Questions about suffering and loss and how they fit into God’s will enter our minds as we see what fills our beggar’s bowls. I have mostly operated under the idea that suffering is a consequence of living in a fallen world and/or a consequence of individual sin.
Trusting God by Jerry Bridges states that both calamities and good things come from God. He quotes Saint Augustine who said, “Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen: He either permits it to happen or He brings it about Himself.”
I feel bewildered to think of God directly causing suffering. How can He be good and loving if He wills pain for His people? Yet, His plan of salvation included suffering for His Son.
Authors like Philip Yancey try to distinguish among 3 types of “wills” in God’s plan. 1) Intentional (goodness); 2) circumstantial; and 3) ultimate. The Bible teaches God is good and His intent is good so the ultimate must also be good. God uses circumstances to serve His ultimate will. The ultimate will is His own glory and the good of His people.
According to Bridges, all occasions of pain and sorrow are under the absolute control of God. People’s sinful intents and actions serve the sovereign purpose of God, but He does not make them sin. They make the choices. God is not the author of sin.
John Piper in the pdf file available on the internet titled Disability and the Sovereign Goodness of God discusses the man born blind in John 9. Jesus does not focus on the cause of the man’s blindness but on the purpose for the blindness, i.e., to demonstrate the glory of God, in this case thru healing. The explanation of the blindness does not lie in the cause but in the purpose.
Suffering can only have value and meaning in relation to God’s plan.
Bridges says the natural response to adversity is to seek relief, but our greatest need is not freedom from adversity, but freedom from the penalty of sin. If God’s love was sufficient for my greatest need, I need to trust it is sufficient for my lesser needs. Trust means not resigning ourselves to pain and heartbreak, but accepting it as part of God’s purposes and plan.
Most of the writings on suffering by evangelical Christians offer words of advice. Don’t dwell on the why, but focus on how God redeems the pain and uses it for ultimate good. Hard to do because sometimes the suffering lasts a long time, even a lifetime. Often we cannot foresee the outcome, the way God uses adversity.
No matter how limited our understanding of suffering, we do know God is always present with us and sees us thru our adversities. We have to quietly rest in Him and trustingly ingest the hard-to-swallow rations that fill our bowls (lives). I confess when I see no relief, I often fall into resignation. Let’s try to move to thanksgiving that God does have redemptive purposes.
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