Why does God allow innocent people to suffer?

Transcription

1 Why Do The Innocent Suffer? Genesis 1:27-28 November 8, 2015 Pastor Vic Willis 1 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Why does God allow innocent people to suffer? In all my 35 years of ministry this has got to be one of the most common reasons given for people not wanting to follow God. The logic goes something like this: if God is all-powerful and all-loving, and God allows innocent people to suffer, then God must not be good and he is not worthy of my worship and allegiance therefore I reject Him. Because, if God were good, then He wouldn t allow innocent people to suffer! But you know, someone who rejects God for that reason all I can

2 say is, there must be something else going on, because they really 2 haven't given careful thought to their logic. Adam Hamilton does a wonderful job of logically and biblically explaining why an all-powerful and all-loving God would do such a thing---why God allows suffering. Hamilton outlines two commonly held but misguided assumptions that God should prevent suffering is based on. One is that everything happens for a reason and that only good things happen to Christians. Those are false assumptions we Christians can get tangled up in all too easily to assume that because I believe in God and follow God then everything is going to be sweetness and light. Take a look at the patriarchs of our faith and in real short order you ll see following God in the OT and Jesus in the NT was more a guarantee of hardship than of comfort. Joseph, Moses, David, Job then Peter, Paul and most all the disciples ending up martyred was indication this was no ticket to easy street. And we can easily fall into the trap of thinking everything happens

3 for reason it just sounds good! But it's a Hallmark Card kind of 3 saying, not a biblical one! Hamilton explains thinking everything happens for a reason puts God in a terrible tyrannical position that of making people go through bad things for some greater good. God doesn t make bad things happen, but often God helps us find meaning and strength as a result of going through some difficulty. But He doesn t cause the bad to happen. If we think "everything happens for reason", then it only follows that Gods plan all along was for horrible things to happen children starving to death every day around the world 30,000 of them, or a little girl gets raped on her walk home from school everything happens for a reason makes God the author of those atrocities. So, these are dangerous false assumptions people sometimes carry around with them about God and it adds to the pain and fear when a tragedy does occur. Now most of us know that just because you follow Jesus Christ as Lord, it doesn't mean it's all going to be sweetness and sunshine! Most of

4 4 us know that. But the other false assumption I think is a lot easier for us to embrace that there is this master plan that God has outlined for our life and if we simply follow that plan, then everything is going to work out just fine! So, Adam Hamilton does a wonderful job of logically and biblically explaining why an all-powerful and all-loving God would do such a thing---why God allows suffering. And it boils down to love! Of all things God's love! I know it doesn t sound like that makes any sense at all, but hang in there with me! God allows suffering even the suffering of innocent people, because He loves us! Now, you would think He would disallow suffering because he loves us, wouldn t you, but in fact, just the opposite is true! Because God loves us he gives us the freedom of choice. He does not force good choices on us. If we choose to take a different path than God's, then because he loves us he allows us to go a different direction. You see, without that freedom, there is no love! He doesn't make us

5 choose the right thing if that were the case then he could not love us. 5 Love requires the option of rejection it requires the possibility that love will not be returned. A forced love is not love at all! Think of it on a purely human level we call forced-love a creepy obsession carried out by sociopaths. We put people in jail who do that. God is not like that. He gives us freedom of choice even the choice to not choose Him. He loves us by giving us freedom, with the hope that we will freely love Him in return. He's also given us, out of his love for us, the authority to care for all that is around us. The passage from Genesis spells that out quite nicely: So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. It s in this transference of authority that we take on one of our most Godresembling attributes that of treating others and the created order with

6 the same love God has shown us! Since we have this authority, our 6 decisions and our choices really mean something they impact others and the earth for good or for ill. God could have kept us out of the loop as care-takers of the earth he could have said, I ll deal with that, don t you worry yourselves with it. But again, along with love comes trust and he trusts us to take care of things! But we have broken the trust. From the get-go we broke it, and have done a pretty good job of keeping things pretty messed up. We chose our own way from the beginning. He s also given us the ability to know right from wrong and the capability of choosing right over wrong. With the freedom to choose comes the gift of discernment. We are not left to our own devices on how to choose. Still yet, even with discernment, we make bad choices. So here we are with authority to care for creation, with the ability to choose and the tendency to choose for our own benefit rather than for the good of others. God also has created us with an insatiable curiosity that can often

7 get us into trouble and cause us to make bad decisions. Oh, but what a 7 blessing that God-given curiosity has been in the development of many wonderful and great advancements in technology and literature and science but it can also get us into trouble! So I hope you have bought and read this little book it's an easy read and it gives you all the logic and biblical underpinnings of why bad things happen to good people. You know, you can read a book and get ideas and even biblical understanding from it and that s tremendous and much needed. But when YOU get that phone call from a Doctor or a child or the police telling you your son was in an accident, all the logic and great arguments and biblical doctrine sort of goes out the window. When you feel the impact of the innocent suffering, it is no longer theory it is real and you need something more than a book to read. That happened to me late one night when the phone rang and my mom was on the other end telling me my dad had just died from a thrown clot from a botched surgery on his knee. He was 69 and had a lot

8 of living yet to do, but because someone didn t do their job of checking the knee replacement kit to make sure all the parts were there, he lay on the operating table with his knee opened for three hours while they flew in parts that were not accounted for. Such a senseless death of a wonderful man who I felt I really needed in my life of whom I wanted to ask many more questions from whom I wanted to hear those words again that every son craves from their father I m proud of you, son. All that was taken away from me that night with that phone call. You see, my problem with logic in times like those was logic didn t make sense it wasn t logical, and it was the last thing I needed I was mad! I probably said and thought some things during those days I wouldn t in my logical mind ever say. Just as the writer of Ecclesiastes says, There s a time for every activity under Heaven I can tell you, at the reception of bad news is not the time for LOGIC! Prayer, yes. But even that can feel foreign. That s why having others pray in those desperate times is essential. Not 8

9 WITH me, as much as FOR me. Those are moments in which we often 9 can t put two words together, so it s up to the Body of Christ to pick up the slack. And I can tell you for sure that if someone had said to me that night, even in an effort to comfort me, Well, Vic, it s all just part of God s plan I might ve hit them hard! Or There s a reason for everything. Yeah, and the reason this happened was because somebody screwed up the surgery! So there s a time for logic, and there s a time for simply listening being present with someone. That s the best thing someone can do for a person who is reeling from a sudden loss. The Good News is suffering will never have the last word. We have a God who is acquainted with suffering and who understands just what we need from Him during those dark nights of the soul.