A THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING: WHY DOES GOD ALLOW THE RIGHTEOUS TO SUFFER?

A THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING: WHY DOES GOD ALLOW SUFFERING?

(Delivered by the Rev. Canon Fred Vergara as a virtual lecture via Facebook Live last May 25, 2020)

Good evening Friends in America; Good morning friends in Asia. My subject matter tonight is the theology of suffering. This is an ancient question almost everyone in every generation is asking and yet we never exhaust the answer. Why do we suffer? Why does God allow suffering? If God is a God of love and justice, why does He allow the righteous to suffer along with the wicked?

I think in these times of pandemic, everyone is asking this question too. We see death everywhere and we see suffering everywhere. Whenever you turn on your TV you see and feel suffering and pain.

What is suffering? Suffering is the state of being in pain, in distress, hardships or difficulties. I think everyone is familiar with suffering. All married couples understand what it is. Someone said, “every married person has three rings: engagement ring, wedding ring and suffer-ring.”

Okay, I am just giving you a bit of humor there because suffering is a serious topic. So how should we understand suffering?

First, Suffering is a part of life; it is part of being human; it is part of being alive. Suffering is necessary for our growth and our health. Like love, laughter and joy suffering is an integral part of human existence.

There was a story of a butterfly which did not learn how to fly. It was because as it was struggling to get out of the cocoon, a boy took pity and cut the cocoon with scissors. The butterfly came out but it was so weak, it stretched for a moment but could not fly. What the boy did not realize was that the struggle was what the butterfly needed. Its wings were weak and undeveloped and it’s strength was inadequate because the boy cut the cocoon which provided the obstacle training. Like being born prematurely, the butterfly was not ready for the outside world.

Suffering as part of life also means what Hindus call “karma,” the principle of sowing and reaping. What you sow is what you reap. From the bad deeds will come out bad karma and from the good deeds will come out good karma.

Oftentimes, the sowing and reaping are reasonable: apples will bear apples, oranges will bear oranges. Negative breeds negative; positive breeds positive. A child plays with fire and gets burned. A student who studies his lessons will pass the exam. That is a natural consequence of an action.

There are also instances when the consequence is more than the action. That is what we call punishment. The prophet Hosea said to the people of Israel during their times of apostasy, “You sowed the wind but you will reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7).

At any rate, punitive or corrective, our suffering is part of free will: we decide for ourselves what to do and must accept  responsibility for the consequences of our actions and decisions.

The second reason for suffering is that it is the result of sin. This is also comparable to karma but it is a big Karma that dates back to the time of creation.

This story of Creation in Genesis speaks of a paradise where our ancestors Adam and Even walked with God. In such a pristine environment, there was no climate change, there was no war, famine, pestilence or death. In Paradise there was no pain, no sorrow, no suffering. It was a perfect world. But sin entered in by way of disobedience and things turned upside down.

Sin is defined as missing the mark. The disobedience of our ancestors resulted in their being expelled from paradise. The words of God to the man (Adam) was “By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19)

The woman (Eve) was not spared. God said, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you” (Genesis.3:16)

So the broken relationship between God and man opened a Pandora’s Box, so to speak, of human suffering. Now the farmer has to till the fields and suffer until the harvest; the fisher has to wait for the fish to bite and suffer the dangers of the night.

Death came in like a thief in the night. In paradise there was no mortality. It was outside of paradise where Cain murdered Abel. It was outside of paradise where jealousy, envy and murder reared its ugly head.

But there’s always hope beyond hope; there is light even in darkness. Even when we did not hit the bullseye of God’s will,  God did not totally abandon us. In place of the fig leaf that Adam and Eve used to cover their nakedness and shame, God provided them garments of skin that would make their body resilient to the elements of nature and something they can feel good about.

So in another creation story in Psalm 139:14 the psalmist who happened to be King David, said: “I praise you, O God, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” In Psalm 8, he prayed “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers; the moon and the stars which thou has established, what are human beings that thou art mindful of them. You made them little less than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor and gave them dominion over the works of thy hands.”

So that we may inhabit and withstand even a hostile world east of Eden or outside of Paradise, God redesigned our beings to be able to withstand a certain degree of suffering and pain. Our human nature is so intricately woven so that our body has a built-in immune system and has the capacity to heal itself. Our mind has a potential of being able to tap to divine intelligence and resource divine wisdom; our spirit innately longs for the time when we can again be at one with Father-God.

God Himself, having known that we are incapable of saving ourselves, initiated a divine rescue operation. He sent prophets to warn us of the consequences of our continuing disobedience,  asking us to return to God but we continually refused to come under the shadows of His wings.

Then in the fullness of time, God sent His Only begotten Son to reconcile us back to God and be at peace one with another. His love is unconditional and knows no bound, even to the point of paschal sacrifice. By His own suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He laid out the bridge to bring humanity back to God.

Yes, we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus on the cross but there are still vestiges of sin. We were ransomed from captivity to sin and death and given the promise of eternal life without sorrow and but we are still in the state of what is called “the already but not yet.” The completion of such a promise, the consummation of our salvation, will be at the return of Jesus who will come to judge the living and the dead.

In the meantime, we are to embrace suffering as a discipline because “suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.”(Romans 5:3-5)

But we do not suffer alone. Romans 8:22 says that the whole creation groans. But ours is not a meaningless suffering, it is not an unnecessary suffering. Like a woman in childbirth, suffering is a price to be paid for a beautiful reward. When a baby is born, the mother forgets all her labor pains as she beholds the gift of a new creation.

So St. Paul said in Romans 8:18 “I consider that our present suffering cannot be compared to the glory that is to be revealed.”  So if you are suffering as a result of sin, there are resources for you to access.

The Bible says, “If you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

If your suffering is a result of mistreatment and injustice, remember what Martin Luther King, Jr said, “the arc of the moral universe maybe long but in the end it bends towards justice.”

One of my favorite evangelist Ravi Zacharias. He originally comes from India but he became a Canadian citizen and became an itinerant evangelist, traveling the world preaching the gospel as an apologist. An apologist is an evangelist who offers an argument in defense of the gospel. It comes from apologetics, the art and science of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse.

Nowadays apologists are known to be great debaters in religion and theology, but early Christian writers such as Tertullian, Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo were not only great debaters but also considered great debaters and preachers and systematic theologians but also originators of great Christian doctrines.

Tertullian for instance was proposed of the “doctrine of the Holy Trinity,” Clement of Alexandria popularized the “doctrine of salvation,” Justin Martyr the “doctrine of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility” and Augustine of Hippo proposed the doctrine of the “original sin” and “predestination.”

One of the famous books St. Augustine is Civitas Dei. It’s a 20-volume doctrinal book. First ten volumes he devoted to the City of Man and second ten volumes the City of God. To summarize the big book it simply says, “The City of Man is a city built from man’s pride, from man’s greed, from man’s ambition. This city will always die. The City of God is the city built from God’s love, from God’s peace from God’s compassion. This City of God will never die.”

To connect this to suffering for justice, we believe that with all our trials and tribulations, God wins at the end. If you’re suffering for the sake of the City of Man, it is karma. But if you’re suffering for the sake of the City of God, you will be vindicated sooner or later.

And so Ravi Zacharias in one of his apologetical preaching to a group of university students said that he noticed that most of the discourses in America today are from the left and the right, liberal and conservative, democrat and republican. All horizontal dimension. There is basically a void in discussion of the up and down, the vertical dimension. There is a void in the discourse about God and the City of God.

I’m sorry that Ravi Zacharias died last week, May 19, 2020. We lost a brilliant Christian apologist in the 21^st century, the likes of C.S. Lewis of the 20^th century. But back to the question of suffering:

The third reason for suffering is a mystery.

Why do the righteous suffer just like or even more than the wicked? Not all people who died in wars believed in it; not all people who died in accidents were careless. Not all people who suffered pain and hardships were under punishment of sins. There were many who are simply “collateral damage.”

Doubtless, in this COVID19 pandemic, there were many righteous people who suffered and died. If this were a punishment from God why does the righteous suffer? And if this were karma, why is it that many of those who flaunt in wickedness by neither wearing masks nor taking precautions continue to live and did not get infected? At least not yet? Or they might have been infected but were asymptomatic, so they stroll around carrying the virus and infecting others because they simply don’t care.

And why it is that some of those in the frontlines who risked their lives and health to save other lives, even though they took precautions themselves, have gotten infected and some have died?

I think the answer to these questions is firstly personal. Someone said that an intolerable suffering makes someone either an atheist or a saint. When you’re suffering so much, you either get closer to God or you deny the existence of God.

So before I share a biblical answer, let me first share a personal story:

In 1975 while at St. Andrew’s Theological Seminary in the Philippines, I was having a philosophical question with regards to my call for the priestly ministry. I was taking Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) and was ministering to a cancer patient. Her name was Jovita Villanueva. Her husband was Fidel and they had one daughter named Esther.

My involvement with the family turned out to be more than just a chaplain-patient relationship because I was filled with compassion and became deeply and emotionally involved.

That was my first pastoral encounter with a cancer patient. Jovita’s cancer started from the breast which metastasized and spread to other parts of her body. I could almost feel her pain every time I visited her. There were times when I saw her writhe in pain. As the doctor and nurses were attending to her, her husband Fidel would also suffer an asthma attack. I learned how to massage an asthmatic because of that.

Almost everyday, I visited Jovita and prayed with her, read the bible and cheered her up. One time, I brought my classmates with me to sing for her and we all wore our white cassock.

 When we arrived at her bedside she just woke up from sleep and she thought she already died and went to heaven and she was surrounded by angels. The only spoiler was one seminarian who had a thick mustache and Jovita asked in Tagalog, “Mayroon bang anghel na may bigote? Is there an angel with a mustache?” Anyway, we had a great laugh and we sang to her.

Jovita stayed for several months in the hospital which drained their finances. Esther was the only breadwinner as both Jovita and Fidel became disabled. She finally died but left Fidel and Esther buried in debts.

Now, I am not a stranger to suffering and hardships. In childhood, I experienced poverty and when I stowed away from home, I became a homeless teen-ager in Manila. When I was in college, I became a student activist and had ministered to the poor. I served with the Federation of Free farmers attending to the poor farmers. I served with the National Union of Students in the Philippines and had an exposure to the poorest of the poor in Sapang Palay, the slum village near the garbage dump. I finished Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with an awareness of the socio-political and economic conditions of the Philippines.

And so when I became a seminarian during martial law in the Philippines and ministered to Jovita, I brought all these memories and asked God “If you are indeed a God of love and mercy, why have you allowed Jovita and her family to suffer this way?”

That day was Ash Wednesday and at seminary we observed prayer and fasting, so I took my Bible and went to meditate under a Santol Tree. It is a big tropical tree in the Philippines but with small fruits, the size of eggs. Near the tree, there was a watermelon vine and it has large fruits, like the bald head of Kojak. Do you remember Telly Savallas?

I meditated on 1 Corinthians 1:25 which says, “the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”

“Foolishness of God,” “weakness of God.”  Is there such a thing? I asked myself. Can God be foolish? Can God be weak?

Then it dawned on me. “If God is wise, then He should know logic. If He knows logic, then this large Santol tree should bear large fruits like watermelons and this small watermelon vine should bear small fruits like the santol.” So I concluded, “God is not wise!”

Somewhat contented with that “para-theology,” I fell asleep. It was a dreamless sleep but I was awakened by a thud. A fruit of the santol fell on my head. I jumped up and shouted, “Alleluia! God is not foolish! God is wise!” Why? Because if the fruit of the santol was as large as the watermelon, I would have been six feet below the ground! Dead!

So that is my personal answer to the mystery question: Why does God allow suffering? God is wise. And why does God allow the righteous to suffer along with the wicked? God is wise!

Suffering of the righteous is a mystery and I believe in God’s wisdom even though in our state of suffering we cannot discern it. The prophet Isaiah said, “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth so God’s ways and higher than our ways and God’s thoughts higher than our thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

God knows more than what we do. And even if God is foolish, His foolishness is wiser than our wisdom. That is what faith is all about. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the convication of things not seen. You believe that after the rain there is sunshine, after the storm the silver lining. That same sun which sets in the west will rise in the east.

Now let me give an illustration from the Holy Bible with regards to the suffering of the righteous. No one can fit this bill more than Job.

JOB is the first example of what is called “theodicy,” the theology of justifying the goodness of God with regards to His power. Theodicy tries to explain why God allows evil to accomplish God’s purpose. The importance of this example is that Job is the first human being whose righteousness was not questioned at all. In other words, Job is the first example to the question “Why does God allow the righteous to suffer?” In Job is found both the mystery and majesty of the God, the Absolute of all absolutes.

The story of Job is a poetic drama in motion. The prologue starts in the land of Uz where Job was enjoying God’s blessings: tremendous wealth, good family, obedient sons and daughters. The scene then shifted to heaven where God asked Satan about Job’s religiosity and Satan (the Accuser) replied, “Job is righteous because of Your blessings. Remove these blessings and he will curse you---just like any human being on earth.”

So God gave permission to Satan to kill Job’s children and servants and destroy his properties. Yes, that’s unbelievable how God can say that, but that is what the Bible says. And that was just the beginning of Job’s tragedy. Job responded to this tragedy but worshipping God and saying, “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The second trial was personal sickness. God allowed Satan to afflict his whole body with boils. Job responded by shaving his head and sitting on ashes. His wife urged him to end his misery saying, “Curse God and die!” But Job replied, “Shall we receive only good from God and not evil?”

Then came Job’s three friends. They came console him but they had certain idea that God could not do this if Job was really righteous. For them, Job maybe righteous but he might have committed a sin, just like any human being would. So Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar insisted that Job might have committed a secret sin for God would cause no one to suffer innocently, much less Job. So they advised Job to repent and seek God’s mercy.

Then Job changed his position and started to ask hard questions in righteous indignation. He began to question God’s justice. He berated God for the injustice that he suffered and equated it with the way in which God was governing the world. Confident that he committed no serious sin to warrant untold suffering, Job even lamented and said that the reason why the wicked had taken advantage of the poor and the oppressed was because God did nothing to punish them. And yet God allowed the righteous to suffer.

Years ago, an Anglican priest and evangelist David Watson wrote the book, “Fear No Evil.” In that book, he wrote about his struggle with cancer. He eventually died but during his dying days he suffered so much pain that affected his emotional states. In the stages of dying, there is a stage called “anger stage” and he asked the question in his book: “Is it alright to get angry with God?”

Eventually, he answered his question with a Yes. Yes, it is alright to be angry with God because God can take our anger and pain.”

Your spouse may not and cannot take your anger; your children may not and cannot take your anger; your friends may not and cannot take your anger, but God will and can take your anger and pain.

So when you are feeling so much pain, you may try asking God hard question and even get angry with God. In one 1960’s movie, “Sunshine,” the mother who was dying with cancer said, “What’s the matter with you God? If I die, whose go’nna clean the oven?” Yes, it can be therapeutic. Ask God hard questions and you will be surprised to get the answer. Did not Jesus Himself asked in pain, “My God, my God why has thou forsaken me?”

Back to Job: So God answered Job through the whirlwind, and yes it was full of mystery. Enigma. It was not a clear explanation of Job’s suffering and innocence. Rather, like a theologian answering a question by asking another question, God said to Job: ”Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?...Have you ever in your life commanded the morning and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth and the wicked shall be shaken out of it?” (Job 1, 12, 13)
Bluntly speaking, God’s answer to Job’s question about God’s justice and righteousness was this: “Who are you to question me?”
Essentially that is all we can do. God is God. Man is man. We take responsibility for ourselves and do what we can from our side, but in the end, God is sovereign. You can run but you can’t hide. Like Jonah, you can flee to Tarsus and not go to Nineveh, but God would design a fish to swallow you and inside the belly of the fish, you will get the answer.
Psalm 139 says “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me. even the darkness will not be dark to you;the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
That is why Jesus prayed to God in Gethsemane, “Father, take this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will but your will be done.” Why do we lift up our hands to God? It is total surrender, surrender to God’s will.
Back again to Job. After hearing God’s reply, Job confessed and in Chapter 42 of the Book of Job, He prayed:
Lord, I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, “Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, “Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.” Yes, Lord; my ears had heard of you; but now even my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job’s story had a happy ending. Let me read Job 42: 10-16:

 “The Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him,and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.

The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.

After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so Job died, an old man and full of years.”

Now before I make my conclusion on the question of suffering, I would like to share what happened after the death of Jovita. A few months after she died, Fidel her husband also passed away. Esther became an orphan but her friends from GSIS, and there were so many of them, helped contribute to pay their hospital bills. And one day, there was a Canadian businessman who served as a judge at their local beauty contest and Esther Villanueva won. This Canadian businessman courted her and married her and brought her to Canada. That was the last time I saw her and that was 1976. Since she is around my age, she must be around 70 years old now, and if happens to be listening now, I would be glad to know how she is.

CONCLUSION

Okay, now in concluding this meditation, let me say that Job’s suffering became the foretaste of Christ’s own suffering. The thief beside Jesus said to the other thief “We are rightly punished because of what we have done. It is our karma. But this man, Jesus was innocent.” Then turning to Jesus he said, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus replied, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

To those who feel they are suffering unjustly, let me quote from 1^st Letter of St. Peter 4:12 “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.”

Jesus was described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He was despised and rejected but He set His face to Jerusalem, down the Via Dolorosa, the way of suffering. His suffering was redemptive.

A quotation from St. Peter is not complete without a quotation from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, chapter 2:“Therefore if you have any encouragement in Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being united in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The restoration of Job was life on earth, a long and happy life. The restoration in Jesus is eternal life in the heavens where there is no pain, no sorrow, no suffering. So cast your cares upon Him and hear Him say:. “Come unto me, all ye who labor and I will give you rest. For my suffering is easy and my burden is light.” Amen.

THANK YOU MY FRIENDS, KEEP SAFE DURING THIS PANDEMIC, AND KEEP THE FAITH. GOD LOVES YOU, GOD CARES FOR YOU, GOD WILL SAVE YOU!