F
irst things first is that the world isn't as God planned for it to be. If you read through Genesis Originally when God created the world everything was good ( Read through Genesis 1:1-31). and as you continue reading you will understand that Suffering in the world is a result of human kind turning away from God = our relationship with God turned to poop. This was the fall of man or As many people know as the story of Adam and Eve (that was the start at least) Now God is just and will not allow this rebellion to last forever, every human being and the world itself is under God’s judgment, and will continue to decay and go wrong until God ends it one day. He wants everyone to understand the state of things and so uses our circumstances (including suffering) to makes us aware that the world is not as it should be. He wants us to turn back to him and be reconciled.
So God, because of his love, has done something about the suffering in this world. He has sent Jesus to die for us. Jesus was God’s son, he was a perfect man, who did not deserve God’s punishment, and yet he took our punishment by suffering and dying a most unjust death on the cross. The book of the Bible called First Peter tells us that “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3:18)And after having suffered and died for us, Jesus was raised back to life, and when he returns, the world as we have it now will end. Those who believe in Jesus will enter a new world where there will be no tears and no suffering.
So this is a very simply outline of just some of the things the Bible talks about suffering, and is by no means complete. The main thing to understand is that suffering comes from our selfishness and rejection of God, we as a human race has bring it upon ourselves, and we and our world are also under God’s just punishment because of this. But this is not going to last. God loves us dearly and has already suffered himself in order to bring us out of this suffering world. We have a choice to accept this gift from God, or to persist in our selfishness and remain under the punishment of God.
If you would like to look into this issue further, there is a very good book I can recommend, called If I were God, I’d end all the Pain by John Dickson. It is a very short book that goes through how different religions respond to suffering and explains why the christian message gives a satisfactory answer in light of this.
Hope this will help.
For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are called according to His purpose
Romans 8:28
