Why Does God Allow Suffering? Part 2
One of my favorite things about life is the seasons. I live in a place that has very pronounced 4 seasons and I could never move away from it. My daughters and I watch out the window with excitement at the first snowfall of every year. We wonder in awe as a new flower pops out of the ground with the coming of spring. We enjoy feeling the hot sun rays hitting our skin in the summer. And we love to take long walks through the trees as they change into beautiful colors of orange, red, and yellow in the fall.
The world is constantly changing, whether for good or bad. The seasons themselves are not entirely wonderful. The winter eventually becomes so cold it can frostbite and permanently damage your skin. The spring can cause flash flooding and destroy homes and livelihoods. The summer can bring a drought or insect infestation that hurts farmers, thus limiting our food supply. And the fall has pumpkin spice everywhere. Not as life-changing as the others but still awful. I seriously can’t think of anything worse for fall; fall is the best. To me, it has no downside.
However, in the beginning, when God first created the world, He changed many things. He created a whole new creation from absolutely nothing. All He had to do was speak and it was so.
And once He saw that it was good and exactly how He wanted it to be, His desire was for it to never change but instead to thrive where it was. To have a relationship with those He created and enjoy forever together. It was such a perfect world that there was no need for change. It was paradise.
But because He created people who had free will and were able to make their own choices, they cursed His beautiful world to that of change. It introduced evil into the world which otherwise knew not what that was. It created suffering and hardship, tragedy and horror.
And many people wonder, why does God allow it to happen?
In my first blog post of this three-post series, God’s Character, we talked about how knowledge of God’s character matters to that question, and in this post, I will be continuing to answer the question by explaining how sin changed everything.
In The Beginning
Just by living our life, we know exactly what nature and people are like now, and it has become normal for us. We can’t even imagine a perfect world. We’ve never seen anything truly perfect so how do we know what it is? What would it have looked like? What would it have been like to live without stress and heartache? Let me show you a glimpse of the world God wanted us to live in.
Before God created the world time did not exist. There was no time to determine when things were done. There was no aging due to time passing. He was not and is not a slave to time. God lived forever and has always been and will always be. That is why His name is Yahweh, I am. Because in a nutshell, He is. He is everything and in everything.
We don’t know what God did before He created us. He has decided not to share that information with us at this time. So could there be aliens? Maybe. God could have created more life forms on different planets and didn’t find it important for us to know. We don’t know all the ways of God, nor the actions He has done. All we know is what He did at the beginning of our world, from our creation.
If you turn in the Bible and look through Genesis 1 you will see our creation story. What God did to create us and the world we know and love. He first created the heavens (the universe) and the earth but they were not special. They had no form and were empty and it was nothing but darkness. So God moved and looked upon it and He said the words, “Let there be light.”
Out of nowhere light appeared and He had created two distinct times, a night and a day. This was the first day of creation.
He then created something called the firmament. The firmament was an area between the earth and outer space that would make each section distinct and protected from the other. Its job was to separate the waters in the sky from the waters below the sky. In simple terms, it is what we see looking up. It is the clouds, the stars, and the sky in general. It is what we can see with our eyes.
The waters below are the ocean we can swim in and admire. In the beginning, God had created one large land mass and one ocean around it. There were not multiple continents or islands. All those were created during the flood. The one ocean was the water below.
Then above the sky, He created a separate layer of water. I had no idea, but space is actually full of water and ice. It wraps around the earth and throughout the galaxy in a protective layer against the sun. The sun boils and freezes the water, instead of completely destroying the earth. But that protection only lasts as long as God keeps the water in the air. If He decides to let the water run out, the earth will burn to a crisp. God hints that this will be the future, at some point, in II Peter 3:9-11,
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
This was all done on God’s 2nd day of creation.
On the 3rd day, God had grass, herbs, and trees grow and bring forth seeds. He had each seed only grow after its own kind and create edible delights upon the earth. He made them sustainable for all His future creations and beautiful to look upon.
Now, remember when God made the firmament or the sky? He separated space from the earth and the waters therein. Now on the 4th day, God created the stars to show us light at night. He also created the moon and the sun to give us a greater and a lesser night, thus not just creating a light and a dark, but also a daytime and a night time which we could use to rest and work.
On the 5th day, God created all of the animals that live in the seas and all of the birds that fly in the sky. Whereas on the 6th day, He created all of the animals that live on the land such as cattle, lizards, the dog family, the cat family, etc… He has now completely filled the earth in only two days. And just as the plants were to produce after their own kind so were the animals.
But He was not done. He also wanted to make someone in His own likeness. Someone that would be in charge of His unique creation, care for it, and be the leader over all of it. Not a leader to dominate His creation, but a loving one. God created a man and a woman. These were the first and only humans created by His personal touch and He made them for His perfect world. After every single day of creation, God said the words, “It is good.” He was pleased with His creations. They were without flaws and perfect as He designed.
A Perfect World
The life that Adam and Eve led was extremely different than anything we could ever imagine. When God finished forming their bodies and they opened their eyes for the first time, there was no fear. There was no one looking to hunt them down. There was no one lusting after their bodies with the ability to harm them. There was no crying or sorrow or physical discomfort. They were perfectly healthy and anxious for nothing.
They were at rest in God’s calming companionship. They were in the presence of the great God who had created them and the world they could see. God was gentle and kind. He spoke lovingly with them and taught them what they should know. He imparted His wisdom to them as He would His own children. They felt safe under God’s devoted care.
They had animals surrounding them that were full of intrigue to see someone in God’s likeness and eager to be in their presence. And I’m going to say something that might sound crazy, but I wonder if animals and humans might have been able to understand each other at the beginning. I wonder this because when we read about the woman Eve, it says she talked to a serpent. Yet, she wasn’t shocked at all! It was almost as if this was a daily and normal occurrence for her to be talking to an animal. Wouldn’t you think there would be more of a reaction if they couldn’t talk but just bleated and tweeted to Adam and Eve?
There were also no fights amongst creation because there were no predators. There was no bloodshed or need to kill to eat. Everyone was a vegetarian. They were thriving instead of simply surviving. Everything in creation was at peace with each other because of the utopia they lived in.
And not only were the animals and humans at peace with each other but even nature was blissfully impeccable. There were no natural disasters. There were no volcanoes, mountains, glaciers, deserts, or deep trenches. That will all come after the flood during the time of Noah.
The plants were not dying from disease and drought. They grew large and fruitful. There were no weeds, thistles, or invasive species. Locusts and worms were not overtaking the garden. It was easy for the ground to produce fruit and vegetation because it had the perfect environment. The land had a mist that would sweep over it every day and give it plenty of water. The temperature was always perfect and the humidity was just right.
God had even created a specific garden for them to live in. It was full of the most beautiful trees, full of more fruit than you could imagine. It had the perfect weather all the time and was the perfect environment for human bodies and the growing of plants. There were rivers of water that flowed throughout which watered the entire garden’s plants. It was full of precious gems and gold as well.
So as we’ve noticed, everything was without blemish. There was peace in every way. There was abundant food and drink, there was no fear of hurt or death, there were no arguments, stress, or hateful words spoken, and there was no need to be alert to impending disaster. Nothing was going to happen that would break or change their way of life. All the world had to do was live and enjoy the paradise God created. Ah, what a paradise it must have been!
The Gift of Free Will
You might be thinking, “How did we go from such an amazing world to this crappy place? Sure, God’s nature is still beautiful but it would have been amazing to live a perfect life. Why did it all go down the drain and now I have to live in a place that is no utopia?” Well, let me answer that for you. Sin changed everything. It’s as simple as that.
Throughout every creation that God makes He bestows upon them a gift. The gift of free will. He does not force us to follow Him, He doesn’t make us do anything we don’t want to do. We are not zombies mindlessly following Him in worship. That is not the type of devotion He wants. He wants us to truly love Him, from the bottom of our souls, with all of our beings. If we do not have free will then it is not true worship. And God is not interested in a fake or false relationship with us. He wants it all to be real and honest.
In the garden of Eden, He gave Adam and Eve free choice by creating a tree named “the knowledge of good and evil.” He allowed it to be in the garden so they had the choice to eat it and make the choice to not obey God and not live with Him. But He warned Adam that if they did eat the fruit from that one tree then their future would be that of death. They were given free will to choose which life they wanted.
And even the angels up in heaven were given free choice to do as they will. The angels were there and saw God create our beautiful cosmos. They saw the wonders and miracles of it all. One particular angel named Lucifer, one of God’s highest ranking angels, decided that he wanted to be god. It was not enough to praise the one doing these things, now he wanted to be the one worshipped by the angels and creation. He wanted the power and glory that only belonged to God.
We do not know all of the details about what happened between God and Lucifer, God has deemed it unimportant for us to know. But He has shared with us that Lucifer and the angels that followed him into rebellion were cast out of heaven and fell to earth as a lightning strike (Luke 10:18). They were no longer given their former titles but were now known as Satan and his demons.
In trying to become a god, he became the opposite of God. You see, Satan did not want to be like God in character. He did not want to be loving, good, merciful, just, or holy. He just wanted to be like him in dominance and control. He wanted people to praise him for his great acts of power. He desired self-worship. And in following self-worship he became conniving, a tempter, a liar, and someone willing to do anything to get what he wanted. There is no love in him, and where there is no love there is only hate and a desire for destruction.
But now he was no longer in heaven. He does not know everything like the true God, nor can he be everywhere at once like God. He did not want God’s will to succeed nor His future plans to come to fruition. He wanted to destroy every bit of creation that God loved and held close to His heart. He wanted to break God in the only way he could, through hurting His masterpiece. He wanted God to become alone and have everyone follow him instead.
The first place his eyes focused on were the ones created in God’s image, Adam and Eve.
The Beginning Of The End
Since Satan was a spiritual being he does not have a form or body that we can see. The only thing he can do is possess a person’s body and take it over as his own or appear in the likeness of an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14, Mark 9:20-29). He is all about deception. Although he is not an angel of God he likes to pretend to be one, he wears a mask and masquerades as something he is not. If he was to show his true self: a heinous, murdering, self-absorbed, evil dictator then no one would want to follow him.
He must first trick us into believing that he is beautiful and something to desire and then once he has us close enough, he destroys us.
There have been many people who have believed they have seen an angel, a ghost, a spirit, or God himself. But they, more than likely, have not. What they have seen is Satan and his demons fooling those who are weak in their faith or trying to tempt those that are strong. We know this because, since Eden, God has not shown his face to another human.
In the garden of Eden, Satan looked upon Adam and Eve and decided to cause them to leave God’s presence as well. I had always thought that Satan took on the form, or looked like a serpent. Now I don’t believe that’s the case because we know he can’t physically become something. I believe he did what he was capable of and used the most devious of God’s animals to deceive and speak through. And just like he did in the garden, he deceives us today in the same way.
He Causes Us To Doubt God Through Half-Truths
It’s amazing how a little bit of truth mixed in with a lie can be convincing. It is the greatest form of deceit. It is pretending to be something it is not (the truth), but it is never used, to tell the truth. It is only used to lie to people. To cause them to know one thing is true and then believe your word. I have told many half-truths in my teen years, and they were always used to get out of trouble, escape confrontation or get what I wanted.
When the serpent looked at Adam and Eve, he knew which one was closer to God, Adam. Adam had a longer time with God before Eve was created and they had many talks alone. Even the command to not eat of the one tree was only directly spoken to Adam. Adam told Eve at some point but her knowledge f the command was second-hand. It is easier to change the mind of someone that has not heard it straight from the source than someone who made eye contact and physically heard what the other had said.
He asked her, “Did God really say that you can’t eat from any tree in the garden?”
This was all a facade. He knew what God said. He knew that what he asked was incorrect. And the way Eve answers is not correct either. She says to the serpent, “Yes, we can eat of the trees in the garden but not that one. For if we eat it, or touch it, we will die.”
That is not what God said, not fully at least. She put words in God’s mouth, unintentionally, but it made an opening for Satan to take advantage of her. He tells her, “You will not die, but instead you will become like gods and know good from evil.”
He was calling God a liar.
But here Satan was not fully lying. He was telling a partial truth. They would know good and evil because God said that as well. But they would not be like gods for there is one God and He is a jealous God that would allow no other. They would not gain the power to create. They would not live forever. They would simply become their own entity, they would be separated from God.
He shows us in this conversation the next step he takes in our downfall.
He Tempts Us Through Beauty And Desires
When the serpent said this to Eve she then looked at the tree. She saw with her own eyes that it was, in fact, beautiful and tasty looking. She saw it not as the tree of death now, but as a tree of wisdom, a wisdom she did not possess but what she desired.
She had never desired to be a god before but didn’t it sound nice? Now she did not have to simply follow God, she could be just like Him.
She took off the fruit and held it in her hand. Curiously, she did not die. I’m sure now she thought the serpent was right and God was not telling the truth. Since she believed you had to touch the fruit in order to die and that had proven to be false. So wouldn’t the rest of God’s words be false as well?
She then proceeded to eat the fruit. She fell into his trap, his trap of lies.
You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
John 8:44
She then turned to her husband, Adam, and gave him the fruit. At this point, Adam should have refused to eat it. He knew with a surety what God’s words were, they were spoken to him after all. I Timothy 2:14 even says that Adam was not deceived like Eve was. Adam chose to disobey. But that is another post for a different day.
We then see what happens when their eyes are opened to both good and evil.
He Leaves Us In Our Sin To Face God Alone
I have heard that sin is all of the bad things that we do. That is one way to say it but I like to think of it as that which is contrary to God. When we sin it is always because we did something that God would not have done and what He does not wish for us to do. That is exactly what Adam and Eve did. They did what God told them not to do.
And Satan’s prerogative is to make us sin. To get us just far enough to his side that we are no longer on God’s. And then He leaves because his work is done. He has accomplished his goal and really doesn’t care about us after that.
Once they ate of the fruit the Bible says their eyes were opened, opened in the sense that they didn’t just understand good. They also understood and desired evil. And of course, the serpent(Satan) was nowhere to be found. But he is also no longer noticed by Adam and Eve because now they are focused on their new surroundings. They are filled with fear for the first time and the realization of what they had done. They look at themselves and realize that they are naked and are filled with shame. Why did they need to be ashamed? God made them this way. It was perfection.
Their mindset changed. Their behavior changed. Their desires and motives and future all changed at that moment, and they knew it. They knew that God was aware of it too. They knew that God had seen what they had done so they tried to hide from him. They were afraid of Him. What had He done? Their sin caused them to fear. Their knowledge of their sin caused them to fear.
What I believe is the saddest part of all this is that they had forgotten who God was. He was their creator, how could He not see where they were hiding? Did they really think He did not have the ability to find them? And what were they afraid of? Had God ever hurt them before? Did He ever oppress them or harm them in anyway?
They knew that they were separated from Him. And they could feel down to their soul that it was the way it needed to be. They couldn’t be in God’s presence. Their sin had stained them from perfection. Their sin had changed them.
No longer were they filled with God’s peace and enjoying a stress-free life. They were completely disconnected from God and the world that He had created for them. They had created their own existence in a corrupt world filled with the knowledge of evil and were under the dominion of the king of darkness that now roamed and dominated the earth. There is much more to this story but this is the beginning of sin, disobedience to God, and the bad things He is not, in our human race. Everything after that is not what it once was. Sin changed everything.
“Be sober, be vigiliant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” I Peter 5:8
Sin Changed The Perfect World
Now that evil had been unleashed into this perfect world it was no longer perfect. Sin tainted every part of the creation God had made. No longer was everyone and everything in harmony with each other and under God’s perfect reign. There was a separation from God that allowed each to be their own selfish god, to be in charge of their own life and the ability to hurt others or do good.
Mankind and His Relationship to God
All of mankind became in bondage to sin. Each child that Adam and Eve would have would be born with sin already possessing their body. No one would know of God’s perfect creation except these two. They would never know paradise on earth. They wouldn’t remember the one who created them, they wouldn’t care about where they came from or what they could have had. No longer were they in the light, they were in darkness, clawing their way around. Trying to figure out which way to go. They would always be unconsciously searching for something but they wouldn’t know what.
Without God there was no moral wisdom, we did whatever we wanted to and deemed it right. There became a lawlessness, a disregard for God’s laws (I John 3:4). We created our own imperfect laws, full of selfishness and a lack of morals. It created a state of disorder, a place of chaos.
We not only became victims of other people’s sins but we, ourselves, harmed others by the sins that we did. We did not simply receive the hurt, we also dished it out.
With God’s perfect world, we were free in our hearts, minds, and souls. But now our hearts and minds desired to do evil. We desired to be important, to be praised, and to be given every desire.
Before sin, it was almost like when we were children. We didn’t have responsibilities or worries. We simply lived, played, and enjoyed life. We didn’t have a care in the world. We were free. There was an innocence about us. But once we sinned we became an adult, we had a knowledge of what the world was like. We knew the troubles and fears that could happen due to our own life experiences. We felt alone, scared, and unsure of the future. We had no power over our future. We were in bondage to a life without God.
This is because we were now in Satan’s domain. Once the world became wicked, he became its master. God had to remove His presence from the wickedness that now inhibited His creation. However, God did not abandon us. He still loved us and created a way for us to remove the sin from our hearts because He still desired to be with us, but He cannot be around sin. We must take the steps to come back to Him.
A wicked heart is a heart without God in it. And God cannot be in wickedness so the only way to get back with God is to remove the sin. The only way to remove the sin was for a blood sacrifice. But how could you find enough blood to cover the sins of all people for all time? We could only do this through Jesus Christ (I John 3:8). He came to earth to destroy the works of the devil.
Jesus is God’s son, but is also God. He took on the form of a man, through an actual birth, many years ago. He became man but remained God. As a man he had blood in his body, and as God his blood would never run out. It could cover the sins of all people for all time. He sacrificed his life for us. He died for us. He shed his blood to bring us back to God.
Jesus did it willingly because he wanted us to be free from our sin. He wanted us to come back to God and the perfect heaven He had created for us. He gave us this gift with no strings attached. All we have to do is ask him to rid our hearts of their sin. To ask him to bring us back to God and be in God’s family again like we were in the beginning. To be able to, after death, be in His perfect world again, with Him as our God.
We must take the first step. God has already given us the stairs. We just have to trust Him and follow.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:7
The Animals
The animals were not excused from the taint of sin. Now they began to kill and hunt each other. They desired the other’s flesh to eat. This was the start of predators and prey. Some even became cannibals. They had to fight for survival and even fight against their own kind to care for their little ones. Have you ever noticed that a momma cat hides when she gives birth? It is to hide them from the males because the male cat kills their young. Even if it’s not their kittens. Any tomcat might kill a random litter they find. It doesn’t always happen, but it can and does.
They also had the same fears and evil nature now as we did. They would live a life hiding from their enemies. They would have to struggle to survive and make it against a world trying to destroy them. They would desire to harm another for their own benefit. I have seen my neighbor’s duck seriously try to drown his other pet duck just because it wanted to swim in their pool alone. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing, a selfish duck.
No longer were they friends with mankind, no longer did they look to us as their caregivers. We were something to be feared, something not to be trusted. To be fair, it was mankind that ruined their lives.
The Earth
The earth began to groan under the weight of evil. Thistles and vicious weeds began to take over the beautiful garden and the rest of the dirt. It was no longer easy for food to grow. Mankind had to toil to get sustenance. The dirt became hard, the seeds became infertile. We had to provide our own water to the garden and keep the animals from eating the plants we worked hard to grow.
After the flood, it became even worse. The earth opened up to let massive amounts of water out. It quickly changed everything and caused the land to break apart into the continents we now have today. It created volcanoes, mountains, deep trenches, and layers in the ocean. It still affects us today by causing earthquakes. There was nothing wrong with the earth’s plates and core before the flood. Now there is constant tension and smacking of the plates together causing natural disasters.
Water from the heavens above also fell causing our atmosphere to change. No longer did we have as much protection from the sun. No longer would a mist continuously be upon the earth to give it all the water the plants needed. Now they needed rain or bodies of water to survive, without it they became desert, a wasteland.
The weather became extreme. We now see tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis, landslides, thunderstorms, sinkholes, and blizzards. They became so powerful that they can kill everything in their path. They show no mercy to those stuck in its clutches.
But we also harm the planet too. I am not an advocate for global warming or a pollution activist. But I do believe we are not taking care of the earth like God had asked us to. We care more about our own convenience, hygiene, and comfort above all else, and it shows in our oceans and landfills.
There are so many abandoned cities around the world that become nothing but a garbage heap. We have thrown litter and trash everywhere. We are creating artificial materials that cannot be destroyed. We buy and create too much useless crap. We don’t take care of what we have and instead just buy a different one. We are not being responsible. We are not being practical. We are not exhibiting self-control. We are not thinking about the consequences, only ourselves.
Conclusion
God allows suffering because we allow and create suffering. There is not a single person in the world that has not hurt someone, even if it was unintentional. My newborn has hurt me. Sounds stupid but it’s true. Your child has probably been mean to another child. The government hurts a group of people when creating laws to help other people. Some churches hurt people by not following the law and turning over sex offenses among their members.
God is giving us what we want. He is allowing us to have free will. But He knows it is a spiritual battle we are facing, not a physical one. He knows it is not something we can face without Him.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12
But in order to stop suffering, we must stop following our own desires. We must stop being our own gods and follow the one true God. We must see sin for what it is, sin. We must come to the realization that it is not a good or a beautiful thing or to be desired. It is pain, it is hardship and it causes suffering. Then and only then, can we begin to heal. We will never be perfect, but we can make the world a better place.
But it all starts with us. Choosing to change ourselves first. As I said before, not all change is bad. It can sometimes be for good.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I John 1:8-9
