Difficult things happen to all of us. It’s part of the creation that God orders for us. Pain is part of life; you can’t avoid it. The United Methodist Church teaches that “suffering begets holiness”. The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, added a little more nuance when he argued that:
· Suffering keeps the believer humble, even as a little child.[27][1]
· Suffering alters the believer’s focus, from this world and toward God.[28][2]
· Suffering teaches the believer obedience, just as it did for Christ.[29][3]
· Suffering cultivates an attitude of full submission toward God.[30][4]
· Suffering increases our earnestness for pure love.[31][5]
· Suffering prepares the believer to fight temptation.[32][6]
Ultimately, “Whatever raises the mind to God is good; whatever draws the heart from its center is evil[7]
This is great to know; however, Pain, Suffering, and illness seem to contradict what many know about God’s nature that:
o God is all-powerful.
o God is all-knowing.
o God is all-loving.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People”[8], posits that because he couldn’t accept a God who isn’t all-knowing or all-loving, he had to accept that God isn’t all-powerful. I have a problem with that. God is the first mover…the initiator, that being who set all of this in motion. God is the author of both good and bad.
This can lead a person though down several rabbit holes. It can lead a person to attribute all suffering to God as the source of everything that happens, and we all know through experience that this is not always true. It doesn’t consider the decisions and actions of other agents — human, nature and otherwise. It makes any idea of freedom to be an illusion and renders any form of judgment meaningless.[9]
There is a second way for many to look at this. What if we view suffering through Love with Love being at the center of all Creation? God, through love, created all of Creation and called it good. God loves us, but we are not required to love God back. We can choose otherwise. God risks that humanity will choose evil over good, ourselves over our neighbor, pleasure over health, lust over good relationships etc. But God has absolute trust in humanity that we will choose love. Even though we routinely disappoint.
God not being all-powerful is saying that contrary to the Word, God is a God of random events and not order. Reality contradicts this; there is a defined order to all things in creation. God created a Creation of order and then posited rules of Love. We are to love God and love our neighbor. Now, there are many religious expressions, and every one of them teaches the love of the Divine and neighbor in some form or other. You can be atheist or even agnostic and still have a love for a neighbor over self. Love is central to human existence despite what many in the American Reformed traditions will tell you!
Humanity has claimed knowledge of Good and Evil (freedom) for ourselves from God, and in doing so, we left ourselves with a power we are not equipped to have. We chalk up bad things that happen to us to chance, which doesn’t exist in the biblical context. God is constantly revealing who God is to humanity.
When we take that ability to judge good and evil for ourselves, we are left to understand the bad that befalls us without being all-power, all-knowing, and all-loving. We are like a person in a cave who sees shadows of the truth but can never leave the cave[10]. Rabbi Mordechai Kraft notes in a Torah talk that the Talmud says that if you haven’t experienced pain over 40 days, God isn’t involved in your life.[11]
So if sickness, bad things, and evil are known to God, could they be manifestations of God’s love? Some of you are thinking that this is crazy. But the Bible is filled with evil, sickness, and bad things happening to good and bad people. At some point, we have to lay the explanation somewhere. This shows up in our New Testament as well.
James 1:2–4 NKJV
“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”
Paul was a sick man. He was in constant pain and sickness. But in writing within that sickness, he never denies the Oneness of God.
2 Corinthians 12:9–10 NIV
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Through the power of Christ, we are empowered to heal, receive healing, and receive God’s blessings, but God never promises a sunny day with no issues every day. That is not who God is. Christ also empowers us to endure suffering, mistreatment by others, injustice, evil, and lack of material goods. Jesus lived this within the Gospels. Christ, God’s own self, suffered and died horribly. Christ was raised, but the events leading to that cannot be ignored. Bad things happen to us all, including God.
Some Americans are conditioned and protected from immense suffering and injustice. Some people call this privilege; I think it’s the worst kind of injustice because it denies the fullness of the human experience, including injustice, suffering, pain, sickness, and death which are critical to the human experience and needed to live a full life.
Through immense trauma, the Black community has learned to live in suffering and experiences of injustice, violence, hunger, and housing insecurity. Yet, we believe in a God that saves, a God that provides, and a God that, even in our death, is with us. HOW! God is One. As my Grandma used to say, “you get the Good with the Bad”. God fills the spaces of pain, injustice, violence, hunger, and housing insecurity with a presence of hope, grace, peace, and love, especially when a systemic change of the heart is required.
Good isn’t equal to pleasant. Life has elements that are quite painful and pleasant. Life is a complete cycle. Rabbi Mordechai Kraft astutely defines the concept of good as purposeful.[12] For example, take chemotherapy, it is highly unpleasant, causes immense pain, but it is purposeful in helping to rid us of cancer. Painful but good.
In pain, difficult times, injustice, and violence, we should ask God why, and there are two potential ways of doing this. The first way is asking God for what future purpose God is preparing me for and what the benefit is. Another way to ask why is to ask what past experiences or events have led me to this period of bad or suffering. Notice I am not saying YOU are that reason or YOUR actions, but in general, what in the past could have brought me to this?
We’ll use cancer again. Could chemicals in the water have caused it? Could a behavior I engaged in that was encouraged by the wider culture as good have led me to this? Or…is it just a cell that went crazy.
We should ask why but don’t give God a pass. God is with us in pain, harm, or bad situations, but telling God that it sucks and feels unfair is OK. And to ask God why God doesn’t do something within Creation to fix it is a rational feeling and frustration to have. There is either a future purpose of the bad or a past reason for this, and we are right to demand of God what it is and why! Because God doesn’t get a pass in our suffering. This is a two-way relationship we are talking about here. But we would be naïve to believe that God somehow owes the believer a pain-free life devoid of sickness, pain, harm and death. That is not reality.
Sometimes, the bad things that befall us are truly based on our actions. God will bring punishment. The Hebrew word is “onesh”, which means to perceive that you have fallen. But Grace! Grace says that God has already forgotten through the Cross. We still experience pain, but we can repent, turn and stop doing the things that cause us pain or that trigger bad things to happen to us. As Rabbi Kraft says, this pain creates space between us and God. God loves us too much to allow us to destroy ourselves, and God uses pain to remind us of this fact because, in this, we are left with nothing but our God and God desires to fill this space with God’s grace and love so that we can recover and start again.
I was in a lot of pain the last week of June. The Supreme Court had rulings that impacted my family and me directly. It wasn’t that rulings came down. I am used to injustice occurring against Blacks in America; I don’t see justice ever coming to atone for all the trauma and pain that hampers the community even today. I was unprepared for a Supreme Court Justice from my ethnic group, causing the pain! I was angry. God has blessed this person with education, power, wealth, and connections. He could have used this to help his people but instead caused immense harm. I spent the balance of the week calling out to God, asking why. Why this way? Where is the justice for my people? I haven’t gotten an answer. But like Moses, I will continue to ask why.
So, we face the bad of life and accept that the bad in life happens. When possible, though, we fight the bad and find ways to mitigate its effects. But don’t give God a pass. God still has a role in this; we need to be in dialogue and fight with God for a resolution, to fill the space, and provide presence.
[1] John Telford, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., eight vols. London: Epworth Press, 1931 (Hereafter: Telford), 4:188 (9/15/62); 5:132 (4/24/69), 182 (2/17/70); 7:197 (11/21/83).
[2] Ibid., 4:250–51 (6/20/64); 5:134 (4/29/69).
[3] Ibid., 7:45 (1/2/81). Wesley alludes to Hebrews 5:8, where it says Christ learned obedience from what he suffered.
[4] Ibid., 6:135 (12/30/74).
[5] Ibid., 5:182 (2/17/70).
[6] Ibid., 7:316 (2/21/86).
7 John Wesley, Primitive Physic, 22nd edition, Philadelphia: Parry Hall, 1791, iii-iv.
[8] Kushner, Harold S. “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. First Anchor Books edition, Anchor Books, 2004.
[9] Jeff K Clarke. “If God is good and all-powerful, why do bad things still happen?” accessed 7/3/23 https://www.christianweek.org/god-good-powerful-bad-things-still-happen/.
[10] Rabbi Mordechai Kraft. “Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People” accessed 7/3/23, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoqsqlq8eJw
[11] ibid
[12] ibid