why pain, why suffering?...

do you ever read some of the warning labels on medicine where they talk about the side effects? steve martin did a whole monologue on side effects.

come to think of it that would be a good thing to have on life. on one side it would talk about all the wonderful things about life. life can be full of wonderful adventure and joy. then on the other side it would mention the side effects because there are side effects to life. there is pain. there is suffering. there is heartbreak. there is disappointment. there are broken relationships. there is crime. there is victimization. there’s abuse. there’s even death.

in fact, JESUS did warn about this. in john 16.33 (niv) HE said, in this world you’re going to have trouble. you’re going to have tribulation. but HE didn’t really in that passage address the question of why. and that is the question that has been on peoples’ minds since the beginning of time. why is there pain? why is there suffering? why do bad things happen to good people?

it’s gone back to the beginning of time. we can see it in the old testament. that was the cry on the lips of job. “why is there suffering?” that was the cry of the psalmists as they wrote. and especially, coming out of the twentieth century as we just did. that was the century we saw suffering on the biggest scale of any civilization – two world wars, the holocaust, the killing fields of cambodia, the devastating famines that took place in africa, the emergence of aids, genocide in uwanda, ethnic cleansing in kosovo. we’ve seen all this stuff and the world wants to know why. why pain, why suffering?

i know for many of you this is not just an academic question, this is not just a theological issue that you bat around the dining room table over dinner. this is a very real issue. you have gone through pain. you have gone through the loss of a child. you are going through illness. you’ve had suffering. you’ve seen loved ones who have gone through pain. and i really wish i could give you the perfect answer from GOD on this issue but i can’t.

now in life we may not be able to make out all the peripheral answers in terms of why. they still may be enshrouded by our limited ability to understand. but there are some key biblical truths that are illuminated to us through scripture. and if we keep our eyes on those points of light just like if you are in a deep fog and you are following the taillights of a semi in front of you i believe they will take us to a place of understanding where our hearts and our minds can be satisfied.

just a thought from the front porch…