....faith and life....life and faces

Man's greatness and misery

Undeserved suffering

Christians  cannot  "explain"  suffering  either. However, they are able to trust God and know that suffering is not God's declaration of bankruptcy and the end of His love. How is this possible?

We try to  reflect:   suffering can purify.  Without a  heavy  blow,  life may remain too superficial. Often, suffering permits us to look behind the facade of things. According to E. Bloch, "Misery teaches us to think". And K. Jaspers said: "Suffering finally wakes up the human being." Suffering can make man more mature. It also can break him. We take off our hats in admiration for some people who have gone through suffering. The French thinker Gide said: "I believe that there are certain gates that only illness can open."

Suffering can have a warning function. Physical pain may indicate a dangerous disease and thus may help to advance life.  Suffering can teach us to pray ... but also to swear! We must always try to give suffering a purpose. But the question remains: Could there not be another way? Does purification, maturity, and warning have to hurt so much? Reflecting this way, we do not find a real answer to the question whether suffering makes sense.

Does the Bible give an answer?

Many  people  spontaneously  connect suffering with a  penalty for sin. In fact,  this view is predominant in many parts of the Bible,  especially  in the Old  Testament:  Suffering  as  penalty,  for  guilt  which may be  hidden and unconscious.  But  this  is  not the only tenet of the  Old Testament. In Job -  one book of the Old Testament is named after him - a man is presented who revolts against incomprehensible suffering and argues with God. He is not the "enduring, tolerating Job" who is wrongly referred to time and again, but the Job who rebels and rises up against God.

Job shows that the suffering human being does not have to be silent, that God does not resent his accusation. Quarreling with God does not mean being an atheist. It is finally in the middle of his suffering that this complaining Job experiences his God. His friends,  who tried to give Job many explanations for his suffering and who scolded him for incessantly accusing God, are reproved by God in the end.

It is Jesus who does away with the one-sided declaration that suffering is a penalty for sin. When His disciples see a blind man and ask "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered: "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be manifest in him" (John 9,2). The connection between sin and suffering cannot have been so obvious after all.

Man's greatness and misery

The devil

A  high  ranking  SS-officer  and  general of the "Waffen-SS", Karl Wolff, wrote in a letter in August 1942: "I have noted with particular joy in your communication that now, for the last two weeks, a train with 15000 members of the Chosen People is going to Treblinka every day ..." (a concentration camp in the Third Reich).

Is a human being really capable of such evil? By whom and through what is he driven to it? Thinking of the crimes committed in those concentration camps, do we not  have  the  impression  that  this type of malice is no longer human,   that  there  is a  stronger  spiritual  power behind it, something superhuman, diabolical?

The Holy Scriptures call this spiritual power which negates the will of God, the devil. They call him "liar from the beginning", "diabolus", meaning the "confuser", who puts all values upside-down and makes sin appear desirable.  But still, this is no excuse for human beings, as only by their own consent does evil gain the upper hand, resulting in sin. How should we imagine the devil? The Scriptures say almost nothing about this. They only want to show the reality and power of this diabolic might. However, the many popular and often very naive ideas about the devil are not confirmed by the Scriptures.

...and all the suffering

Man's freedom includes risk. But without this risk, man would be no more  than  a  tool,  a  puppet, in the hands of God, with no will of his own. The greatness  of man can also show itself in the ability to say NO to the will of God,  in  sin.  We can agree with the Bible, which finds the source of so much suffering  in the world  within man himself.  We also see deep human experience documented in the Scriptures when they report about demonic powers misleading man  to  do  evil  which  appears to be beyond human capability.

But is this sufficient  to  explain all the suffering in the world? What about suffering  which has no obvious connection with sin? Suffering which overwhelms man unexpectedly and through no fault of his own, senseless pain, catastrophes, earth tremors, accidents, suffering of the innocent, terminal illness, sudden death. Who is responsible for all this? Would no world at all not be better than this one? What is God's opinion?

The question of suffering remains enigmatic and challenging for both, believers and atheists. Many say "Let us act, let us drive back suffering wherever we can. This is more profitable than thinking about it and looking for explanations". This is certainly true. This corresponds with the will of God:  Anyone who alleviates suffering acts on His behalf. But has this answered the question? What does Christianity say about undeserved suffering?