It has been a sad week; I lost a precious member of my extended family and a dear friend lost her son. If we live long enough, we will all come face-to-face with the death of a loved one. Every worldview, therefore, must deal with this important issue if it is to be viable in the marketplace of ideas. All too often it is the Christians who are asked to explain how a good God could allow such bad things to happen, but it is clearly everybody’s issue. So what are the other worldview options for this perennial problem?
The atheist/materialist has nothing to offer but inferior genes that couldn’t quite outwit, outlast, and outplay its competitors in the game of evolutionary survivor – “There’s no crying in evolution” if your life is just a chemical competition. Buddha astutely recognized that suffering was a problem, but rather than recommending a time of mourning for the loss of a loved one, He would tell us that our problem is that we have developed an unhealthy attachment to them in the first place – Buddha would say the problem is that we loved too much. The Hindu has to accept the fact that tragedy is really the work of some nebulous Karma policemen who patrol the world without body cameras and have no headquarters where you can file a complaint – All the Hindu can offer is “what goes around comes around.” New Age religion suggests that it is our lack of positive energy that created the negative circumstances – Heartbreak then becomes a guilt trip for failing to think happy thoughts. Isn’t it interesting that when tragedy strikes nobody blames Buddha, Brahman, or Darwin, yet they seem quite ready to blame God? Why is it when you round up deities to blame for pain and suffering the only God in the suspect lineup is the God of the Bible? While we Christians may think it unfair, we have to remember that the reason He gets dragged into the court of public opinion is because He is the only God that actually claims an intimate relationship with mankind. Questioning God doesn’t mean that we doubt He exists, but rather indicates that we are so sure of His existence that we expect an answer.
Critics of Christianity prematurely think they have driven the final nail into God’s coffin with the issue of pain and suffering, but forget that Christianity has a three day waiting period on all claims to God’s death. Asking God to explain pain and suffering is not limited to the detractors of Christianity, but is also an integral part of the Bible. Job, the prophets, and even Jesus are compelled to ask God, why? When we survey all the worlds’ religions we find that the only God that actually allows the question of suffering to be raised is the God of the Bible. It appears from all available evidence that the Judeo-Christian God is the only deity who has the guts to enter the ring of suffering with mankind. But what is even more amazing is that when we step into the ring we find that He is already sitting in our corner, pummeled on our behalf because He graciously took The Fall for us. We need to remember that Jesus came not as a preventer, but a healer. He didn’t come to stop bad things from happening, but rather to redeem them when they did.
We will all walk a trail of tears so we have to ask ourselves if our weeping will form puddles of despair or water the seeds of hope? Will they flood the valley and become a mire of misery or bring life-giving water to an orchard of optimism? God welcomes sincerely asked questions, His only request is that you pause long enough to hear His WORD on the matter.
The painting is The Doctor by Sir Luke Filde. A reprint of this painting hung in my Dad’s office.
