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IS GOD FAIR?�A THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING

Mark Snyder, MD

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What do you find most difficult about the Christian faith?

Albert Einstein’s struggle
Survey results: what is the #1 reason for rejecting the existence of God?
What seems to be an inherent contradiction?

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Theories that attempt to diminish God

Rabbi Kuschner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People:

God is not powerful enough to prevent catastrophe
Intentions good, but power limited

The problems with theories that diminish God’s perfection in order to excuse the existence of evil…

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IS THIS THE BEST POSSIBLE WORLD WHEN THERE IS SO MUCH PAIN?

“The sun can energize the harvest and it can scorch and destroy what little grain grows in Africa. The fatherland of Bach, Beethoven, Luther and Goethe also gave us Hitler, Eichmann, and Goering.”

Yancey in Where is God When it Hurts?

Why I cannot accept what modernist

philosophers tell us about our world!

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Theology that makes sense!��7 POINTS TO CONSIDER

The Source of Sin
The Freedom of Moral Choice
The Difference Between Moral Freedom and Moral Determinism
Why God Did Not Prevent Sin From Happening
The Justice of God
God’s Amazing Alternative
God’s Answer to the Problem of Suffering

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The source of SIN

The Bible reconciles the goodness of God with the presence of evil!
The source of sin exists apart from God

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Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

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THE FREEDOM OF MORAL CHOICE IS GOD’S GIFT TO MANKIND AND MADE REBELLION POSSIBLE

The freedom to make moral choices
We choose to obey or disobey God
The scheme to sin – the realm of Satan
The act of sin – a free moral choice in the realm of humanity

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Genesis 3:5,6 ⁵"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Satan’s scheme). �⁶When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."

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Romans 1:25 ”They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.”

Solzhenitsyn writing in the Gulag Archipelago (page 612) said, “And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states , nor between classes, nor between parties either – but right through every human heart – through all human hearts.”

We blame Satan for our evil – but Jesus proclaims that sin is in us! Matt 15:18-20; Mark 7:20-23. Matt 15: 18But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. 19It's from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing. 20That's what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands--that's neither here nor there.“ Mark 7:20-23 20 He went on: "It's what comes out of a person that pollutes: 21obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, 22greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness-- 23all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution."

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MORAL FREEDOM AND MORAL DETERMINISM

Our moral choices are “biochemically” predetermined

Albert Einstein

“We are born with an agenda already mapped out in our genes…”

Steven Pinker

The risk of evolutionary and naturalistic theories…
This low view of human worth contributes to…

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ABORTION, EUTHANASIA, GENOCIDE, HOLOCAUST, AND EVERY OTHER ACT OF RECKLESS, RUTHLESS HUMAN SIN…

Listen to the words of Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl:

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“If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present him as an automation of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drive and reactions, as a mere product of heredity and environment,

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we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted with the last stage of corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz.

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The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment - or, as the Nazis liked to say, ‘of blood and soil.’

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I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”

Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul:

Introduction to logotherapy (N.Y.: Knopf 1982),

The America I Love

By Elie Wiesel�Published: July 4, 2004

Born in Sighet, Transylvania (Romania), Elie Wiesel became a U.S. citizen in 1963. Since then, Wiesel—a Holocaust survivor, Boston University professor and the author of more than 40 books—has become one of our nation’s most honored citizens. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow on a civilian. In 1992, President George Bush recognized Wiesel with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wiesel, who has been an outspoken advocate of human rights around the world, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

The day I received American citizenship was a turning point in my life. I had ceased to be stateless. Until then, unprotected by any government and unwanted by any society, the Jew in me was overcome by a feeling of pride mixed with gratitude.

From that day on, I felt privileged to belong to a country which, for two centuries, has stood as a living symbol of all that is charitable and decent to victims of injustice everywhere—a country in which every person is entitled to dream of happiness, peace and liberty; where those who have are taught to give back.

In America, compassion for the refugee and respect for the other still have biblical connotations.

Grandiloquent words used for public oratory? Even now, as America is in the midst of puzzling uncertainty and understandable introspection because of tragic events in Iraq, these words reflect my personal belief. For I cannot forget another day that remains alive in my memory: April 11, 1945.

That day I encountered the first American soldiers in the Buchenwald concentration camp. I remember them well. Bewildered, disbelieving, they walked around the place, hell on earth, where our destiny had been played out. They looked at us, just liberated, and did not know what to do or say. Survivors snatched from the dark throes of death, we were empty of all hope—too weak, too emaciated to hug them or even speak to them. Like lost children, the American soldiers wept and wept with rage and sadness. And we received their tears as if they were heartrending offerings from a wounded and generous humanity.

In America, compassion for the refugee and respect for the other still have biblical connotations.

Ever since that encounter, I cannot repress my emotion before the flag and the uniform—anything that represents American heroism in battle. That is especially true on July Fourth. I reread the Declaration of Independence, a document sanctified by the passion of a nation’s thirst for justice and sovereignty, forever admiring both its moral content and majestic intonation. Opposition to oppression in all its forms, defense of all human liberties, celebration of what is right in social intercourse: All this and much more is in that text, which today has special meaning.

Granted, U.S. history has gone through severe trials, of which anti-black racism was the most scandalous and depressing. I happened to witness it in the late Fifties, as I traveled through the South. What did I feel? Shame. Yes, shame for being white. What made it worse was the realization that, at that time, racism was the law, thus making the law itself immoral and unjust.

Still, my generation was lucky to see the downfall of prejudice in many of its forms. True, it took much pain and protest for that law to be changed, but it was. Today, while fanatically stubborn racists are still around, some of them vocal, racism as such has vanished from the American scene. That is true of anti-Semitism too. Jew-haters still exist here and there, but organized anti-Semitism does not—unlike in Europe, where it has been growing with disturbing speed.

As a great power, America has always seemed concerned with other people’s welfare, especially in Europe. Twice in the 20th century, it saved the “Old World” from dictatorship and tyranny.

America understands that a nation is great not because its economy is flourishing or its army invincible but because its ideals are loftier. Hence America’s desire to help those who have lost their freedom to conquer it again. America’s credo might read as follows: For an individual, as for a nation, to be free is an admirable duty—but to help others become free is even more admirable.

Some skeptics may object: But what about Vietnam? And Cambodia? And the support some administrations gave to corrupt regimes in Africa or the Middle East? And the occupation of Iraq? Did we go wrong—and if so, where?

And what are we to make of the despicable, abominable “interrogation methods” used on Iraqi prisoners of war by a few soldiers (but even a few are too many) in Iraqi military prisons?

Hope is the key word for men and women like myself, who found in America the strength to�overcome cynicism and despair.

Well, one could say that no nation is composed of saints alone. None is sheltered from mistakes or misdeeds. All have their Cain and Abel. It takes vision and courage to undergo serious soul-searching and to favor moral conscience over political expediency. And America, in extreme situations, is endowed with both. America is always ready to learn from its mishaps. Self-criticism remains its second nature.

Not surprising, some Europeans do not share such views. In extreme left-wing political and intellectual circles, suspicion and distrust toward America is the order of the day. They deride America’s motives for its military interventions, particularly in Iraq. They say: It’s just money. As if America went to war only to please the oil-rich capitalists.

They are wrong. America went to war to liberate a population too long subjected to terror and death.

We see in newspapers and magazines and on television screens the mass graves and torture chambers imposed by Saddam Hussein and his accomplices. One cannot but feel grateful to the young Americans who leave their families, some to lose their lives, in order to bring to Iraq the first rays of hope—without which no people can imagine the happiness of welcoming freedom.

Hope is a key word in the vocabulary of men and women like myself and so many others who discovered in America the strength to overcome cynicism and despair. Remember the legendary Pandora’s box? It is filled with implacable, terrifying curses. But underneath, at the very bottom, there is hope. Now as before, now more than ever, it is waiting for us.

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WHY GOD DIDN’T PREVENT SIN FROM HAPPENING

God created a good world, but sin entered in a given point in recorded history.
To prevent it would have necessarily meant that He would have had to control our lives, our decisions.
As puppets we would not thus be capable of genuine love, moral responsibility, even selfless acts like sacrifice and heroism.
But he made us free; even free to choose evil!

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THE JUSTICE OF GOD

God’s perfect character necessarily demands justice!
He cannot and will not overlook evil.
Thankfully, He did not decide to start all over.

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GOD’S AMAZING ALTERNATIVE

Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, suffered, was rejected by God, and died the death our sins deserved on the cross of Calvary.
He came and bore the punishment we deserved!

From

“The Passion of the Christ”

Mel Gibson

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Isaiah 53:5-6 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. �We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

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AND WAS HIS ALTERNATIVE SUCCESSFUL?

YES!!!!!!!!!
Jesus Christ’s seventh and final cry from the cross: “It is finished.” John 19:30
His resurrection proved God’s plan to save us from our sins succeeded! More on this later…

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GOD’S ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING

God’s answer to the problem of suffering is that He came right down into it!
John Stott, the great British theologian and former pastor of All Souls Church in London, England wrote in The Cross of Christ,

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“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross…In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away.

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And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is God for me!

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He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings became manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.”

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Why did God do this for us?

St Augustine wrote, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil at all.”
God decided that it was better to suffer the pain and horror of rescuing sinners than to avoid creating us in the first place! Why? LOVE!

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“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and (ever)lasting life.”

John 3:16

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Can God be known in our suffering?

Let’s go on rounds and test this question in our real world of problems!

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SOME BASIC RULES...

We will not assume that their suffering requires an explanation.
We will remember that they do not solely want explanations, they want someone to be there.
We will act with compassion and comfort (minor to us, major to our patients!)
We will see them as people with infinite value in God’s eyes.
We will be open to lessons God can teach us through their suffering.

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A patient with leprosy

Pain is not God’s great mistake. It can be one of His greatest blessings.
“God…shouts to us in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” CS Lewis
Pain serves us by protecting us.
Just visit a leper colony
LESSON: God can use pain in our best interest

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A missionary with traumatic arthritis of the knee

Attacked one night on the way to help a native woman with a problem pregnancy
Tibial plateau poorly repaired and he later required a complex TKA
He understood that persecution was part of serving God on the mission field

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God’s greater purpose in pain

Psalms 119:71 “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”

2 Corinthians 1:8-9 “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired for life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

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“HE IS NO FOOL WHO GIVES WHAT HE CANNOT KEEP, TO GAIN WHAT HE CANNOT LOSE.” JIM ELLIOTT

LESSON: Suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ is not too great a cost when we remember what He did for us.

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John 15:18-20a “If the world hates you, keep I mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you…”

Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

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A two-time armed robber crashes while trying to escape: massive skeletal injuries

The majority of pain in the world comes from our sin.
One purpose of suffering is to lead us to repentance.
LESSON: There can be serious consequences to the choices we make.

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Called to the E.R. after the Staten Island Ferry Disaster

10 killed and 22 severely injured
The worst ferry crash in U.S. history
How does Jesus deal with the question, “Who is responsible for suffering?”

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The clearest insight comes from the gospel of Luke, chapter 13

Just as in the Old Testament, there are several answers:
¹⁶ “Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

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The clearest insight comes from the gospel of Luke, chapter 13

Jesus then declares that Satan caused the pain of a woman bound in disease for eighteen years.
At the end of the chapter, Jesus grieves over the future of Jerusalem: He could see that her stubborn rebellion would bring about much suffering.

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But consider what He says in verses 1-5!

“Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them -- do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

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He uses both tragedies to teach eternal truths relevant to everyone!

A tragedy should alert us to make ourselves ready in case we are the next victim of an accident, or even terrorism!
Catastrophe joins with victim and bystander in a call to repentance, by abruptly reminding us of the brevity of life.
The finality of time we are given in life to make choices about our eternal destiny.

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Jesus is asked about two current events: one an act of political oppression, the other a construction accident

This is the kind of suffering that concerns many of us!
Jesus’ response is both brilliant and enigmatic!
He does not answer the question of cause.
He clearly states that these events were not caused by the victims’ wrongdoing.

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LESSON: The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without God, without purpose.

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And now we are going on a mission trip to Buwale Camp near Mogadishu, Somalia

Jesus MD by David Stevens MD

“Some years ago when I was medical director for Samaritan’s Purse, on my first trip into Somalia during that country’s civil war, I visited a place in Mogadishu called Buwale Camp. It wasn’t really a camp, merely some open land behind an abandoned gas station that had been completely looted – the pumps ripped out, bullet holes everywhere. But it was where the Buwale people (a clan in Somalia) had congregated after they had fled starvation and clan warfare in their homelands and wandered into the city looking for food.

The people of Buwale Camp lived in hovels only a little bit higher than a table – flimsy ‘structures’ pieced together out of sticks and covered with little scraps of plastic, paper, or what ever they found to keep the sun off. The temperature soared well over a hundred every day, and dust blew everywhere. If you stopped and listened, you could hear the constant buzzing of flies swarming all around what was truly a miserable situation.

I had left the States so quickly that the only medical equipment I had packed was a stethoscope. I didn’t even bring any medicine to hand out since I was there on an initial scouting trip to see what the problems were and what our medical teams should bring when they came.

That’s why I had gone down to gone down to Buwale Camp with my translator, merely to assess need. So I knelt down by the first hut I came to and looked through the door – which was not so much a door as a hole in that little hovel. There, sitting cross-legged on the ground was a skin-and-bones woman. In her arms she held a tiny baby.

In all my years in Africa as a missionary doctor I had never seen a baby as starved as that little one was. You could literally count every bone in his body, which was nothing but a tiny skeleton shrink-wrapped with skin.

As she watched me and our eyes met, this mother tried to jiggle her baby to get him to nurse. But it was no use. Her breasts hadn’t produced milk in weeks. She was in little better shape than her child.

I looked at the baby more closely and noticed the mother had him wrapped in a filthy, tattered rag. Immediately I surmised that this child had pneumonia. Respiratory rate looked to be forty to sixty. I had no medicine, but I told myself, ‘At least I can put my stethoscope on to listen to the chest. The mother will feel as if I’ve done something and it will confirm my diagnosis.’ But as I placed my stethoscope against the baby’s chest, the child gasped and died.

I couldn’t believe what happened next. In her dazed and weakened state, that mother didn’t immediately notice that her child has stopped breathing. Finally she did look down, and with no emotion registering on her gaunt face, she pulled the corner of that dirty cloth up over the child’s head and patted it twice – almost like a benediction. Slowly she crawled out of the hut, stood up on legs as thin as twigs, and started walking away with her pitiful bundle.

Just across the street lay an empty lot with no building on it. As I looked in that direction for the first time, I noticed dozens of people, their bundles laid out beside them, digging the ground with their bare hands, burying their loved ones. This mother trudged over among the others, knelt down, and with bony fingers began scratching out a grave for her baby.

I turned to my translator and said, ‘I’ve been in Africa for many years, but I don’t understand this. When children die in Africa, the mother screams and runs and tears her clothes. She pulls out her hair; she wails. But she doesn’t just get up without a word, without a tear, without any emotion, and walk over to start burying her baby.’

The translator looked at me and said, ‘Doctor, you are right. You don’t understand. This woman had eleven children, and that was her last one. She has no more tears.’

So when I went to the next hovel, it was the same thing, and the next hovel and it was the same thing, I hurried back to our vehicle and drove back to where I was staying. I unzipped my bathroom kit and took out the little bottles of medicine I carry for myself on trips, and I rushed back to Buwale Camp. I started breaking open ampicillin capsules, crushing antibiotics tablets, and putting them into little babies’ mouths with tears poring down my face until I could hardly see. I was working as fast as I could until I finally ran out of medicines.

I had never, ever seen anything like that before. I had never felt so helpless.

I will tell you something, this missionary doctor, who thought he had seen it all and whose heart had gotten a bit callused, needed that. I needed to be reminded that the Great Physician was crying because people in that makeshift cemetery were going into eternity without ever having heard the Gospel – not once in this radically Muslim country with fewer than two hundred Christians in an underground church.

I needed to have my heart broken like Christ’s heart was broken. I needed to see the world as He sees the world, because when I did, compassion welled up within me like never before.

We get so objective, so logical in what we do sometimes. We get desensitized by the latest disaster coming across to us in living and dying color on the evening news. What we really need is to round with Christ every day to see and be broken by the pain and suffering all around us. We must see this world as Dr. Jesus sees it, to feel the suffering as He does. Then, and only then, can we practice compassion like the Great Physician. That kind of compassion changes our actions, changes our hearts, and changes other peoples’ lives.” Pages 189-191

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LESSON

See the world through Jesus’ eyes.
See the suffering in your patients that goes beyond their physical disease.
See their loneliness and their fears.
See the broken lives and addictions of those who live in your city.
Act out of His heart of mercy and service.

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Suffering can either lead us to God or turn us away from God. Choose to join the vast majority of people in history that chose God. They knew the true comfort and the enduring peace that come from the One who suffered and died to set us free!�

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Most human suffering has been caused not by nature but by other human beings - genocide, holocaust, world wars, acts of terrorism, the widespread slaughter of more Christians in this century than the 19 that preceded it.

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Lavish compassion upon those who suffer – including widows, orphans, prisoners – for as Jesus said, “as much as you have done it unto the least of these you have done it unto me.”�

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The greatest tragedy in life is neither suffering nor death, but to have lived a life without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ – God’s amazing answer to the problem of suffering, to the problem of sin.