Why Is There Suffering?

[Lounge Daddy]

Ok, you all. I have a very good friend who just lost family in a fire (including two teens) and I know she will ask me the “WHY IS THERE SUFFERING” question. …Strange, that we were discussing this topic last week.

She will also soon watch the Mel’s Passion movie … and ask, “why did Jesus have to go through this” and bleed to death on a tree?

How would you explain the role of suffering?



thank you all... I love you all, my Phamily

[Adeodatus]

Lounge Daddy,

This is generally called the "problem of evil" and is advocated as a reason not to believe in God. I have noticed over the years how many people, involved in terrible events like a mad gunman shooting a whole group of people, usually make the same comment: "I don't believe in God anymore". For such people, to say such a thing is ---in my opinion---a good thing. (Let me phrase this carefully). What I mean is that the God they don't believe in anymore never actually existed anyway. If the God they believed in before was a big old Grand-daddy in the sky who stopped the wicked and made the good happy, then it's a good thing that they don't believe in that idol anymore. The Living and true God is different.

We know that awful things happen in this world, and it can happen to good or innocent people too. Jesus told his disciples the same thing, that the 18 people killed when the tower of Siloam fell were not more evil and deserving of death than the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And his other example was the Samaritans whom Pilate killed when they were sacrificing were not more guilty than the other Samaritans. So why do bad things happen to good/neutral/bad people?

Basically, I don't know. We can't say it's because God wants to draw out a greater good (although it's true that He does draw out a greater good from every evil), because then it makes God look like He needs evil to make greater good. God doesn't need evil. Suffering can teach us many things, and borne with Jesus it can yield much fruit, but of itself---considered in itself-- suffering is always an evil. God does not [b]will[/b] evil, but He [b]permits[/b] or [b]tolerates[/b] evil. Why?

Even as holy and wise a saint as St Thomas Aquinas couldn't answer this question. But he notes that God is not indifferent to evil. While God may allow evil to befall us, He does not spare His own Son. It is not necessary for the Son to suffer, but He freely chose to suffer ('No one takes it from me, but I lay down my life of my own will'). There is no easy answer to your question, Lounge Daddy, but this gets closest to the heart of it: at the foot of Calvary, when you look up and see the silhouette of the dead Jesus, hanging in a twisted, macabre way from the Cross, hanging there dead, then we can see that our God Himself is not indifferent to our suffering. And this same Cross is our way out of suffering. Because God who is not able to suffer in His divine nature did suffer in His human nature, we have that confident hope that God can rescue us from our suffering too. The One who, in His own proper nature, is unable to suffer can save us from suffering.

May the Lord be with you. Amen.