Explaining Suffering

Explaining Suffering

When Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, they chose sin and self over holiness and God. Mankind’s relationship with God was broken. God does not tolerate sin, so we were exiled from His presence and we now live apart from Him.

God is The Giver Of Life who sustains all living things. When we left Him, we chose to leave life. So we now live in a world ruled by sin. There is great pleasure but there is also death and decay. All of human misery is a consequence of that sin.

40 years ago, John Denver and George Burns started in a movie called, “Oh God.” The point of the movie was that God appeared to someone and brought His message to the world again. In the course of the movie, all of the world’s great religious experts tested John Denver to see if he was really hearing from God.

They gave him a list of questions and locked him in a room alone. He was told to ask God for the answers. One of those questions was this, “How can you allow so much suffering in this world?”

There was a lot about that movie that I don’t agree with (and please don’t think that I get my theology from Hollywood) but I love the answer they gave to that question. God’s response was “What do you mean ‘Why do I allow suffering?’ I gave you a perfect world and look what you’ve done with it.”

In terms of theology, it’s not a perfect illustration but you get the idea. We treat our world with a “We can do whatever we want” mentality when God has told us that it’s not meant to work that way. He offered us Paradise but we chose self-indulgence over worshipping Him.

We are reaping the consequences of that mind set. It impacts every one of us. So, in answer to the question of the day, can’t God create a world without suffering?

Yes! In fact, He did exactly that.

Romans 7:24-25

“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!