Don’t you just love bumper stickers?

I mean sometimes, while you are sitting there at a red light, they can ask some really tough, existential questions like this:

That’s a good question!

Or they can quickly share the love, like this one…

I remember Jay Leno saying he once saw someone with this bumper sticker, so he gave a little honk, and the guy actually flipped him off.

Sometimes, bumper stickers can just make you shake your head:

I don’t even know what that means.

But sometimes, bumper stickers can try to be helpful, but really they just give pat answers for much more complex issues, like this:

I mean, if you’re dealing with depression, wouldn’t you just LOVE to see that on a car in front of you?

Cheap answers don’t help, in fact they can be destructive.

Today, we are continuing our series, Reasons, and through this series we are looking at some of life’s most difficult questions, questions that would be easy to just ignore or shy away from, but that’s not who we want to be. We want to engage these questions, realizing that some of these questions have been asked for thousands of years, and we may not be able to answer every angle, but in the end, we want to show that there are solid reasons for believing the core truths of Christianity. Our hope for this series is this: that those who call themselves Christ-followers will be encouraged knowing that they don’t have to intellectually disengage to believe, and 2) Skeptics will be encouraged to know they aren’t stupid if they decide to give careful consideration to the claims of Christianity.

And this morning, the question we are going to hit is a big one: “How Could a Good God Allow Evil and Suffering?”

Yikes, (can we go back to talking about the hokey pokey?:)

But when it comes to this question, bumper sticker answers are not good enough.

As the church, we can say things like “it the way God wanted it to be”, or “everything happens for a reason”. Pat, easy answers like this are not helpful and in fact, can hurt someone’s journey toward finding their way back to God.

And the question we are asking today is a BIG question, a difficult question. Manhattan Pastor Tim keller tells the story of being asked to speak at a memorial to some of the family members of the victims of 9/11 on this topic of suffering and evil, and they said, “you have 7 minutes to do it ”. Can you imagine? Luckily we have a few more minutes than that.

I’m sure many of you remember the Tsunami that hit SE Asia years ago, and created one of the worlds worst natural disasters, killing between 240k and 280k people. During that time a reporter asked: ““If God is all powerful and all-loving He would have and should have stopped that from happening. He didn’t. So He either could have and He didn’t , or He couldn’t have stopped it even though in His love He really wanted to. You can’t have it both ways .” Beneath these major philosophical and theological questions, we also find our personal experiences of pain and loss. Stuff that we just can’t make sense of it in light of what we’re told about God being a God who loves us.

The pastNow I think the best way to deal with this question of suffering and God’s role, is to look back, and then look forward.

When people ask, “Why does God allow suffering?” the implication is that a loving God should make the world a place where people don’t suffer. And I think it’s super-important to acknowledge right out of the gate that that’s exactly what God did. When we look back at what God has done, we see that the world He originally made was a suffering-free world. It was “good.” (“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” -Gen 1:31) “Good” doesn’t mean just “good quality,” it meant without flaw. The world God originally made was a world un-marred by suffering and any pain. No sickness. No death. No sadness. No loneliness. No violence. That’s the world a loving God made.

But as a loving God, he knew that in order for there to be the chance of real love between himself and the people he created, he had to give people the freedom to choose. Love isn’t really love unless a person has the freedom to embrace or reject the relationship. Without choice, there could not be love. But with choice, came the possibility of suffering. Our freedom to choose is how suffering came to be a part of our world. People turned against God and did their own thing and when they did, all hell broke loose. Spiritual disruption, relational strife, even the natural physical world was upended since human beings had been given responsibility for the stewardship of the earth. When the first humans rejected God, God Himself even asked, “What is this you have done?" (Gen 3:13) Truth is, of all the awful things that happen in this world, the vast majority of human suffering is directly or indirectly the result of human choice that goes against God. Whenever a person is victimized by crime or war or violence, somebody somewhere is going against God. Whenever a child is abused, somebody was going against God.

The futureSo we can look back and see that this is not the way God wanted the world to be, and we can also look ahead, because looking ahead gives us hope that it will not always be this way. In Revelation 21:4 we read that suffering will not have the last word, because a day is coming when “He will wipe every tear from their eye. And there will be no more mourning, crying, death, nor pain.” (Revelation 21:4)

It’s a very real promise that God is going to restore His dream and that nothing can and nothing will stop him from bringing His dream to full reality.

The present

So we look to the past to understand that our loving God had a vision for a world that was without suffering, and we look to the future to understand that one day, this planet will all be made right again, and today, as we suffer we also can look to Jesus as our guide.

Jesus is our example. When it comes to our suffering, He knows what we’re going through. Jesus was profoundly shaken by evil and suffering.

In the garden before his arrest, his soul was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:33-34).

He showed all the signs of being in physical shock (Luke 22:44).

He begged the Father to save him from what he was going through (Luke 22:42).

On the cross, Jesus cries out in despair that God has forsaken him, experiencing the pain of the loss of his most treasured relationship (Matthew 27:46).

Jesus knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, grief, torture, pain. He didn’t numb himself to it. He didn’t sugarcoat it. He experienced it.

So as I am dealing with suffering in my life what does this mean? It means that Jesus is with us in our pain. While Jesus’ suffering doesn’t answer the question, “Why does God allow evil and suffering?” it does tell us what the answer isn’t. Pastor Tim Keller writes: “It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself” (Reasons, Chapter 2). If we embrace that Jesus is God and that he went to the cross, we can know that God is truly “God with us”, even in our worst sufferings. God understands our pain.

Finally, Jesus will partner with us to redeem our pain. Not only does Jesus’ death demonstrate that he is with us in our heartbreak, his resurrection gives us hope that our suffering is not in vain. Years ago I remember walking by the side of a friend of mine who was going through a divorce. It was not something he wanted, he was consistently praying for reconciliation, but it wasn’t happening. This friend of mine was in incredible pain, and I will never forget the way He would honestly go before God, weeping and crying out, and allowing Jesus to be with him in the midst of a very dark time. And now, when I head into dark times, I remember my friend, and am shaped by the way he lived his life.

Jesus’ resurrection means that pain, suffering, and death do not have the last word. We can see glimpses of this “resurrection” in how God redeems our pain and suffering and works it for good in this life. Though none of us are grateful for the tragedies and difficult things we’ve walked through, probably all of us can see ways we’ve grown, gained perspective, or later seen good reasons for at least some of the pain we’ve experienced (Romans 5:1-5, James 1:2-4).

What am I supposed to do today?

If I’m being honest, in the midst of pain and suffering, it’s helpful to know where pain and suffering come from, to know that God’s going to someday make all things new and that Jesus is with us in and through our pain… but what am I supposed to do with that knowledge in the meantime? How am I supposed to handle the hard times of life in a way that’s meaningful and honors God?

Well I’d like to suggest 2 ways to deal with the pain in our lives. I want to make sure you understand that these suggestions aren’t intended to ignore or invalidate the pain we may be feeling. These aren’t just simple cookie cutter approaches to suffering and they in no way minimize the pain we may be going through. Instead, they’re meant to remind us of ways to navigate the pain… well… in ways that acknowledge it, but also motivate us to work through it.

The first suggestion is to Find Comfort in Jesus. Now this isn’t just some cute saying on a Christian Hallmark card. This is incredibly useful wisdom to help us navigate pain if we understand it properly. You see the meaning behind this statement is something that can actually give us hope.

What I mean by it is that the cross and the Resurrection of Jesus are actually the power of God to overcome death and suffering. The fact that Jesus suffered and died on the cross and then rose again means that he has completely and totally defeated death and suffering! He’s conquered it all. The reason this is important to dealing with pain is because it can actually give us hope to get through the pain instead of just getting away from it.

If you’ve ever experienced pain then you’ve probably heard a very well intentioned person saying something about “God having a plan we just don’t see and can’t understand.” In fact, you may have been the one who said it… I know I have.

But as we said earlier, the thing we need to understand is that we live in a world with free will… with choice… with a God who loves us enough to allow us to choose. And that means sometimes suffering comes with that freedom. Sometimes bad things happen because each person living has free will to make good choices or bad ones. So pain isn't always pointing at something and it’s not always caused for some grand reason… sometimes it’s just the reality of the world we live in.

Author Philip Yancey in his book Where is God When it Hurts says this about pain. "Maybe God isn't trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt. Half the time we know why we get sick: too little exercise, a poor diet, contact with a germ. Do we really expect God to go around protecting us whenever we encounter something dangerous?" (Where is God When it Hurts, 84).

Now, maybe you hear that and you say, “But what about the suffering that isn’t caused by human choice?” Well that’s a great question. Maybe you think about the problem of hunger around the world and wonder why God’s allowing that to happen… I mean that’s not necessarily a problem of free will, right?

Well you see the reality is that people aren’t starving around the world simply because of problems with climate and irrigation. In fact, we produce more than enough food on our planet to supply every single person living on earth with at least 3,000 calories a day. There’s plenty of food. Weather and food supply aren’t the biggest problem.

The biggest problem is a combination of greed, political corruption, and ignorance that keeps food from getting to hungry people. So more than we realize, pain and suffering comes from human choices, not from God. God made the world the way He wanted it; and we’ve made it this way.

The truth is, Jesus didn’t come to remove all suffering from the world in the here and now, but rather to usher in God’s Kingdom… a kingdom of renewal. And we’re reminded all throughout Scripture that while our problems don’t magically disappear because we’ve become followers of Jesus, we are promised that in those sufferings we are not alone.

So remember, you ARE NOT alone! You can always find comfort in Jesus.

The other suggestion for us today is to Look Forward. This means that in our suffering, we need to remember where the story’s heading. I briefly touched on this earlier, but want to spend some more time here because we need to remember that God is in the process of restoring the entire world and destroying pain and suffering once and for all. Agian in Revelation we’re told that ultimately God “‘…will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

This means that even though things are difficult right now and may hurt us deeply, the reality is that we’re always moving closer to the day when God will restore his creation and make all things perfect and new.

Again Yancey says: “… God is not pleased with the condition of the planet either. The story of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the story of God’s plan to restore his creation to its original state of perfection... The Bible communicates no message with more certainty than God’s displeasure with the state of creation and the state of humanity” (Where is God When it Hurts, 67).

What I find absolutely incredible is that God’s not just working at this all alone… in isolation. Instead, he’s called each of us, you and I, to partner in this work of restoration with him. That means we have a role to play, here and now, in helping bring some of that restoration to the world around us. In fact, each of us is meant to be miniature representations of God’s work of renewing creation. We’re meant to serve as signposts of God’s work in our world. I think that’s amazing!

So instead of spending time worrying about the “whys” of pain and suffering… looking backward… we should be people who are looking forward… looking for the day to come when God will restore this world. Until then, we should partner with God to be the places where his restorative work plays out each and every day with the people we come in contact with.

Conclusion

How many of you have seen The Lord of the Rings trilogy? If you remember the climax of the series there’s this incredible scene where Sam discovers that his friend Gandalf wasn’t dead, like he thought he was, but was actually alive. Crying, Sam says to Gandalf, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

Jesus’ answer to that questions is a loud and adamant – YES! God says to a suffering and broken world that he’s “making everything new!” That means all pain… all suffering… every tear from every eye will be wiped away. And for us, in the here and now, that means God calls us to Find Comfort in Jesus, Look Forward, and partner with Him in restoring this world to everything He dreamed it could be.