Suffering. Pain. Evil.
Often—in both my personal conversations and in my observation of others’—these rank as the greatest difficulties in reconciling the state of the present world with the notion of a “Good God”. How can so much evil exist if God is Love? And more poignantly, How can any evil exist if God is Love? The question is so simple and foundational: it is perhaps asked as frequently by children in Sunday School as it is by the ivory tower theologian. Indeed, the question extends, Why didn’t God simply create a world without sin? Many who attempt to answer this enigma end up drawing a picture of a God who is either callous or worse: impotent. Others, like my philosophy professor (a devout Christian) have answered: The problem of evil is, well.. a problem. I don’t think there’s a good answer to it.1
I don’t write today with the hubris of attempting to answer the daunting question directly. Many of deeper faith than I have done so valiantly, and an even larger number have offered trite, shallow answers shamefully (think of your social media experiences). While I am not worthy of the former group, I hope to at least avoid joining the latter. And I hope the following meditation will engender the initial consolation of Job’s friends, before they broke silence and made themselves fools with their hollow explanations.
So rather than facing this timeless difficulty head on, I would invite the reader to voluntarily shelf the question while we explore the meaning of the Cross—in light of the problem of suffering. As my title indicates, I would remind the reader that God is indeed a “Who”. At least in our post-enlightenment era, we are too hasty to imagine the Creator as an impersonal Clockmaker, tasked with creating the perfect universe—the “perfect clock”. In this paradigm, there ought to be a singular “perfect design” to the clock, operational and without flaw.
Not a Clockmaker, but an Author
But another way to picture this divine “Who” is not as a Clockmaker, but as an Author. And to view the universe not so much as a machine but as a story. In this paradigm, one would not expect a “perfect” design or “perfect” functionality, with only one possible correct configuration. No, one would instead look for beauty, an aesthetic that reflects the mind of its Author. Such a beauty might be composed in a number of potential configurations. Further, it may encompass a mix of “good” and “evil” under its wings without suffering the accusation of being “flawed”. Was Tolkien a flawed author because Gollum and the Nazgul are part of The Lord of the Rings? Of course not, in fact, the ultimate beauty of the story would be spoiled without their involvement.2 No one denies this when it comes to Middle-Earth, yet when it comes to Earth this perspective is not much tolerated.
If you allow yourself to take this perspective to the pages of the Bible, we encounter an Author who subjects himself to the same suffering that is undergone by the countless figures in the narrative. In times of old, this Author suffers the scorn of his chosen people time and again after He rescues them from their persecutors and from their own follies. Entering the New Testament, we see the same Author lay aside His divine privileges to incarnate himself into the story,3 enduring the pain of poverty, betrayal, and murder in return for His righteous deeds. And at the crescendo of the story, He offers himself as a ransom for this race of recidivists.
If you find yourself rolling your eyes in dismissal, asking mechanically, Why didn’t God just prevent these rebellions in the first place?, may I suggest taking a brief moment to suspend the syllogisms and meditate on the beauty of the story—and on the Cross at its climax. Imagine for a moment that the One in charge of this universe (and of our souls) is not an engineer operating a machine, but instead an artist telling a story. We all have a part to play in the story, yes, but we are not the main character. These lifetimes of ours, and even this very moment, are all chapters working towards an ultimate conclusion to the narrative, wherein the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.4
Yet Will I Trust Him
If there is evil along the way to this conclusion, we must not belittle it with trite explanations. No, we are called to mourn and lament. But neither must we despair, because we recognize that the story does not end with ourselves. Further, and more consolingly, we have as friend and savior an Author who is not indifferent to our pain, but who has suffered with us. We may never come to understand the role of our personal sufferings, much less God’s ultimate plans. If we are to take the Scriptures at their word, His ways are inscrutable and are never to be fully uncovered.5 Yet despite this gap of understanding, we can have faith in the One who did not spare himself from the effects of evil. We can run to the arms of the Wounded Healer. We can love the God who marks himself with the sign of suffering—the sign of the Cross. We can say with our forefather Job: Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.6