Why Suffering?

  No one denies that suffering is a fact of life. Why is there so much suffering in this world? Where is God in all this? What is He doing about it? Where are the answers? Only God has the answers and He has given us the answers in His Word. The Bible tells us that suffering in this world is due to a number of reasons: the primary reason being Sin. God created this world very good, but man made it very bad by sinning against God (Rom 5:12). Our first parents—Adam and Eve—broke God’s law by eating the forbidden fruit (Gen 2:16-17, 3:1-7). Their sin and disobedience plunged the whole of humanity into misery, pain and death (Gen 3:16-19, Rom 6:23). Human beings throughout the ages experience suffering because they are living in a sin-cursed world which is populated by sinful people who are bound by sinful thoughts and feelings and bent on doing sinful things (Rom 3:10-18). No one is innocent; all without exception are guilty (Rom 3:23). God, being holy and just, has to condemn and punish sinners, and the judgement began from the time man fell in the Garden, and continues until the present, and will end in the fiery destruction of world, and the casting of the finally impenitent into the lake of fire for all eternity (2 Pet 3:7-12, Rev 20:11-15). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31).

The Bible makes it very clear that the problem of suffering is man’s problem, not God’s. Ehrman keeps questioning why the wicked prosper and the innocent suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? But in God’s sight and by His standard, no one is good or innocent. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes. … For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:10-23).