Some thoughts on suffering (part 2)

It is fair enough to point out that most human suffering is caused by the evil action of human beings (including the suffering we cause ourselves through our own foolish behaviour) but what about tsunamis and earthquakes, what about the person who lives a healthy lifestyle and yet gets cancer. We can't easily let God off the hook for these.

Are these acts of divine judgement?

Perhaps you have heard people say that the Tsunami of 2004 was an act of judgement on the people of that region. I must admit such explanations leave me feeling troubled. For example, what about the church communities that were wiped out?

It is true that in the Bible's narrative God does use some 'natural' events as agents of judgement (eg. the flood), but it does not teach that every such 'natural' event is such a judgement. So we need to be careful not to make assumptions. Indeed the Bible discourages us from assuming that people's suffering is the result of particular sin.

Take the man born blind in John 9, the disciples assumed that his suffering must be the result of either his sin or his parents' sin, Jesus explains that neither was the case. Job's 'friends' assumed that the disasters that befell him must be God's judgement for particular sin but his friends were wrong. In Luke 13 Jesus responded to the questions raised by two local incidents (one being the result of an act of savagery by the Roman governor that claimed the lives of some Galileans; the other the collapse of a tower which had killed eighteen people in Jerusalem), Jesus rejected the notion that this proved that those who were killed were greater sinners than others. 'Jesus rejected jumping to the easy explanation that when disaster happens it must be the judgement of God on somebody's sin' (Chris Wright).

The problem then is that this leaves us with mystery. We want answers and many listen to those who give easy answers of cause and effect. Without answers we are left only with complaint and protest. But then we are in good company for the Psalms are full of questions. Christopher Wright says, 'In the Bible . . . there is plenty of lament, protest, anger, and baffled questions. . . . Lament is not only allowed in the Bible; it is modelled for us in abundance. God seems to want to give us as many words with which to fill in our complaint forms as to write our thank-you notes. Perhaps this is because whatever amount of lament the world causes us to express is a drop in the ocean compared to the grief in the heart of God himself at the totality of suffering that only God can comprehend.'