How can God Allow Suffering?

A story came around through the internet saying that in Haiti, as in all places where natural disasters strike, one of the horrible outcomes is that young girls, and boys as well are exploited as a result. They sell themselves for food or water or shelter, or are sold by others for those same commodities. A friend e-mailed, ”For the young girls in Haiti, where is God?”

It’s a fair question. It’s much easier to believe in a God of love and fairness and forgiveness and joy when we don't have to know about the horrors man inflicts on his fellow human beings. I guess each of us has to come to an understanding of this individually, and for me that understanding required two steps. First, I started praying daily and became serious about not trying to protect God from my thoughts. Second, I finally began asking His opinion after I’d shared those thoughts.

Through my Lord’s teaching, this is what I’ve come to understand. Others may see things differently, but here's my piece.

Back in the beginning God’s Word says that He made a choice. While He has the power to stop or change anything going on in the universe, it was His decision to give man dominion over His creation. I think that means that how we handle this power is extremely important. While it is a privilege from the Lord, we are in a position to make it our right. Everyone - from a disobedient servant girl in Abraham's day to a relief worker in Haiti who reportedly bought a young girl for his pleasure - will answer for what we've done and not done. God's word says that clearly, so it's important that we understand it, and respond accordingly when we make our decisions in handling His creation - from the soil all the way to the people.

So that was my first understanding. God set it up so that we're in charge of our actions and the consequences of them. He does not promise to step in and stop the horrors man perpetrates on his fellow human beings. What He does promise is that He will heal us from the consequences if we allow it. More on that in a moment.

My next understanding came from something He taught me when I was reading in the book of Job. I was right ticked when I read that story and I prayed, "Lord, how could You wipe out all of Job’s children and their families and servants just to make a point? If this is true, then You're a cruel God!" and He said, in answer to that prayer, "Wipe them out? I didn't erase them. I brought them Home." That answer stunned me. I never truly realized that this life is the temporary one - like serving a rotation in the navy, or spending a few years in the mission field. After I’ve done my time here, then the real living begins in the next life, the tangible, enduring one. After understanding that about the story of Job I had to read scripture very differently, remembering what God’s end goal is, and that this life is not the be-all-end-all. It's only the means to the everlasting life.

Means to everlasting life... Once I grasped that, I began to see this life as being very similar to our school system. In many countries around the world, everyone has access to free schooling. There is no cost to us. All you have to do is show up at the door and walk in. Some folk never attend. Some start and move forward for a few years, and then get comfortable at a particular grade and keep living according to what they learned at that level. I think that’s perfectly fine with the Lord. God will nudge them if He so chooses, but they may be serving Him exactly as His will dictates, so that’s fine for those students of the Lord. Some choose to finish a grade and then enroll in the next, and the next, and the next. By definition of learning, each grade is more difficult and entails more challenges and work, more insecurity and unsureness, but eventually deeper understanding and greater skill. (And, as it says in James, greater responsibility!) I believe that in the same way our level of education has an impact on how we live our adult lives in this life, all the learning and field practice we carry out here will have an impact on what our experience will be in eternity. With that in mind, I tend to treat fellow believers as students, and that makes it very easy to not judge their learning experience because I’m well aware that everyone learns at different rates, in different ways, and all of it is valuable.

Back to God. Scripture says that His goal for His human creation is that He wants all to come to Him. Jesus said it doesn't matter what our fellow humans do to us, and it doesn't matter what we've done in the past. Ultimately He wants us to be in heaven with Him. That's why I believe that death row conversions are possible. That's why I believe that the 13 yr old girl in Haiti being bought for a piece of bread can be told in truth that her horror is man-made, and that she has the power to turn to Jesus who can provide healing and spiritual rescue. And as hard as it is to say, I also believe that the man who bought her can be saved and forgiven and healed as well. (But to be honest, I don’t like to think about him! If it was up to me, he wouldn’t have that chance. Thankfully for him, it’s not up to me!)

My own story is not one of peace and tranquility. My childhood saw a variety of evils and chronic suffering that resulted in my attempt to find escape through suicide attempts and cutting. Suicidal thoughts were my default whenever things went wrong, even as an adult. I had two breakdowns, two stints in the psych ward, until I could stabilize. My daughter suffered an accident that left her severely disabled. People who know me and my family know that I’m not speaking Christian clichés here. I’ve lived what that girl in Haiti is experiencing, and I can attest unequivocally that I have been healed!

Because of my own experience, I can truly say that healing is possible, and that Jesus will provide that healing. But there was a cost to me. I had to give up my anger and pain and sense of identity as a victim. I had to accept that I could have a different identity in Him, and give over who I believed I was to see what He'd do with it. It's hard to let go of what you know, what you're comfortable with (even if what’s comfortable is awful!) because you don't know what there might be to replace it. So stepping out and trusting Jesus feels dangerous and brings with it great insecurity. That’s something many Christians don’t get, I’m sure. Everyone says ‘Trust in the Lord! He is your strength!” But the idea of trusting Him when you are a barely holding yourself together in your state of vulnerability and fragility… yeah, that’s difficult.

What began my healing was to take Jesus at His word. He says, “Come to me”, so I did. I started by having daily frank discussions with Him - a good start, but not enough to heal.

The next, and more difficult step was to began to have the willingness to listen to His response. Sometimes I was rather embarrassed by what He was impressing on me. Sometimes I was downright ashamed and I’d push the concepts away for months at a time before I was willing to entertain them. Often His answers to my emotional and spiritual 'whys' came from way out in left field. I had to really think about them, since they'd never crossed my mind before.

That's when healing began to take place. He gave me NEW thoughts, NEW understandings that no human had ever been able to give me, and they were so very personal to me, to my story, to how I’d been damaged, to what I needed to understand, that no human could ever have provided that help and insight - only someone Who knew me as intimately as my Lord Jesus. And always, ALWAYS His understandings were laid on my heart with love.

This is the prayer I began with, to start this change within me.

Psalm 139:23-24
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.

May the Lord speak to all our hearts in the way that He knows is right for each of us.