Why?

Pope Francis hugging Glycelle

                “Why does God allow children to suffer?”  Pope Francis was asked this poignant question yesterday by a 12-year old Filipina street girl named Glycelle during his Apostolic Visit to Manila.  I was asked a similar question this morning:  “Why is God making us go through all of this?”  Katie’s question was equally as heartbreaking, and equally as impossible to answer as Glycelle’s.  I’m asked this question a lot, and I often find myself asking the same question:  Why?

                Why does God allow suffering?  Lots of answers float around out there, but truth be told, none of them are very satisfying.  Some say suffering teaches us a lesson that God wants us to learn.  I don’t doubt that we learn many valuable lessons in our suffering, and I don’t doubt that God can help us learn and grow from suffering.  But I don’t believe that an all-powerful God who created the heavens and the earth would have to rely on suffering to teach us a lesson.  One would think that God has a more creative lesson plan than that, and that an all-compassionate, all-merciful God would not resort to torturing his students to get his message across to us. 

Another answer we often hear is that our suffering is punishment for some wrong that we've committed.  While this response plays to our sense of justice, it’s not borne out by our experience.  The “law of retribution,” as it’s called, states that the just are rewarded and the wicked are punished.  Well, that sounds fair, but, as the saying goes, “life isn't fair.”  It doesn't always work out that way, at least not in this life.  Good and bad things happen to bad people, good and bad things happen to good people, and there’s no rhyme nor reason as to when or why or how. 

Then there’s the worst possible answer to the question of why God allows us to suffer:  “It’s God’s will.”  (Please don’t ever say this at a funeral).  This vague, falsely-providential response fails on several levels.  First, God is perfect and, therefore, perfectly simple.  So if “God is love” (1 John 4: 8) then God can only love.  God cannot will suffering, sickness or death.  It’s contrary to his nature.  If God willed death, he would never have sent his Son to bring us eternal life.  Second, since God can only love perfectly, God cannot love one person more or less than another.  God loves everyone and everything equally – that is to say, perfectly.  As a result, God cannot and does not target one person to suffer and another to live a care-free life.  God’s will for everyone is for us to live in his perfect love for all of eternity.

So how do I answer this question when asked?  Well, the short answer is that I don’t.  I admit right off the bat, like Pope Francis did, that we don’t have the answer to that question.  Then I try to put the question into the context of what we understand about God and his creation.  I explain, as I did above, that God is love and that God cannot and does not cause or will suffering, sickness or death to anyone.  God created us to love us and so that we could love him.  But to have love, we have to have free will.  Love can’t be forced; it must be freely given.  And with free will came the original sin that introduced disorder into the cosmos – disorder that results in suffering, sickness and death.  Our suffering, therefore, isn't the will of God or an act of God; it’s simply a condition of this disordered world.  In one sense, then, suffering is an inevitable consequence of a world where free will is permitted to exist.  Perhaps God accepts that a life spent loving him and being loved by him is worth the inevitable suffering that results from the free will needed to make that love possible.

   

God doesn't cause suffering, but he always offers us the opportunity for good to come out of suffering – he always offers us the opportunity to love.  When people around us suffer, God hands us the opportunity to help them, to pray for them, to comfort them – to love them.  Likewise, when we suffer, God gives us the opportunity to join with those who suffer, to pray together with them, to suffer with them – to love them.  God also offers us the opportunity to allow others to minister to us in our suffering.  Humbly placing ourselves into the loving care of others is itself an act of love.  The trick, then, for all who suffer is to look for the God-inspired love that is being poured out for us and to seize the God-given opportunities to pour out our love for others.

Why does God allow us to suffer?  I don’t know.  I ask God that question all the time.  He has not yet chosen to answer me.  But I do know that when I and those close to me have suffered, God was with us because love was all around us.  God’s love sustained us, comforted us and brought us peace.  So I also know that God’s eternal love is more powerful and more enduring than any suffering this life may bring.