Have you ever experienced losing someone dear to you to a disease? Or battling a disease yourself?
Or have you ever faced a situation where you felt like you were treated unfairly, that perhaps prompted you to say that life is unfair?
Everyone does. Everyone in this world faces suffering of one kind or another. Suffering is a constant thing while we live on earth. Whether it's a small amount of pain or a relatively large problem, all humans from all nations, socioeconomic statuses, and educational backgrounds face suffering.
Why?
Many of us ask God why He allows suffering to happen in our lives. We ask Him why He took our loved ones away from us, why He allowed us to suffer from sickness, why He allows others to bully us, and why He allows our efforts to go down the drain.
What we fail to realise is that God isn't the one causing us to suffer at all.
God Does No Harm to Us
God is not the one who will harm His people. Although His discipline is quite painful at times, it is meant for our own growth into Christ-likeness. Blaming Him for our sufferings, however, is just plain wrong.
James 1:13 tells us, "Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone."
God never tempts any person to do evil, and neither does He do any evil deed to any man.
God promised us that He doesn't plan to harm us. Rather, He plans to prosper us, and give us hope and a bright future (see Jeremiah 29:11). And because God never turns His back on His own word, what He promised will never change.
Why We Suffer
The sufferings that we go through, then, come from a different source: sin. When we read the Bible, we find that the first suffering man ever went through came after the first sin was committed by a man.
In Genesis 2:15, God told Adam never to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or else he will die. Adam disobeyed God. After eating the fruit, both Adam and Eve suffered as their innocence was tainted by sin (see Genesis 3:7). Shortly, both of them were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, and were forced to live their lives in hardship and labour until their death.
The same goes for us.
James 1:14-15 tells us, "But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death."
When we desire the wrong things and make the wrong decisions, we naturally suffer the consequences of our wrong choices. Sins have lasting effects, and unless we repent of them, we can never experience God's forgiveness and cleansing (see 1 John 1:9).
So Why Does God Allow Suffering?
God didn't create man to suffer. In His wisdom, however, He gave man the freedom to decide for himself what he wants to pursue. He gave Adam and Eve the freedom to eat of the fruit in the garden, and He also gives us the freedom to make our own choices, with their corresponding consequences.
When we suffer because of our wrong choices, it's so that we would learn to listen to God and obey Him. When we suffer injustice, it's so that we would cry out to God who has promised to avenge us. When we suffer the loss of a loved one to death, we're reminded that someday we, too, will face judgment: either to eternal life if we believed in Christ while we were still alive, or eternal death if we didn't.
God loves us so much that although He didn't create us to suffer, He offers us a comfort that only He could give. Our sufferings magnify our need for a loving God who is actually waiting for us to come to Him.
