Why is there pain, suffering and evil?

Whether consciously or not we have ²all turned away from God, the source of love, life, and all things.

God told us the day we turned away and no longer followed his wise and loving direction, we would die... 

*physically - ¹we would return to the dust we came from. And 

*spiritually - we no longer possess the breath (Spirit) of God, therefore we no longer experience the immediate and direct love, life, and presence of God. Without God's life (breath-Spirit) we are no longer able to commune with God - who is Spirit. 

This warning was not a caution God gave out of retaliation but a warning out of His care and desire for our best.

Yet sadly and foolishly we still turned away from God to created things - i.e. to our innate abilities, each other, and anything else in creation - in an attempt to make life work without God (life we already had in Him but turned away from). Why?  Because we believed we could find life on our own, apart from God - who is life and gives life to all things. 

We also believed we could find life in and through creation (which consists of both ⁹internal and external gifts). 

As a result, we continue to this day trying to restore our sense of meaning, purpose, and love apart from God - i.e. the life we lost by turning away from God, its source - in and through anything other than Him. At best God is an afterthought instead of our focus, if he's thought of it all. 

How do we know we have turned? In at least two ways.

1. We ³do not acknowledge all that we are and have comes from God and act accordingly i.e. we act as if God is either irrelevant or doesn't exist (though we might acknowledge or call out to Him as a last resort when we are in our greatest pain and darkness moments). We act as if he is not the Creator and Sustainer of all things. 

We assume everything is either an accident of time plus chance (the evolutionary model) or we simply ignore the evidence all around us that created things must come from a Creator who has a purpose and design for all things i.e. we rarely if ever give a thought to why He created in the first place.

2. We operate predominantly out of fear, not trust in God i.e. If we truly believed God was as good, wise, and powerful as he claimed, we would not be afraid to trust him. As it is *we wrestle with trusting him all the time (and go as far as blaming Him for our self-imposed pain). 

(*For a discussion on how faith is hard work click here when you have finished reading)

Our difficulty trusting God is often not evident until we go through extremely challenging circumstances. When we face our greatest pain is when we have our greatest doubts about God's goodness, love, wisdom, and power e.g.  "If you really loved me God why would you let this happen?" (not unlike what Christ went through in the garden of Gethsemane, yet without sin (i.e. distrust). If faced with extreme challenges few, if any of us would approach our pain as Christ did when he said, "not my will but yours be done." - Christ did what Adam - and we - failed to do. He remained faithful in the face of extreme adversity, even unto death. Unlike Christ few of us suffer to the point of dying, much less by being tortured).

As a result of our turning from God, everyone and everything is now broken, marred, and distorted. Nothing operates according to its original good design - how can it be if we are no longer fully plugged into the very source of life? This is like a sailboat without the wind or ocean. We are now only an empty shell of our former selves and God's intended design (though he is constantly working to restore us... more than not through our pain).

Because of this, the rest of Creation - by no choice of its own - is also in bondage, subject to decay, disease, and death, and awaiting those who trust Christ to be completely ⁴freed and in full union (glorified) with God - the Source of life, love, and all things.  

We and everything else is now broken. Broken things result in more things breaking, causing ongoing and increased pain; spiritually, emotionally, and physically (pain within - fear, anxiety as well as adverse health i.e. disease and eventual death...and pain without, through adverse circumstances i.e. the thorns and thistles of living in a broken world).

Pain is for our good!?

Ironically and incredibly, suffering entering the world was (and is) a ⁵good thing! How?! It would become our teacher from then on and be used by God as a reminder that life without God doesn't work as God intended. Pain is the potential means of humbling us, resulting in our returning to Him (if and when we pay attention and let it).

An old expression says you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink; however, there is a corollary... you can salt its oats. Pain is how God salts our oats.

Prolonged and deep pain can reveal to us the inadequacy of creation to give us what we most need in those times of overwhelming pain and help us see that created things alone (including other image bearers) can not sustain us spiritually and emotionally at the deepest and most important level. Nor can it prevent us from the ultimate loss and suffering of dying (no matter how hard we seek to prolong life).

Pain can be the means of our seeing that only an infinitely loving God can satisfy our deepest thirst and hunger (It is with good reason that Christ called himself the bread of life and the only one who offers living water that keeps us from ever thirsting again).

We must recognize only God, not creation (which includes ourselves and each other. Fellow humans are merely finite. Our need for love is infinite) can sustain us in our darkest times. Pain can guide us to the realization that true and lasting life is only found in the infinite Creator, nothing else. The greater our suffering the greater the opportunity to see the inadequacy of creation to ⁶meet our deepest needs and longings. 

When we peel back the layers and consider all this, we recognize all that God does is good, even - maybe especially - by allowing evil, death, and suffering to ⁷continue.

Why? Unfortunately without pain, we will continue to cling to created things and may never realize how deep and great our need for God is; that only He can meet our deepest and infinite longings, not created things. It can stir us to ⁸return to God. With it, there is a chance and opportunity we might...so pain remains for now as a potential means of leading us back to the Creator, the Source of creation, who is good and always acts for our good.

And if we do return He uses it to deepen our trust in Him even more.

Though we are the cause of the pain, not God, He takes it and uses it for good. The wonder is God uses the fruit of our rebellion - pain, suffering, and death - to draw us back to Himself. And when we turn from distrust back to trust in him, this is exactly what happens.

Because we all have already turned away, there is pain and suffering but if one returns and finds God due to their pain and suffering, it is good and totally worth the pain. Others may intend it for harm but God intends it for good.

From all this, we realize if God did not use evil for good it would not exist. Because He can and does, it remains; at least for now.

The good news is Christ died (by fully embracing our pain and suffering - caused by no fault of his own) so we could one day be completely freed of all suffering (including death). 

Thanks to Christ, we will be freed one day if we receive His offer. Pain and suffering will have done their job and no longer be needed. In the meantime, He invites you to come and choose life. 

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. - Rev 22:17

For a further discussion on why God allows evil click here.

For a discussion on how we best impact the world for God's glory click here.

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Footnotes:

¹This does not mean we cease to exist, it means if Adam still possessed the life/Spirit of God he would have never physically died but lived forever and continued to have access to the Tree of Life. Death was not part of our original design and will no longer exist once we go into eternity and fully into God's presence, the source of life, love, and all things. 

¹Of course not everything about this world is evil and suffering. It is a curious mix of both good and evil. The creation still reflects significant elements of its original design which is good and beautiful - shrouded with a veil of sadness and the sense of something missing or incomplete. Nevertheless, creation continues to display something significant about the beauty and glory of God. So much so that we can not claim we know nothing about God. But this recognition alone is not enough. Pain often is also necessary to eventually leads us to see His beauty.

²Many have returned to God but before we did, this was our approach to life. Those who have returned, now look forward to the day all things will be fully restored with zero pain, suffering, and death. Thanks to God and His Son this is now possible.

³Unless he turns us back to himself.

⁴If you think the creation is beautiful now - and it is - just wait! For those who entrust themselves to him, they haven't seen anything yet!

⁵It was also the normal and natural outcome of us severing our connection with the source of life, love, and all things.

⁶apart from or outside of God, creation was never designed to be the source of our greatest comfort. Only a means of God showing His care for us. Creation was designed to point us to Him and His vast beauty and infinite love, not draw us away from Him. Created things alone - including other image-bearers - are inadequate and can only satisfy and sustain us on a temporary and superficial level. The greater our suffering, the more apparent this becomes if and when we return to Him.

⁷It is, after all, the absence of God that causes our pain to begin with. Pain and suffering are not a vengeful "getting even" by God for our turning away but the natural organic outcome of being disconnected from the source of life. This was confirmed when God did not reject Adam and Eve after their distrust but immediately provided both a short term (animal skins) and long-term solution (a promised savior - Gen 3:15) to their rebellion.

⁸Returning to God is our greatest good for God is good... the source of good and all good things. Without him, there is no creation to be enjoyed.

⁹Internal gifts consist of any natural innate gifts or abilities we are born with, whether artistic, musical, intellectual, athletic, and so on.

External gifts consist of anything outside of us that we use to sustain and improve our lives such as food, water, sunlight, plant and animal life, natural resources (minerals, gems, metals etc) etc. 

When we apply our internal gifts to the external gifts (natural resources) we are exercising our being in the image of God. So these are all good things. The problem is we don't do it to advance and honor God, the Giver of these, but to honor and advance ourselves.