him.

Trust in Christ

True followers of Christ sometimes can’t reconcile God’s loving nature with their suffering. Charles Spurgeon, who faced grave adversity said to God whose love and sovereignty he exalted,

“I could not bear to see my child suffer is Thou makest me suffer; And if I saw him tormented as I am now, I would do what I could to help him and put my arms under him to sustain him.”[2]

Overtime tests can strengthen our faith and enhance our perspective. Trust in Christ doesn’t mean we suffer less. Nancy Guthrie’s disabled daughter, Hope, died after living through 199 days of seizures and other complications. Nancy writes,

The day after we buried Hope, my husband said to me “You know, I think we expected our faith to make this hurt less, but it doesn’t. Our faith gave us an incredible amount of strength and encouragement while we had Hope, and we are comforted by the knowledge that she is in heaven. Our faith keeps us from being swallowed by despair. But I don’t think it makes our loss hurt any less.”[3]

Their pain didn’t decrease because they believed; rather, their faith kept their pain from incapacitating them. When Alcorn interviewed David and Nancy, Guthrie, they said God stood with them in their pain, but God did not remove their pain.

Consider Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus and his bereaved sisters, Mary and Martha, not because he lost perspective, but because he had perspective. Death is an enemy, as is the suffering and disability that precedes death. God hates it. And so should we. We are to rejoice for the coming day when God promises no more death and suffering. Such rejoicing can fully coexist with mourning a great loss.

Those Who Suffer Loss

We should avoid spiritual-sounding comments that minimize suffering such as, “God must have loved your son very much to take him home this young.” Parents who hear this will say, “Then I wish God loved him less.” A friend told me that when her child died, a well-meaning woman assured her it was “for the best.” My friend, a committed believer said, “I wanted to tell her to shut up.”

Don’t say to a person whose child has died, “I know what you’re going through; my mom died.” It may have been very difficult for you, it may help you emphasize to a degree, but it’s not the same. Those who suffer loss need our love and encouragement. They do not need us to minimize or erase their pain through comparison; They need to feel and express it fully.

Grief and weeping are common and healthy among God’s people. Paul wrote words of encouragement about our future with Christ and our loved ones who died in Christ.

• 1 Thessalonians 4:13 ESV states “That you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
• Isaiah 53:3 portrays Jesus as “a man of sorrows.”
• David wrote, “Record my misery; List my tears on your scroll – are they not in your record?” Psalm 56:8
• Psalm 119:28 states “My soul is weary with sorrow; Strengthen me according to word.”

We Have Done Our Time

Randy Alcorn shared,

“When Nancy and I passed through a particularly difficult period of our lives, we felt like we’d ‘done our time,’ as if we shouldn’t have to face more difficulty for a while but that’s not how it works is it?”

As everyone living with ongoing disabilities, diseases, and heartaches knows, in this life God does not parcel out a certain amount of suffering, so once it runs out we’ll face no more. But the promise remains:

“Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.” – Lamentations 3:32

To obtain God’s help in healing we must want it and ask for it.

At the pool of Bethesda, Jesus looked at a man paralyzed for 38 years and asked him a remarkable question; “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6, ESV).

While sometimes we long to feel better, most of us who have faced depression know that times come when we simply don’t want healing. Sometimes we find an odd comfort in living out of sync with the world. For one thing, it offers us excuses for not doing what we don’t want to do. If healed, the paralyzed man would need to learn a trade and generate an income.

We also need to want others’ help and to seek it.

Many people are deeply hurt because church members don’t reach out to them in their suffering. Yet often they didn’t call for the help they needed. They’ve sat in a dark room, hoping the phone would ring, assuming others should have figured it out.

But how often have they themselves failed to recognize when someone else was suffering? If possible, a person drowning should cry for help. Most often, those within earshot will respond. It’s unfair to blame people who “should have known” when we have failed to tell them.

Chapter 35 – Apparently Gratuitous Evil and Pointless Suffering

Life involves suffering that appears pointless. Some believe the existence of gratuitous evil is fully compatible with God granting demons and people the capacity to choose. Philosopher Michael Peterson argues,

“Not only are real and potential gratuitous evils not a devastating problem for a theistic perspective, but, properly understood, they are a part of a world order which seems to be precisely the kind God would create to provide for certain goods.”[4]

Peterson maintains that God has designed a natural order to serve as an arena in which free human beings can respond to real dangers and challenges. “Pointless” evils, though tragic, are a necessary part of that system. Hence, an evil could itself be pointless, while the natural order that permits it is not. In that sense, Peterson seems to be arguing that God may permit such evils to exist not for a greater good, but because of one.

God’s goodness and sovereignty and his plan for the world, spoken of in Ephesians 1:8-9 and other passages, convince me that no evil is completely pointless. Yet, as Peterson states, even if you believe in pointless evil and suffering, its existence does not in itself disprove an all-powerful and all-loving God.

While devastating experiences often produce eventual good, we usually cannot see this good when the difficulty falls upon us.

Dan’s Experience

After serving in a ministry for 15 years, Dan endured a 10-year spiritual drought. He told Alcorn, “I felt like God just wasn’t there. My spiritual life became pointless.”

Finally, Dan determined to draw near to God, hoping God would keep his promise to draw near to him (see James 4:8). For ten Saturdays in a row, he took a chair into the woods and sat for hours at a time. He vowed he would keep coming until “God showed up.” He brought a pen and paper to write reflections. For the first nine weeks, he sensed no contact with God and so had little to write.

On the 10th Saturday, suddenly Dan started writing. He felt God’s presence like a wave, for the first time in ten years. Beginning that day, his life changed. He told Alcorn, “As miserable as those ten years were, I would not trade it for anything. God showed me that my earlier 15 years of Christian life and ministry had really been about me, not him. I had lived on my terms, not his. At last, I was seeing God.”

Dan said, “After it was all over, I thanked God for those ten years.” Yet during that dark time, Dan said he couldn’t have imagined ever being grateful for it.

Dan now suffers from a combination of ailments resulting in severe insomnia, which has prevented normal sleep. This has worn him down physically and mentally. After surviving his lengthy ordeal of not sensing God in his life, how does Dan feel about this subsequent trial? He says:

“Once again, I feel set on the shelf, but this time it’s different. I don’t resent God. As a result of what I learned in those dry years, I realize I serve at God’s pleasure, not mine. If he wants me to serve him at full capacity that’s up to him. If not, I’m not indispensable. I’m willing to serve him however he wants me to.”

Pointless Suffering?

The argument that a good and all-powerful God shouldn’t permit pointless suffering assumes without proving that “pointless suffering” exists. Not seeing the point in extreme suffering doesn’t prove there is no point. Alcorn puts the term “pointless suffering” in quotes to emphasize it’s a claim, not a proven reality.

Open theist John Sanders writes,

“When a 2-month-old child contracts a painful, incurable bone cancer that means suffering and death, it is pointless evil. The holocaust is pointless evil. The rape and dismemberment of a young girl is pointless evil. The accident that caused the death of my brother was a tragedy. God does not have a specific purpose in mind for these occurrences.”[5]

But how can John Sanders possibly know that? Each of these things is horrible, but horrible is not the same as pointless. No doubt Sanders and his family suffered greatly from his brother’s death. But does that mean God could not have a specific purpose, or multiple purposes, concerning it?

• Some Christians believe God has specific purposes for suffering.
• Others believe that he doesn’t, but still brings about certain good results from suffering.

But if it all-knowing God determines in advance to bring about certain good results from suffering doesn’t that qualify as a purpose?

And if God will not permit anything to happen that he can’t use to glorify himself or bring ultimate good to his people then even a terrible evil would not be gratuitous.

Evil such as rape and murder certainly look gratuitous but are we qualified to say they really are? Didn’t the violent excruciating death of Jesus when it happened appear both gratuitous and pointless in the extreme?

To label suffering as pointless we must be able to see clearly that it lacks any point, but we can’t.

Air Traffic Controller Scenario

Imagine an air traffic controller instructing a pilot to assume a certain altitude and to take a certain line of descent. The pilot might argue, “That doesn’t make sense to me. It would be easier to make a different approach.” But he doesn’t argue because he knows hundreds of other flights come in and out each hour. Good pilots must know the limits of their understanding and trust those who have the big picture and can see the potential consequences of each pilot’s decisions.

Only God

Only God is in the position to determine what is and isn’t pointless. Suffering may cause us to long for God to complete his redemptive plan. It may cause us to grieve for the human rebellion that causes suffering. If it does those things, it’s not pointless.

Behind almost every expression of the problem of evil stands an assumption: we know what an omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect being should do. But we lack omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection, so how could we know?

We should recuse ourselves as judges. As finite and fallen individuals we lack the necessary qualifications to assess what God should and should not do. Not only do we know very little, but even what we think we know is often distorted.

We Cannot Know

Usually, we cannot know what God does to relieve horrible suffering.

If a man falls off the ship and drowns, we ask why God would allow him to go through such a horror. But what if God did relieve the man’s horror? How could we know?

If someone burns to death in a building, how do we know they didn’t die of smoke inhalation before the fire touched them? Not all shocking and tragic deaths involve as much suffering as we sometimes suppose.

This We Know

This we do know, according to God’s Word: for the believer in Christ, this life’s suffering, no matter how great, ends at death. Jesus paid a terrible price on the cross so that no person’s suffering needs to continue beyond this life. Therefore, the question is:

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• [1] See Philip Yancey and Paul Brands Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1997).
• [2] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon
• [3] Nancy Guthrie, Holding On To Hope (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale, 2002), 9.
• [4] Michael L Peterson, Evil And The Christian God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1982), 117.
• [5] John Sanders, The God Who Risks (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity 1998), 262.