This past week a very good friend of mine passed away from cancer. He was at the best point in his life when cancer struck him down. It seems life can be so unfair and the obvious question is “why?”
Why.
People have asked that question for centuries. It ranks along side the question “How can God who is supposed to be loving allow this to happen?” when major catastrophes and acts of mass human cruelty takes place. Consider: tens of thousands starved to death during the great Chinese famine in 1959? Over one hundred thousand butchered in the Rwanda genocide? Millions of lives extinguished in Nazi concentration camps during WW2? “How can God who is supposedly so loving allow that to take place?”
Truth is, I don’t know.
How could God – who I KNOW is love and operates out of love, allow such atrocities and acts of cruelty to happen? Somehow it doesn’t fit into my understanding of what love is and who God is.
The best I can answer is this: that human suffering is not ultimately God’s will for mankind. Pain, suffering and death were brought into the world as a direct result of the fall of mankind.
And secondly, suffering gives all of us the opportunity to show God’s love to our neighbour in their time of need. Whether they live next door or around the world the opportunity is there for us to demonstrate our God-given ability to love. “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16).
God was there alongside those who have suffered throughout history. God is there today alongside those who suffer. The question is not “How can God allow this to happen?” Rather is becomes “What is my response to those around me who are suffering?”
Tim Hall is pastor of Victory Way Church.