The mystery of suffering

A  facet of life that baffles many of us human beings is suffering. As Christians we can explain the mystery by saying that suffering came into the world as a result of sin. The explanation can suffice until we find ourselves face to face with cases that do not add up.

Consider the case of a couple that has lived a happy life together for 40 years, and then it is discovered that the husband has incurable cancer. He survives for a couple of weeks and then dies. Or think of a young couple whose only child is a darling of a young woman who drives herself to university every day. One day, at the age of 20, she is involved in a fatal accident and dies on the spot. Or consider a young man who is doing well in his job as a company manager. He buys himself a luxury car, a beautiful house and a seaside cottage. He furnishes the house and the cottage with the most expensive furniture. He owes his bank money for all these goods. One day he is summarily dismissed from his job; he cannot get an alternative job and the bank repossesses all his goods.

These examples can lead one to begin to question why God allows such suffering, meaning that one may be tempted to lose faith in God. And where there is no faith there is no hope. So suffering can lead to a loss of the three pillars of Christianity — faith, hope and love. This reminds us of the story of Job.

Job was an upright and blameless man who feared God. He was a wealthy man who had seven sons, three daughters, a large number of servants and thousands of cattle, camels, donkeys and sheep. His sons used to take turns to hold feasts. Then all of a sudden a calamity befell Job: he lost all his animals, his children and most of his servants. When all these things happened to him, Job prayed:

Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

Naked I shall return again.

Yahweh gave, Yahweh has taken back.

Blessed be the name of Yahweh.

But worse was to come. Job was then afflicted with painful sores all over his body from the soles of his feet to his head. Job, the rich and upright man, was reduced to a miserable leper who sat among the ashes scraping himself. Three friends offered to assist him by suggesting that God was punishing Job for his sins. Job insisted that he was an upright man and began to question why God is so unfair and cruel to humankind (Job 14:18-22). He now questioned the wisdom of God.

In chapters 38-42 God responds and says if Job can make such comments about God, is he able to explain creation, nature, the universe and all that the Creator has ordained in his wisdom? Job finally concedes that as a human being he cannot fully understand the workings of God and will let God be God. God rewarded Job for being faithful and made him even more prosperous than he had been before his misfortune.

We can begin to understand the place of suffering in human life when we consider that God allowed his own Son to suffer although he was innocent. Jesus was in such anguish on the cross that he cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In this regard we can say that Job was right in rejecting his friends’ explanation that he was suffering because he had sinned. Jesus was the innocent one, but he suffered for our sins.

In Hebrews 12 we learn that God disciplines those he loves by allowing them to suffer. What Job had in common with Jesus is that he ultimately accepted the will of God despite his suffering in the same way that Jesus prayed in Gethsemane: “yet not my will, but yours be done”. Jesus was obedient unto death. He endured the cross, was raised and sat at the right hand of God. Job was rewarded for submitting to God.

We will be rewarded too if we do not lose our faith but continue to do God’s will even in the face of suffering.