Why Does God Allow His Children to Suffer?
Dr. John Ankerberg: Michael, why does God allow us to suffer?
Dr. Michael Easley: Lots of reasons, let me distill them to three. Number one, I think sometimes our sin, our individual sin, does and can bring suffering. Not always, not one-to-one, but because we’re fallen creatures we sin, we fail, we miss the mark. And on occasion we do have a one-to-one relationship with living a lifestyle of sin. God may indeed inject pain into our experience to get our attention. C.S. Lewis, roughly paraphrased, pain plants the flag of surrender in the fortress of a rebel heart. So if I’m sinning, that’s one way He gets my attention.
Secondly, we’re fallen creatures in a fallen context. From the time Adam and the woman ate and violated the prohibition in the garden, everything fell, it collapsed. And so, many of us wear glasses, many of us have arthritis, many of us have aches and pains as we age. It’s not because we’re sinning necessarily, one-to-one correlation, but we’re fallen people in a fallen context.
And third, and most uncomfortable, sometimes He allows it for reasons we can’t quantify. But I do believe He allows it for greater purposes, or imperceptible reasons we may not know. And as a sufferer in chronic pain or disability, we have to make a choice, how am I going to walk through this horrible thing, knowing that God’s good and loving, but my life sure doesn’t seem good and loving right now?
Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes. A verse that comes to my mind is, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had,” Paul says, “and now hear that I still have.” [Philippians 1:29-30] Or Acts 14:22, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Or 2 Corinthians 1:5, “For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” You want to comment on those three?
Dr. Michael Easley: Well, to look at Paul’s life in that lens, I mean, we want to go back to Damascus Road, we want to go back to his call perhaps, and Ananias.
Dr. John Ankerberg: It’s a great story. It’s a great illustration.
Dr. Michael Easley: It’s a horrible story.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Who’s Ananias, first of all?
Dr. Michael Easley: Well, Saul, of course, is going after, with papers, essentially to incarcerate Christians who are following the Way. And so, he’s on his way to Damascus, and God strikes him blind. Ananias is this prophet who’s minding his own business. He’s at home being a little prophet, whatever they did. And God speaks to him and says, “I want you to go talk to this man Saul who’s in prison.” Let me just read a portion of it from Acts 9.
“Ananias answered. ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.’” And here’s the amendment, “For I will show him how much he will suffer for my name’s sake.” [Acts 9:11-16]
So here’s this guy who’s… we would call him an Ivy League rabbi. And he’s got papers and credentials to take people back to Jerusalem. He’s struck blind, Ananias gets this dubious job of going to him and confronting him. And the story unfolds; of course, the scales fall off. But that just mind-blowing missional statement, “he’s going to suffer a lot for my name’s sake.” So, from his zeal as a Jews’ Jew, now he’s going to be turned 180 and be a zealous apostle to the Gentile. He’ll, of course, spend years in prison, he’ll be shipwrecked, flogged, snake bit, persecuted, on the run, lowered down in baskets in humiliation to escape angry crowds. And his life will be one on the run and in prison until he dies. And this is the great saint Paul who was chosen to suffer.
Now, if you want me to take Prosperity 101 versus Suffering 101, of course I’ll take Prosperity 101! But that doesn’t seem to be God’s plan in the Scripture. We’re going to suffer—all of us will—in some way, shape, or form.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes. In verse 26 of the passage that you’re quoting, he says they were in “danger” or “peril” eight times in one verse, okay? So that’s what he was living with all the time. He was a chosen instrument; he was going to be greatly used by God; but the prison time that he spent and all of these things, from being stoned, to being hunted down, to being mistreated in every place that he went, it was a life. And he is the great apostle Paul. So where do we come in?
Dr. Michael Easley: We look at Paul’s life, obviously not picked like he was, but if we’re called of Christ, we are chosen of God. And so, in our life’s fabric, even when Paul was chosen, I doubt he had any idea how God was going to use him for His glory and His good.
And so, when Joni looks at her life, and I look at my life of chronic pain, when people who are watching your broadcast have far more complicated situations than we do, to see that you’re a chosen instrument of His; that He loves you, He cares about you, and He will use you.
And this is the hardest part, when we lose this ability, we can’t do things we used to do, “Well, I’m not useful anymore.” And that’s where, somehow, in a way I don’t understand, John, in our weakness He’s made strong. He somehow overcomes the limitations in the flesh and uses us in spite of us. And I don’t know that we can always quantify that even in this lifetime. I think that will be later to come.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes. Well, let’s go back to you and a personal illustration, because before all this stuff hit you, you could do just about anything. You were great at racquetball, you could fix any car, you could fix stuff in the house, you could mow the lawn. And then tell me what that was like.
Dr. Michael Easley: I appreciate you bringing that up and making me feel bad again! You know, you do: you lose your sense of who you are because your identity is self-sufficient; your identity is, “I can learn that thing, I’m a handy fellow. I can fix things.” And when those props are taken away, you realign yourself. My identity is not in what I do or how I perform in this world. My identity is in the person and work of Christ. And the greatest use any of us can be is to talk about the person and work of Christ, how He works in spite of our limitations, in spite of our disabilities, in spite of the things that we don’t have. He chose not many wise, not many noble, not many strong, but He chose the weak, ignoble things of the world to shame those who were wise, strong and noble. So I think our place in Christ, it takes a recalibration always: Don’t let my experience teach me about God, let the Word teach me about my God.
Extracted from our series, “Where is God When Life Hurts?” Slightly edited for publication. The entire series with Dr. Michael Easley and Joni Eareckson Tada is available through our online store at jashow.org.
