Luke 22:42-43 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. (43) And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
If there is a loving God, then why do evil things happen to good people? Why must even we who trust in God go through times of unexplainable pain and suffering? These are not new questions. They are questions people have struggled to answer and deal with for thousands of years now.
Atheism has no explanation for these questions because that would require defining what “evil” is and doing this would require admitting there must be some universal standard of good which would be getting too close to admitting there’s an all-powerful standard bearer (God) who exists.
So, in order to avoid this, atheism bypasses the whole notion of a universal standard of good and seeks to focus on each person’s own personal experience.
In this particular case, I believe atheism actually gets it right. The question of unexplainable evil and suffering goes beyond doctrinal statements and church cliches. It gets down to the level of personal experience because no two people have the same experience in suffering even if they are suffering the same events.
This is because each uniquely created person has their own personality and therefore their own perspectives and responses to suffering. As famed mathematician John Lennox once said, “There is no generic person therefore there is no generic answer to evil and suffering”.
While Christianity does not solve the problem of why people go through times of unexplainable pain and suffering, it does at least provide an explanation, a way to understand it as much as we possibly can while in this life, and a way to go through these times successfully.
The Real Questions of Life
People generally have the same two main questions about other people. “Can I trust you?” and “Can you help me?” Their closeness to others seem to be founded upon these two questions.
So, the real question is not “why does God allow evil things to happen to good people” or “Why does He allow there to be unexplainable pain and suffering?” The true underlying question that I believe people have is, “Can I trust this God who allows unexplainable pain and suffering, even when I don’t understand what He is doing or why He is doing it?”
I believe this question alone gets down to what people really want to know.
I have found that if you give people a decent explanation of why things are a certain way, that will often suffice for them and they’ll just say something like, “Oh, okay. That makes sense”.
People don’t always need a clear-cut answer, they often just need the light ray of hope to pierce into their darkness of confusion and doubt to show them there is a reason, even if they don’t fully understand that reason in the moment.
We have an example of this in the Bible when Jesus seems to randomly just start washing His disciples’ feet. Upon seeing this, Peter questioned Jesus about it in John 13:6 Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?
Jesus simply responded with …What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. (John 13:7)
Sometimes painful events in our lives seem to just be random and unexplainable; almost as if God is just arbitrarily coming up with painful things for us to go through in order to keep us guessing, to keep us in submission, or simply out of spite.
The disciples seemed to have felt this way also when they could not explain why Jesus was doing what He was doing in John 13. He simply told them that they would not understand it now but that they would later.
This is one of the ways Christianity gives a pathway into understanding seemingly random painful events…by helping us realize that the understanding of our situations often comes to us, not in the moment when emotions are high, but later after we’ve walked through them for a while.
So, what do we do in the meantime? I find that people “lose their faith, stop believing in God, or, get away from their parents’ religion”, not necessarily based on a whim, but simply because they either did not understand the need for a relationship with God or they did not understand why certain painful things were happening all around them or even to them.
My question is, are people really looking for ways to just not believe in God anymore and get away from religion just for the sake of doing it, or are we simply looking for ways to understand what is going on in the world around us? I believe it’s really the second one.
While on the earth, Jesus endured a lot of unfair pain and suffering to open the way of redemption and salvation to mankind. It would be easy to say something like, “Jesus went through far more than we’ll ever face” People often do say this and that is probably true on a factual basis.
But honestly, that statement is not usually very helpful. I say this because, it not only diminishes what people are going through in their own lives, it also misses a great opportunity to help people learn to walk more closely, personally, and trustingly with the Lord.
It makes connecting with Jesus seem to be just out of their reach because they could never “understand what He went through” and therefore their situation is not even worth mentioning, much less being affected by it.
Understanding Pain and Suffering
After giving Himself fully to both God and people and knowing He was about to be unfairly betrayed, unfairly tried in a fixed court system, unfairly beaten, and crucified He prayed these words in Luke 22:42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
Jesus understood pain and suffering, not only from a purely intellectual perspective, but He understood it from a very personal perspective as well. He shows us how we are to view and walk through these difficult times.
John 13:7 Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. If Jesus says it’s okay not to understand right now, then it’s okay.
Luke 22:42 …Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me… If Jesus prayed for God to remove the situation, so can we.
Luke 22:42 …nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. If even Jesus had to trust God and go all the way through times of pain and suffering, then so must we and so can we.
We are given a promise from God in Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
The goal is not to get or give all the answers. Neither is the goal to get as far away from God as possible. The goal should be to understand that, even though I don’t understand, I can trust in the God who is allowing this situation and I can trust Him to bring the best outcome from it.
Remember, the ultimate question people have is “Can I trust the God who allows unexplainable pain and suffering to happen?” God shows us that the answer is “Yes, we can!” because now we understand more about Him and how He does things.
Closing prayer: Our Father, we come before You in the name of Jesus. Father, even in our painful situations, many of which are unexplainable, and though we often do not understand them at the moment, we trust You with the outcomes because we believe You are working our situations together for our good because we love You and have answered Your call to be saved. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
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Pastor Fulmer
Pastor Fulmer's Blog 