“How can a good God who loves me allow me to feel so depressed and despairing? Why would He allow me to experience such terrible pain and suffering?
A Lay of the Land
Over that last few of months, we’ve been tackling this knotty question. We started by getting to the root of the question by challenging the faulty assumption that God’s love exempts me from pain and suffering. Then we laid out how the problem of pain gets personal but that there are some really good reasons to doubt our doubts about God’s goodness. We called these reasons theodicies and the argument of God’s inscrutability. Today, we are going to look at our third theodicy.
Theodicy #1: Pain is a megaphone in that it leads us back to our need for God.
Theodicy #2: Suffering is soul-building.
Theodicy #3: Suffering reveals who God is.
Catch up on the other Blogs in this Series Here:
#1: Knowing Why Won’t Make You Feel Better
#2: When the Problem of Evil Gets Personal
#3: Pain is a Megaphone
#4: Suffering is Soul-building
Suffering Reveals Something Profound About Our God
What we mean by this is that suffering reveals things about God and His character that we wouldn’t know or experience otherwise. There are certain aspects of God’s character that would be unknown apart from an experience of evil and suffering. How would we know that God is compassionate if we never had a need? How would we realize that God is both just and justifier if there never was the evil of sin? How would we experience the comfort of God if we never felt loneliness, pain, or grief? How would we know that God as healer if there were no hurts?
We could multiply examples of this, but the idea is clear enough. The fullness of God’s character cannot be known in a world without pain. So, in God’s divine plan, He sovereignly designs the history of redemption such that we might know Him truly in all of His nature through both the good and the evil of the world.
From Comforted to Comforter
Here are Paul’s words on the matter:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. —2 Corinthians 1:3–7
God on the Mountain Is Still God in the Valley
May we see the beauty of all of God’s character even amid the difficulties, pains, and griefs of this life. Let not the valleys shatter your love for God, but let them show you something about God’s love, compassion, and comfort that you would never have felt had you never walked through the valley.
I’m reminded of that Gaither Gospel tune that goes like this:
Life is easy, when you’re up on the mountain
And you’ve got peace of mind, like you've never known
But things change when you're down in the valley
Don’t lose faith, for you're never alone
For the God on the mountain, is still God in the valley
When things go wrong, He'll make them right
And the God of the good times, is still God in the bad times
The God of the day is still God in the night
You talk of faith when you’re up on the mountain
But talk comes so easy when life’s at it’s best
Now it’s down in the valleys, of trials and temptations
That’s where your faith, is really put to the test
For the God on the mountain is still God in the valley
When things go wrong, He'll make them right
And the God of the good times, is still God in the bad times
The God of the day, is still God in the night
