On a cloudless Monday, Oct. 2, 2006, Charles Carl Roberts IV invaded an Amish school in Pennsylvania and shot and killed five of the 10 Amish girls he held hostage.
Before killing himself, he told one hostage, “I’m angry at God and I need to punish some Christian girls to get even with Him.”
Arguably no other topic challenges people’s faith in God and Jesus like suffering. One pastor’s daughter said, “I was never taught the Christian life was going to be difficult. I’ve discovered it is, and I wasn’t ready.” Another person, while suffering from a disease with a 50 percent mortality rate, asked the hospital chaplain to defend God’s goodness, and the chaplain could only promise to “look it up”—and never returned.
Without any credible answers, the hurting conclude Christians can’t consistently defend God’s goodness, and if they can’t defend it, they can’t defend His truth.
Christians can’t, however, ignore their accusations. Fortunately, they can defend their faith even through suffering—thanks to Jesus. As the “image of the invisible God,” the Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1:15, Jesus provided living, breathing, teaching, feeding, and healing reasons to trust God’s constant goodness. Furthermore, only a good God would ask his Son to sacrifice all to first serve others and then empower Christians to imitate Him, as Paul also writes. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”
“But God let Lazarus suffer and die,” the skeptic retorts. “He let Martha and Mary grieve four days.”
However, while Jesus often healed and blessed, He never intended those deeds to define goodness alone, and anyone who tries to measure goodness as temporary happiness, health and wealth does so unbiblically.
God alone is good, Jesus said, and any circumstance, even suffering, that helps people glorify Him then helps them know Him, which helps them know good.
“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations (or trials); Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” James writes.
In fact, God’s glory so outweighs the temporary suffering He allows, the Apostle Peter wrote, “But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”
“If God does something in your life, would you change it?” A pastor once challenged his congregation. “If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good.” He was dying of liver cancer.
“I want to praise God that I am a leper because it was through my leprosy that I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior,” a blind and disfigured believer once said, “and I would rather be a leper who knows Christ than be completely whole and a stranger to His grace.”
However, skeptics who resist this truth must also offer a better definition of good—and none have.
For instance, someone once asked an atheist, considered one of the most intellectual critics of God, to explain how he distinguished good and evil.
“By my feelings,” he replied. (The person then mentioned that Hitler did what felt good.)
A former professing Christian once wrote, “The problem of suffering has haunted me for a very long time … Ultimately, it was the reason I lost my faith.” Specifically, he wrote a good and omnipotent God would never withhold relief. However after denouncing God’s goodness because of His supposed selfishness, this author encouraged people to essentially live for themselves in their pursuit of good.
“We should make money and spend money. The more the better. We should enjoy good food and drink. We should eat out and order unhealthy desserts … We should drive nice cars and have nice homes.”
Ironically, this author confesses that he has suffered little compared to so many others in the world, but while his comparatively little suffering poisoned his faith, the suffering of countless others strengthened their faith—showing that, ultimately, the question of suffering does not challenge God’s goodness. It challenges man’s faithfulness.
(Note: Most of the material for this column was created as part of a curriculum, still in development, for the Christian publishing company Christian Light. Learn more about their resources at www.christianlight.org. Learn more about God’s goodness and suffering in Randy Alcorn’s book “If God is Good.”)
