“I suffer, therefore I am”, joked one of Graham Greene’s typically disenchanted characters in the middle of the last century. In fact, the Twentieth Century brought the reality of living in a suffering world uncomfortably closer to us than ever before. For some, the witnessed atrocities of mass genocide, unending warfare and global poverty have denied any possibility of moral certainty and advancement. It is disappointing, therefore, that in this time the mainstream Western Churches have kept Christian teaching on suffering relatively quiet. Most have failed to present the Bible’s response to mankind’s preoccupation with the imperfection of existence, unpopular though such an opinion might be.

I do not wish to appear glib in treating such a sensitive subject from the comfort of a student-loan funded PC in a wealthy Western country, but do consider it important that genuine Christian teaching on such a problem is heard. Glen Hoddle, for example, had any meaningful career ended after voicing his views on retributive justice through the idea of karma, though his opinions were neither tactfully presented nor Biblically supportable.

Our knowledge of God as recorded through his Word, presents the fundamental answer to the problem of suffering in the first three chapters of the Bible. Most Sunday school children know that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, even that they were banished from God’s perfect Garden of Eden, but few that the ground beneath their feet was cursed as a punishment. The writer, Moses, clearly explains “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19). The consequences of man’s ‘Fall’ or rebellion against the commands of his Creator are both death, and a frustrated existence until that time. Mercifully, God also promises to relieve mankind from such deserved judgement through the rest of the Bible by means of a saviour. The apostle Paul, writing later to the Roman church, tells how, ultimately, the whole of creation will be “liberated from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21).

Many now object to the teaching that suffering is a result of God’s judgement upon his creation. Far from being a sign of his ‘unfairness’ or unfeasibility, the reality of God as a judge reveals an essential fact about his character, namely his moral perfectness. As the theologian J. I. Packer wrote, “All God’s indignation is righteous”. It is indeed a praiseworthy attribute of God that he is just, and punishes wrongdoing. Thus while the wretched lives of the world’s poorest and most persecuted, and even the imperfections of our own, may seem blighted by injustice, the Bible promises that God in his unbounded wisdom and power will mete out justice on the causes of sin, the ‘disease’ of moral perversion which afflicts all mankind.

In fact, Scripture explains that this process of righteous judgement has already begun, as God continuously reveals his wrath to mankind. In the essential text on seeing God as a just judge, Paul again explains how “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the Godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Romans 1:18). The context of the letter describes the overwhelming problem of God’s wrath against mankind for turning from him since Adam hid from his Father after the fall in Genesis. Most importantly, everyone is in a conscious position of rebellion against God through their rejection of the ‘truth’ of God’s nature as made clear to all through his creation. The fact of suffering which Paul confronts in Romans is that God “gives people over” to what they want and deserve. As man has decided to exchange the truth of God for a lie, God righteously lets us indulge in our foolish desires.

Something of the complete nature of God can however only be fully understood by the overriding ‘good news’ of Paul’s letter, that God has provided an answer to this chronic problem of human ‘sin’. God’s extraordinary love for his creation is such that he presents this in his own son, the only worthy solution to mankind’s estrangement from his Father. Thus the primary reason for Jesus’ coming and death is as a sacrifice or ‘propitiation’ on mankind’s behalf, not as a moral teacher, subject for BBC documentaries or even, primarily, as an ‘example’ for our improvement. The word ‘propitiation’, eschewed by some squeamish modern translators of the Bible, is defined as “a sacrifice that averts wrath through expiating sin, and cancelling guilt.” Jesus Christ therefore, as he himself foretold, came to die on the cross that mankind might be spared God’s unavoidable judgement upon it.

The Bible also confronts the problem of suffering elsewhere in the context of Christian perseverance. While those who trust in Christ’s saving work on the cross are spared the penalty of condemnation through judgement, their commencement of eternal life in this world is ironically characterised by an expectation to suffer. Persecution is both a definite prospect (2 Timothy 3:12) and a mark of God’s changing work in us — trials are in fact part of the Christian’s ‘disciplining’ by their new Father and will paradoxically present a future ‘harvest’ to God’s glory (Hebrews 12:11).

The reality of suffering in the world is therefore not an issue which the Christian can not answer, although through the scarcity of Biblical teaching on it the world’s response will not be a welcoming one. It is in fact at the heart of the mechanics of the ‘good news’ about Jesus Christ. It is central to the understanding, for example, of the book of Revelation, as the ‘root of David’, Jesus, is the only one able to open the seal of the scroll of God’s judgement on the world and thus deal with human sin. Suffering is however most importantly the means of our reconciliation with God from a fallen, suffering world. The prophet Isaiah wonderfully foretells how “the punishment that bought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Although we perhaps have a worldly and incomplete understanding of suffering, the Bible clearly tells us that God is one who loves to heal, and offers his solution to a suffering existence to all who put their faith in his son Jesus Christ.

Roy Chambers

Do you agree with Roy? Write and tell us about this or any other subject you’ve seen in this issue of Christis at editor@christis.org.uk