Why does God allow people to suffer horribly?
The Gospel says that everything is subject to the Lord, even to the point that not a single hair can fall from a person’s head without the will of God.
However, we know that in the history of mankind, various tragic events have occurred and continue to occur, such as the Holocaust, wars, natural disasters, epidemics, deadly diseases, terrible crimes, plane and car accidents that claim millions of human lives. Moreover, people often died in terrible agony. Often completely innocent people die. Their suffering and death bring a lot of grief to loved ones.
Why (why) does God allow this, especially with regard to innocent children and infants?
The problem of unjust suffering is not new. Philosophers from different eras struggled to resolve it. Every person who has experienced the grief of losing a loved one faces this problem. It is precisely this personal grief that is worth paying attention to. No matter how fascinating the philosophical problem of “theodicy” (justification of God) is, when the soul is torn into pieces and life loses all meaning, coherent logical arguments are not the best medicine even for a purely rational person.
When does the suffering and death of another person become a problem for us? When we ourselves experience genuine pain from this. When, due to the death of a loved one, our familiar world collapses, when a glaring injustice that seems to us destroys the value basis of our life - faith or ethical beliefs. Not every injustice in the world evokes such a reaction in us. You can sit in a cafe over a cup of cappuccino and “sigh” about the African children dying of hunger at this time, but after finishing the coffee, we will return to our normal lives. But if someone suddenly finds out that their child was hit and killed on the sidewalk by a drunk driver, their world will turn upside down. And it is sometimes more difficult for a Christian to live through such a personal apocalypse than for an outspoken atheist. A Christian knows well that God is omnipotent, that His mercy is limitless, that His name is Love. But how to apply this knowledge when mental pain makes you want neither to pray nor to live?!
The position of the believer in this situation was clearly described by a Western theologian: “You never know how strongly you believe in anything until the truth of your faith becomes a matter of life or death. It is easy to argue that this rope is strong enough if you are going to tie it around a box. But suppose you have to hang over an abyss on the same rope. This is where you will realize how confident you are in the strength of your rope.” Too often the strength of our rope - faith in Christ - is not enough to understand and accept the test that is allowed to us.
This applies to any problem. But it especially hurts us when a person dear to us dies for no reason visible to us, i.e. innocently. It’s one thing when parents mourn the death of their terrorist son, and quite another when a father or mother learns about the death of their little daughter at the hands of a maniac rapist. Hatred for the murderer and the thirst for revenge provide some kind of mental satisfaction, but do not help answer the main question: “Why?”
The first thing we need to do in search of an answer is to honestly admit to ourselves that we grieve more for ourselves, and not for the deceased, especially when it comes to someone who died innocently. It hurts us, it is our world that is empty, and our life has lost its colors. And even if we are worried about the posthumous fate of the deceased, then this anxiety is not the main component of our grief. The undeservedness of this personal pain makes it truly unbearable. The Old Testament principle of talion, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” on which the entire legal system is based, “sits very firmly in our consciousness.” And if I didn’t kill anyone, then by what right do they kill my child?
It is easier for an atheist to answer this question than for a believer. He can refer to blind chance in faceless nature, to natural patterns that are not subject to human influence, to the imperfection of the social environment that gives rise to maniacs and murderers. A believer is deprived of all these “crutches”, knowing from the Gospel that without the knowledge of God, not a hair will fall from a person’s head. The sincerity and depth of grief will lead a Christian to a crossroads, where he will not be able to avoid a painful choice. The choice is between rebellion against God and complete trust in Him.
One of the most striking examples of conscious rebellion is the fate of Ivan Karamazov, one of the main characters in Dostoevsky’s last novel, The Brothers Karamazov. None of his loved ones died innocently. He grew up in an Orthodox country, near the walls of a famous monastery. He grew up deprived of parental love and, as an adult, became very concerned about the problem of innocent suffering of children. At that time, humanity had not yet learned the “miracle” of juvenile justice, and children, even in an Orthodox state, were second-class citizens. The parent had complete control over the fate of his child, and in the event of his violent death, he was subject to criminal punishment, as for the death of livestock!
Analysis of documentary facts of the suffering and death of innocent children shook Ivan’s speculative, outwardly perceived faith. He voluntarily refused to communicate with God, who allows such innocent suffering, and returned to God his “ticket to heaven.” The riot ended with his brother killing their father, with his knowledge, after which Ivan went crazy.
We find two opposite examples of living through tragic life circumstances in the person of the Old Testament righteous men Abraham and Job.
The story of Abraham, the great Old Testament patriarch, the ancestor of God's chosen people, begins with his personal meeting with God, as a result of which he begins to trust God in everything, even in that which completely contradicts all logic, reason and any ideas about justice. First, Abraham, following the call of God, leaves his place of comfortable residence and goes into complete uncertainty with only one hope that there God will not only arrange his life, but will also give him, the elderly husband of an elderly wife, an heir from whom a large nation will come . Soon after the birth of one hundred year old Abraham's son Isaac, God commands this very fruit of the promise to be sacrificed.
For what? For what? After all, I did everything according to Your command? How will the promise of many descendants be fulfilled if Isaac dies now? We do not know whether Abraham asked himself these questions as he rode in silence with Isaac and his servants to the place of sacrifice. And if he asked, then how he answered them to himself. But we know that his hand with the sacrificial knife did not waver, for such was Abraham’s trust in the Living God, with whom he personally met more than once. But God did not need the death of Isaac - at the last moment the angel withdrew Abraham's hand. God needed Abraham to freely make the painful choice between his ideas of justice and his unlimited trust in Him.
Here we can say that Abraham had it easier than us in a similar situation. God honored him, the great righteous man, with direct communication with Himself. Scripture does not give us any information about Abraham’s internal struggle before the slaughter of Isaac. We see a person who completely trusts God, but we do not understand how he came to this. The biblical story about another Old Testament righteous man, Job, will help us gain such understanding.
I. E. Repin - Righteous Job and his friends. 1869 The sufferings of the righteous Job the Long-Suffering prefigured the Calvary sufferings of Christ. His righteousness was witnessed by God Himself, Whom he served faithfully, fulfilling all religious instructions. And so, overnight, without any apparent reason, he loses all his property and all his ten children. Having meekly and humbly accepted this loss, he utters the famous words: “naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I will return. The Lord gave, the Lord also took away; Blessed be the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:21).
This answer is admirable, but does not help us solve the problem of pain from an unfair loss, because in grief we are overwhelmed, at a minimum, by despondency, and even outright murmuring at God. We find the answer in the main part of the Book of Job. Job's further behavior after being stricken with leprosy may seem from the outside to be an outright rebellion against God. He curses the day of his birth, does not admit any guilt for which he could be punished like this. And most importantly, he demands a trial with God, demands a meeting with Him face to face. And God reveals Himself to him, without answering any of the questions posed by Job about the justice of his suffering.
But Job no longer needs these logical answers! He met God face to face and he does not need anything else - neither an explanation of the causes of suffering, nor any compensation for them: “I have heard about You by the hearing of the ear; now my eyes see You; therefore I renounce and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5,6).
The story of Job contains the answer to the question posed. There is no logical answer to this. Only God knows the mystery of suffering in relation to the salvation of every person. Only He sees the heart of the one who dies without visible guilt, as well as the heart of the one who remains to live, tormented by the pain of loss. You can only trust God in everything, as Abraham did. But the path to true trust lies only through a personal meeting with God in your heart. We must fight boldly to the limit of our strength for this meeting. A person, afraid of losing his comfort in life, often avoids this meeting, remembering that “it is scary to fall into the hands of the living God!” (Heb. 10:31). And only when all earthly life collapses does incredible pain help a person enter into the struggle. Not with God, but for Him, for living communication with Him.
Could God have chosen a different, less extreme way to heal us spiritually? Could. Everything is subject to God, but He does not always want to demonstrate His unlimited power. God wanted and created man in his image, endowing him with god-like freedom, freedom to serve God and become like Him in everything, and freedom to do evil, like the devil. You cannot force a person to be kind, because then he will cease to be a person. You cannot destroy only bad people in the hope that the good ones will live well after that. The ability to do evil lies within every person, even an innocent newborn baby. And only God knows how it will manifest itself in the future.
Therefore, to destroy the evil that gives rise to suffering means to wipe out humanity from the face of the earth or turn it into a herd of completely obedient, and therefore sinless, animals. God is not the source of evil. Man, following Adam, himself disposes of his god-like freedom to the detriment of the entire universe. And all people are connected with each other, both in the matter of salvation and in the disastrous fall. The great righteous man with his prayer helps many people make a choice in favor of God, and the notorious villain, by his example, drags them after him into hell, which they, again, choose completely voluntarily.
A direct meeting with Christ removes all logical questions about unjust suffering, because He Himself experienced such, and to a degree immeasurably greater than the suffering of any outwardly innocent person, since even a newborn baby is not devoid of the general damage of human nature “There is no righteous man in the world.” earth, who would do good and would not sin” (Ecl. 7:20).
Driven by love for perishing people, Christ voluntarily lived that complete abandonment of God, the likeness of which we feel at the moment of great grief. But He didn't just give us an example to follow. His redemptive feat and victory over death changed the very meaning of suffering. They used to be torture, ending in inevitable eternal death, eternal separation from all those we love. Now they are a means for meeting the Living God, for whom everyone is alive and who already in this life fills the suffering heart with the joy of communicating with Himself.
Trials teach us important principles
As stated earlier, trials give us precious experience that we cannot gain in any other way. How we cope with life's difficulties shows who we are, what principles we adhere to, what sources we turn to in search of advice, solutions or support.
I would especially like to note that in times of trial we can be patient and obedient as never before. Everything in our lives happens for a reason. We may not now understand why the Lord has placed us in such difficult circumstances, but He has a special plan for each of us. It is very important for us to trust God, it is important to show that we are ready to follow His will. Mormon apostle Robert D. Hales said, “Hope and trust in the Lord require faith, patience, humility, submission, long-suffering, commandment-keeping, and endurance to the end.”
The Parable of the Footprints in the Sand
“Once a man had a dream. He dreamed that he was walking along a sandy shore, and the Lord was next to him. Pictures from his life flashed in the sky, and after each of them he noticed two chains of footprints in the sand: one from his feet, the other from the feet of the Lord.
When the last picture of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. And he saw that often along his life’s path there was only one chain of traces. He also noted that these were the most difficult and unhappy times in his life. He became very sad and began to ask the Lord:
“Didn’t You tell me: if I follow Your path, You will not leave me.” But I noticed that during the most difficult times of my life, only one chain of footprints stretched across the sand. Why did You abandon me when I needed You most?
- The Lord answered:
- My dear, dear child. I love you and will never leave you. When there were sorrows and trials in your life, only one chain of footprints stretched along the road. Because in those days I carried you in my arms.”
May our hearts always be filled with love for the Lord, may the words of the Savior always ring in our hearts in difficult times: “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).
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Faith
Public relations specialist, holder of a bachelor's degree in conflict management, lover of fast food, sun and heat. Lives and works in Moscow.
