If There is a Loving God Then Why is The World Filled With Such Suffering?

How many times have you been asked that question? Even a better question is how many times have you had that thought yourself?  If God is love how come He continues to allow brutal wars, evil leaders, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, starving children and the death of love ones? 

We have all contemplated the ever worsening condition of our world and at some point we get to the end of our human logic, look up to the heavens and simple say, “Why?”  If God loves us wouldn’t He make this go away?  Wouldn’t he step in and show Himself and heal this mess we live in? I mean if He was a good, loving God it would only make sense.

We forget that in the Garden of Eden we lost so much.  We lost the protection and covering of the hand of God and the perfect world He had made for us.  We forget that we traded in our perfect world for a world in which we could make our own choices, create our own destiny, and in essence be our own gods.  We gave away God’s purpose for us, His plan for us, His presence with us, and our Identity He created for us.

We forget that God himself came to Earth in the form of man to live among us, as one of us, so He could suffer like us.  To suffer the way we do, more than we do, and conquer sin so we can have victory.  A victory to reinstate our original purpose, to live in His presence, to fulfill His plan, and to give us back our identity.

We lose site of the fact that God hates sin and hates suffering more than we ever could.  So much so that He sent His only Son to deliver us from its grasp and bridge the gap so we could have a restored relationship with Him.

In Mark 7:31-37 we read the story of Jesus healing a deaf and mute man.  What is different in this story is right before Jesus heals the man He looks to the heavens and does something He was never noted to do at any other time in the Bible; He sighed.  Why sigh? And why does Mark make note of it?  Think about a time in your life when you sighed.  A sigh is that feeling we have when we are still compassionate but on some level we begin to feel frustrated.  Jesus was frustrated.  Jesus sighed and was probably thinking, why? Jesus was saying, “Why did men do this? Why did they have to sin? It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  I created you to have dominion, to be fruitful, to multiply, to rule the Earth, and to walk with me and you chose this? Why?

The same question we ask of God, Jesus asked of us, why?  Jesus’ is purpose, plan, and destiny lay before Him and He knew what he had to do because He loved us that much.  He wanted to rid the world of suffering and of sin.

So that brings us to the question we started with.  If there is a loving God why is there so much suffering in the world?

The answer is because God is so merciful He allows us to suffer.  That doesn’t sound right does it; but that is the answer.  Not the one you are looking for huh?

The truth is if God removed suffering from the world, He would first have to remove sin from the world.  And if he were to remove sin He would first have to remove you and me.  He would have to come down in His Holy Glory and destroy all of human mankind and then suffering would be totally removed.  Our suffering is a show and proof of His mercy being extended to all of mankind. 

He holds true to His word that what is meant for our destruction He uses for our good.  He stays faithful to His plan to draw men to Him so they can live eternally in heaven in His presence and not be lost forever.  He stays true to the statement he made that no weapon formed against you will prosper and He came to Earth in the form of a man to suffer what we would suffer to destroy the works of the enemy and to rid us of suffering.

Every day we exist and continue to live is God’s mercy at work; it is proof of it.  We suffer and God uses the suffering that is meant to destroy us to draw men to Him.  God would love to see suffering go away and He knows what he would have to destroy us to rid this world of it; but He is too merciful.  If a family member or a friend of yours came to know Christ due to what you suffered would it be worth it? Would it be worth it to suffer loss of this world to gain relationship with God and life with Him? It was worth it to God.  We were so worth it he gave His Son Jesus to Suffer. To God we are worth it. Our suffering is a demonstration of God’s continuing mercy.  Thank you Lord for your everlasting mercy.