What Suffering is All About

Does God want us to suffer?

Many a preacher of the Gospel contends that Jesus came to deliver us from and alleviate us of our suffering.
Feeding the multitudes, healing the lepers, curing the blind, raising the dead all offer ample testimony that supports this idea.

On the other hand, many a preacher proclaims:
“No suffering…no Jesus. Know suffering, know Jesus.”

Which is it? Does God want us to suffer, or does God want to alleviate our suffering?

And if God does indeed want to wipe out suffering, then why do plagues like world hunger, human genocide, human trafficking, child abuse, gulags exist, migraines, arthritis and lower back pain exist?

Is God sovereign?
Is God bigger and stronger than suffering?
Or is suffering bigger and stronger than God?

And if suffering is bigger and stronger than God, then there is no God really, because God by definition is all-powerful and supreme.
As the psalmist says, “Our God is in heaven, He hath done whatsoever he would” (Ps 115:3).
So, if God does whatever He wants, and if He is all-powerful, and if He wants suffering to be obliterated, then why does it continue to exist and plague humanity?

Could it be that God doesn’t want to wipe out suffering?
What if suffering and God are not mutually exclusive.
Meaning, what if God not only allows suffering, but uses it as one of His ways to help us become who we are called to be?

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Five Reasons for Suffering

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1. Suffering is Discipline

Adults typically despise being referred to as a child and being called out as disobedient.
Ask any man who has been referred to as “boy” or any person who has been ticketed by a police officer for driving over the speed limit.

With adulthood comes freedom, with freedom comes the ability to be our own authority, and being our own authority, no one can assess us as being “right or wrong” ,“good or evil.”
We obey our own pursuits and passions.
Yet, our Lord is clear, “I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3).

And again:

“That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust” (Matt 5:45).

God the Father claims you as His own child.
Therefore, He is the authority.
We play by His rules.
Therefore, we are either obedient or disobedient to Him.

So how does a good father discipline a disobedient child?

The author of Hebrews says, “Endure suffering (your trials) as discipline. God treats you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Heb 12:7).

God uses sufferings, trials, setbacks and the like as a form of discipline to awaken us from our stupor of selfishness and self-idolatry.

We interpret suffering as bad or evil and rightly so, who relishes it?
However, our interpretation may be reversed.

Suffering proves that God the Father values us, claims us and invests in us as His own son.
“But if you be without chastisement (correction, discipline) …then you are bastards, and not sons” (Heb 12:8).

If you are suffering, it is a sure sign that you are a son of God the Father, and that He is testing you to perfect you; he is using suffering as a way to discipline you.

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2. Suffering is the Only Way to Mature Manhood

Sacrifice is the heart of worship.
The Latin word for sacrificium is comprised of two Latin words sacer, which means sacred, and facere, which means “to make.”

Sacrifice is the act of taking something and offering it to God that it become sacred unto the Lord.
Sacrifice is only sacrifice when we are giving up something we like—even love—to God.
If you don’t like brussel sprouts and you give up eating them for the Lord, your sacrifice is in vain.
But if you love bourbon and crease drinking bourbon as an offering to God, your sacrifice is significant.

When we offer something that we like to God, a suffering occurs.
We feel the pain of losing that which we possess.

This pain is selfishness leaving your soul.

God has one goal for you: to be like Him.
God is self-giving love.
Jesus Christ is THE Imago Dei, “Who is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15).
Jesus communicates to humanity who God the Father is…
For as He attests: “I and the Father are One” (Jn 10:30).

Our Lord gave Himself fully, completely, unreservedly to the Father on behalf of us sinners.
He is self-giving love.
The path to self-giving is by means of sacrifice.

Sacrifice demands the giving or offering of something dear and precious.
This offering of something precious causes suffering, which is the death of the selfish boy and eventually the rising of the real man.

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3. Suffering Fosters Solidarity with Those who Suffer

Cub fans feel the pain of the Cubs when they lose—which is often.
Mothers intuitively feel the pain of a heartbroken daughter.

Pain is “entrance” into another person’s soul.

You cannot tell a person whose spouse has died, “I know how you feel” unless your spouse has died.
You cannot give advice to a person who suffers from fatigue unless you suffer from it also.

But once you suffer from an ailment that another suffers from, you cease to give advice and tell people “what they should do.”
The pain grants you entrance into the other’s personal world, their interior war.

When my pain and your pain are the same pain, we become united in that pain.
We fulfill the words of St. Paul, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).

By having your own suffering, you can relate to other’s sufferings.
You become compassionate to them.
Compassion literally means to suffer with.
Suffering then allows you to understand, care and love others in a way that nothing else can.

This is an important point.

There are many Christians who profess their knowledge about Christ yet know Christ not.
They profess the prosperity, health and wealth Gospel, and rob the Gospel of its power.

The sure way to know Christ is to know His pain.
To know His pain, is to know who He is pained for.

To know who He is pained for, inspires us to carry our Cross behind Him, for the sake of others.
No Cross, No Jesus. Know the Cross, Know Jesus.

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4. Suffering is an Honor and a Privilege

The greatest of all honors is to be like God.
To be like God is to be like Jesus Christ.
To be like Jesus Christ is to offer oneself for the sake of others.
To offer yourself for the sake of others is sacrifice.
A meaningful sacrifice is not only prayers, or words…

A true sacrifice is offered with one’s body.

St. Paul says, “Offer your bodies as a holy and living sacrifice to God, this is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1)
To worship God is to sacrifice to God.
To sacrifice to God is to offer your body to Him.
When you offer your bodily torments, your sufferings in the flesh to Christ, that He may unite those sufferings to His sufferings, you become an offering for others and thus become like Christ.

“Christ reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes 22)
Christ reveals to us our supreme calling, which is to offer our bodily and spiritual sufferings to God on behalf of souls stuck in the mire of sin.

“For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for Him as well” (Php 1:29).
The most honored, privileged people are not the wealthy, the health, the rich and famous…
it is the Christian who suffers with Christ for the sake of sinners.

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5.Suffering is the Path to Glory

St. Peter tells us, “Wherein you shall greatly rejoice, if now you must be for a little time made sorrowful in diverse temptations:  That the trial of your faith (much more precious than gold which is tried by the fire) may be found unto praise and glory and honour at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 6-7).

God promises to glorify and honor those who suffer with and for Christ.
Now if we suffer with Christ, like Christ, we can expect to be glorified like Christ with Christ.
Indeed, “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim 2:12).

Though suffering appears to be a great evil, if we can understand suffering from the divine perspective, and embrace it, we derive the benefits of:

1. Becoming great and true sons of God the Father
2. We become united with our brothers and develop true friendship and brotherhood
3. We know Christ intimately and thus become like Him
4. We will understand it as a privilege and a sure sign of sonship of God and brotherhood with Christ.
5. We will, in the end, be glorified with Christ.

“Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Rom 8:17).