The question ‘why there is suffering’ is a universal-unknown to the whole of mankind.
This book will be short and to the point. There will be no lengthy, glib stories; or “God spoke to me” declarations of unique or special revelation. This book declares what is already known, but is seldom made knowable because our culture, our media, our pulpits, our intellects, and our constant pursuit in seeking relief from suffering prohibit it from joining its truth with our hearts.
Yes, this book is about my personal journey and the conclusions I had drawn from Scripture, so someone could say it’s all my opinion. But I have yet to find anyone who was able to counter my conclusions with either scriptural truths or observable facts.
This ‘truth’ that is seldom made knowable is a difficult juxtaposition of the obvious world of suffering in which we live and the notion that a ‘good’ God divinely wills this suffering to exist.
To the secular person, the coexistence of universal suffering and a ‘God who loves you’ is worthy of mockery. To the believer who cannot reconcile God and suffering, there can be nothing ahead except endless moral confusion, self-blame, grief, fear, quixotic purges of real or imagined vices, feelings of abandonment, trials of faith, and still more suffering.
Christ called upon each man to carry his own cross and follow Him. Luke 9:23. Paul in Romans praised the power of suffering to transform, Romans 5:1-5. Yet, few take these charges seriously. Most gloss over this Scripture and look for relief from the burden of a personal cross and seek another way to follow Christ.
The fact is that the desire for, and the pursuit of, the relief from suffering is the fundamental basis for cowardice, both in believers and non-believers alike. Not that the desire for relief from suffering always produces cowardice, but it illustrates the divide between the outcomes of Romans 5:1-5 and the path toward cowardice.
As much as a non-believer resists the notion of his own sinfulness before God, so do typical 21st century American Christian evangels resist the knowledge that God wills suffering to reach its fullest, divinely ordained measure in the life of a believer.
Carrying your own cross has wide and deep implications. It is not isolated to a God-ordained endurance race, though your life is an endurance race. It is not about self-sin recognition or self-repentance. [Escaping the power of sin is not a do-it-yourself exercise.] It is not about keeping yourself Holy. [You can’t.] It is not about making yourself pure. [You can’t do that either.]
Carrying your own cross is not an option. It is a mandate. But what is it? The way of the cross is the way of the suffering of God in your life. This is not double-talk or gibberish. To be more clear: The way of the cross, the suffering of God, is the inner, moral suffering a person experiences as he or she lives their lives in this fallen world. Physical suffering, and all its variants, are manifestations of the greater, more universal, moral suffering.
Without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, the ‘way of the cross’ cannot be easily recognized [discernment being a gift of the Holy Spirit]. This is because we ourselves are fallen and live in a fallen world; the combination of which dims the truth of our moral condition.
Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, which makes clear the purpose of the cross in our lives, our human hearts tend to seek easier paths.
The influence of the natural man nudges us away from the suffering cross, and our lives are spent looking for that ‘other way’. Even for the most devout believer, that ‘other way’ can be found masked in religious theology: Many wait for the Rapture as a way out. Many seek the Lord’s return as a hope of relief. Many find temporary distraction by the emotional entertainment in our church worship services. Many use prayer only as a petition platform. Many dream of the heavenly existence in a new body. In all these things, the desire for worldly relief from the heaviness of this present life takes the forefront. Few accept the inescapable reality of suffering. Few take on the cross as their own.
But relief from suffering in this life is not the Will of God. If it were, we would not suffer.
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
This book is for believing Christians who struggle to understand suffering and why God allows it. Indeed, more than that—why God, who is the Great Uncreated Eternal Omniscient Almighty Being, interactively perpetuates suffering across the spectrum of mankind, from the distant past, the present and long into the future.
There are many who hold fast the belief that God is Absolute Love, Who wants no harm to come to anyone, and is the God who Saves and Heals. And I concur, God surely is all of those things. But the adherence to that belief cannot explain the ubiquity of suffering, nor God’s role in allowing it on a grand universal scale. To hold to the belief that God is Love—a harmless kind of Love-- is to deny reality.
This book is not necessarily limited to believing Christians. But, for the unbeliever, the reader needs to know that the focus of this book’s content presupposes that the reader is “saved” in the traditional sense. Being “saved” means that a person has accepted Jesus’ atonement for their sins by His death on the cross and has provided the promise of eternal life. This book is written from this perspective and assumes that the reader has a referential background in God’s Word, yet struggles with the questions surrounding God’s Will as it pertains to suffering.
So, by focus of content and intent of design, this book is not for everyone. But it still may be for you.
In its pages you will find an explanation for the suffering of man, why the Almighty God divinely wills it to be so, and your role as a divinely connected co-sufferer.
‘Suffering’ has plagued kings and slaves alike. It lies at the heart of the reason for the creation of many false religions and political systems. Throughout the history of man, man has used the threat of suffering as a method of control over the weak by the strong. In contrast, the relief from suffering has propelled man from living in tents and caves to the creation of great civilizations. It has also been the same catalyst for bringing great civilizations to dust. Just in the last two centuries, the pursuit of the relief from suffering has led mankind to technological heights as well as created the most oppressive forms of governments ever to have existed.
The sciences of psychology, sociology, and anthropology are inadequate to answer the question about man’s suffering with respect to God. The scope of human experiences, by their very construct, are too limited a frame of reference. Just as in the case of self-analysis, self-sentience alone is not enough to deduce the reason for the existence of self. The answers must come from ‘outside’ the human experience. Therefore the source for answers must come from God’s own revelation.
There is nothing to sugar coat the answer to the question ‘Why God Wills you to Suffer’. You may not like the answer. It is a hard answer. It requires a shift of perspective that many will find difficult to accept or will reject outright. But the answer is not presented as speculation. It is not a guess. It is founded upon a framework that has its origins outside of the human experience. It comes from God’s own revelation of Himself, His Divine Nature, and through His Word.
A believer in Christ can go through a lifetime of suffering and never know why God designed it to be so. Until of course, at the end, when it is finally made clear.
But there is no need to wait. There is no need to cry in the dark like a child: ‘why, God, why?’ God has already revealed the ‘why’ of the design. And He has provided His Holy Spirit to illumine the way.
As A.W. Tozer said:
“Everywhere… we find persons who are Bible-taught but not Spirit-taught. They conceive truth to be something which they can grasp with the mind. The most brilliant intellect may be imbecilic when confronted by the mysteries of God. For a man to understand revealed truth requires an act of God equal to the original act which inspired the text.”
Truth only requires the believer let go of his own fallen morality, examine the subject through the lens of the revealed attributes of the Sovereign Almighty God, and to let the Spirit of God provide the illumination.