THE PROBLEM OF INNOCENT SUFFERING 

In a world where bad things happen to good people, can we still believe in a God who is both all-powerful and all-loving?

Where was God last Wednesday Morning?

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, fire swept through a maisonette in Tollesbury Court in Hutton, trapping the family inside. 13-year old Ricky, 8-year-old Lewis, and 5-year-old Jack lost their lives in the blaze. Twelve-year-old Danielle, eight year old JoJo and mum Kerri were seriously injured but escaped alive. Long Ridings School and Shenfield School have lost pupils, classmates and friends. A number of folk in the church here knew the family and the children who died. As we extend our sympathies, and surround the family with our prayers, there is one simple question many thinking people are asking. Where was God last Wednesday morning?

It’s the same question people have asked when they heard about the tragic loss of life in the floods of Mozambique, or the many droughts or earthquakes or volcanoes over the years. It sounds similar to the questions asked after Locherbie or Dunblane or Auschwitz. Where was God in those places when so many innocent people were suffering and dying? Of course, in many events responsibility for the suffering rests with people, with deliberate acts of evil. But in Hutton last week, as in Mozambique over the last month, nobody was to blame and nobody should be blamed! These were “natural disasters”, tragic accidents that could have happened to any one of us! So the question is very straightforward – why does God allow such accidents to happen? Where WAS God as three innocent children burned to death in Hutton last Wednesday? The problem of innocent suffering is a vital issue for Christians to grapple with.

It’s a question which people who are not Christians will sometimes raise as their “proof” that God doesn’t exist at all. “If there was a God then he wouldn’t allow that kind of suffering,” they say. To some people the existence of innocent suffering is a knockdown argument which demonstrates that there is NO God at all.

In fact, if you stop to think about it, that argument doesn’t prove anything at all. “If there was a God, he wouldn’t allow innocent people to suffer,” people say. But saying, “if there was a God” in that kind of way is actually already making some important assumptions about what God is like. It assumes at least that God exists, that God is good, that God is just, that God is loving. Unless God exists, unless God is good and just and loving, there is NO reason to expect the world to be any different. Unless God exists and is good and just and loving, there would be no reason to expect him to do anything to STOP innocent suffering. Then the question also assumes that a God exists who is powerful enough to change events in the world if he wanted to. A God who wasn’t all-powerful could not be expected to do anything about innocent suffering.

So the person who asks, “where was God in Hutton last Wednesday morning?” is already assuming that a God exists who is not only good and just and loving but who is also powerful enough to prevent innocent suffering if He so chooses. The question is not really about whether God exists, but whether he is really the kind of God we believe him to be, in the light of events in the world which suggest the opposite.

The heart of the problem of innocent suffering is really best expressed like this. “Why does a good and just and loving and all-powerful God allow innocent people to suffer?”  Does this mean that God is not really good and just and loving? Or does it mean that God isn’t really all-powerful after all?

In response to this question as Christians we want to say at least four things. And to illustrate three of these things I am going to point us to one of the most significant events in the Old Testament, the flood.

God IS good and just

The Bible teaches us in so many places that God is perfect in His justice, goodness, righteousness and fairness. The Bible talks about righteousness more than 500 times and justice almost 200. We are only human, limited in our wisdom and understanding. God rules the world with complete justice and fairness. And we see God’s justice at work in the Flood, bringing judgement on a rebellious world.

Genesis 6:5-12

In the flood God acted to remove all the violence and pollution of the world and the suffering they caused. The Flood is one of many Biblical examples of God’s righteousness and justice being expressed. And as well as being a good and just God, the Bible makes clear that

God IS all-powerful

The God of the Bible is God ALMIGHTY, Maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them. We see God’s mighty power at work in the events of the Exodus, in the miracles worked by the prophets and supremely by Jesus. But the Flood also shows us just how powerful God is!

Genesis 7:11-24

I believe the flood actually happened. I believe that Genesis gives us a historical account of historical events, which show us just how powerful God is. So God is both good and just, and also all-powerful. So why doesn’t God surely bring innocent suffering to an end?

Life is full of risks. Where we live. How we travel. What we eat. All these decisions carry risks of us being harmed in some way. Some accidents are simply that, totally unforeseen circumstances that lead to accidents that could happen to anyone. But these are very, very rare. Usually somewhere along the way human beings have made some choices which have made the accident a possibility. We have chosen to put ourselves into a position where we might be hurt. So the only way God could prevent those kinds of accidents would be to take away our free will – to never let anybody take any risks, ever.

But so much innocent suffering is actually caused directly or indirectly by the sinful actions of human beings. Not only through murder and war, where the powerful inflict terrible suffering on the powerless.  So many of the world’s problems are caused by greed. There IS enough food to go round. So often, it just doesn’t get to the people who are starving at prices they can afford to pay. And there is enough land for people to be able to build homes in safety, instead of along fault lines or in the shadows of volcanoes.

The one sure-fire way that God could deal with the problem of innocent suffering would be to make sure that NOBODY could ever harm anybody else. But the only way to do that would be to get rid of all the people who could ever possibly, maybe, one day, not just by deliberate action but by omission or even by accident, all those people who could conceivably cause harm to others. And that would mean all of us, everybody, the whole human race. Because we are all human, all fallen, all sinful. We all have free will. Any one of us could choose to hurt others. And we are all fallible, all imperfect. Any one of us by our mistakes and failures and accidents could cause others to suffer even if that was the last thing we intended. So the only way God could get rid of innocent suffering completely would be to get rid of all the people – another Flood perhaps?

God could do this. He IS all-powerful. But as the Flood also shows us, 

God IS loving and merciful

We see God’s mercy in the way He saved Noah and his family and the pairs of animals from the punishment and destruction of the Flood by building the Ark. The God of the Bible is a God of love and of mercy. The reason that God doesn’t solve the problem of innocent suffering by the simple plan of wiping out all the people is all wrapped up in God’s love and mercy. And we also see the same love and mercy in the covenant which He made with Noah after the Ark had come to dry land again, the “Rainbow Covenant.”

Genesis 9:8-17

In the Flood, the Almighty God in his justice and power broke into the natural world in order to bring judgement by cleansing the whole earth from sin. In the Rainbow covenant, God promised that he would never break into the natural world in that kind of way again.

Genesis 8:21b-22

The Rainbow Covenant is God’s promise that the natural order of things will continue until the end of time, until the final judgement. It is the Creator’s promise that the creation will be allowed to unfold in its own way without continuous interruptions by divine intervention. In Eden God walked in the Garden, but since the Fall God does not walk in the same way in the world which has rejected Him. And after the Flood, God promised that He would never break in, in judgement, again.

If God were to intervene in miraculous ways to prevent EVERY incident of innocent suffering, what a strange world we would live in. The car with brakes failing wouldn’t hit the pedestrian, because God would lift the pedestrian 10 feet into the air as the car crashed beneath him. The Mozambique village wouldn’t be swept away because, just as in the parting of the Red Sea, the floodwaters would separate and flow each side of the village instead of through it. The starving millions might discover that stones really do turn to bread for them each day. That would indeed be a world full of strange miracles. It would be a very confusing unpredictable world to live in. But that isn’t the world God created!

We believe in a God of miracles. We believe in a God who DOES act in power to bring healing and deliverance and salvation. But we also recognise that God only works in those kinds of ways in rare and exceptional circumstances, usually in his church and for his praise and glory and not usually in the world which does not even believe He exists. God alone has the wisdom and justice to decide fairly when it is right for Him to intervene by miracles and when to let events run their natural course, however tragic the outcome. We trust in God’s justice and fairness. And we recognise that it is actually a sign of God’s love and mercy that, although He IS all-powerful, God generally does allow the world to continue in its own way, with natural laws operating unhindered and events unfolding in predictable ways. For most of the time, God leaves human beings to take responsibility for our lives, and to take care of each other as best we are able. Because the only alternative would be to bring this world to an end and make a radically different world!

Somebody once asked the German preacher and theologian Helmut Thielicke what he thought was the most important question facing the Western World. He pointed to the question of suffering.

            “Again and again I have the feeling that suffering is regarded as something which is fundamentally inadmissible, distressing, embarrassing, and not to be endured. Naturally, we are called upon to combat and diminish suffering. All medical and social action is motivated by the perfectly justified passion for this goal. But the idea that suffering is a burden which can or even should be fundamentally radically exterminated can only lead to disastrous illusions. One perhaps does not even have to be a Christian to know that suffering belongs to the very nature of this our world and will not pass away until this world passes away. And beyond this, we Christians know that in a hidden way it is connected with man’s reaching for the forbidden fruit, but that God can transform even this burden of a fallen world into a blessing and fill it with meaning.”

“Suffering is part of the very nature of this our world.” It would be a very very different world which did not have such suffering. The continued existence of evil and the possibility of innocent suffering are both consequences of God’s mercy and patience. He could just bring judgement on us all here and now and that would be and end of it! Until that judgement comes, there will always be suffering.

God IS good and just, God IS all-powerful and God IS loving and merciful. In His wisdom he leaves the world to carry on and doesn’t prevent innocent suffering by continually intervening. But we mustn’t conclude that God is aloof or unaffected when people are suffering and dying. Because last, but by no means least, there is something else very important which Christians would want to say.

God shares our sufferings

Sometimes we can feel that God doesn’t know what is going on in his world, or that he doesn’t care about us any more.

Luke 12:6-7

In this season of Lent, as we lead up to the events of Easter, we are reminded why Jesus Christ the Saviour has been the strength and inspiration for so many who have suffered innocently. The poor and the oppressed and the slaves, the sick and the suffering and the dying in every age have found comfort and hope not only in the resurrection of Jesus, but in His dying on the cross for them. Because more than anywhere else, it was on the cross that Jesus the Son of God took upon Himself our pains and our sufferings

Isaiah 53:3-5

After the tragedy in Dunblane in 1996 Steve Chalke wrote some words which seem to apply even more to the fire last week. Where was God last Wednesday morning? “We know that what happened was neither His doing nor His will. God’s was the first heart to break over the events that took place there. He wept with us for the children whose lives were cut short and the family they left behind. When confronted with the pain of the death of his friend Lazarus, Jesus also wept.”

God is suffering right now with a mother and a brother and a sister who are not only coping with their own terrible injuries but are also bereaved, whose lives have been destroyed by the loss of their brothers. God suffers with those neighbours and fire fighters whose courageous attempts to save the children were not successful.  God suffers with a community shattered by this dreadful tragedy. God suffers with the thousands dying in the floods in Mozambique, and with the tens of thousands dying of hunger and of terrible diseases every day, whose innocent suffering we never know about but God sees in intimate detail.

God suffers with us in EVERY incident of innocent suffering, and God knows our suffering so well because there was none so innocent as Jesus, the Son of God, the spotless Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world, Jesus who experienced deeper grief and pain there on the cross than and human being before or since. God suffers with us.

So where was God in Hutton last Wednesday morning? He was there, weeping like the rest of us!