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Human Suffering
A dictionary defines suffering as the state of anguish or pain of one who suffers; the bearing of pain, injury or loss (The New International Webster�s Comprehensive Dictionary).
Suffering plagues our world. In its many forms it affects us physically, psychologically and emotionally. Whatever its manifestation, extended suffering can crush the body and spirit.
Suffering falls on the just and the unjust. It afflicts innocent victims. This uncomfortable fact makes it difficult for us to reconcile such obvious unfairness with the existence or fairness of an intelligent divine being.
Some are so disturbed by this state of affairs that they try to remedy the situation. They devote much of their energy to performing charitable works aimed at relieving undeserved suffering. They long to make the world a more just and equitable place to live.
But, commendable as these efforts are, good works don�t solve the world�s problems. It appears that our efforts to stop suffering at best only delay the inevitable. And nobody, it seems, has a believable explanation of why so much human misery persists.
What is the answer? Why is suffering so indiscriminate? Why isn�t it meted out only to those who deserve it? Why do the innocent suffer from actions and events over which they have no control and often cannot foresee?
Thinkers and philosophers have weighed in on the issue for years, but they have failed to provide a satisfying rational answer. Those in pain-including many reading this booklet-need answers to their questions.
The Bible view: Realistic and encouraging
Let�s examine the causes of suffering from a biblical perspective. God�s Word is the key source that can help us discover the reasons people suffer. The biblical view of life is realistic and encouraging. The Bible explains why pain has always been with us and why it will remain, at least for a time. At the same time the biblical view is also encouraging, especially when we expand our thinking to see life in terms of God�s plan and His purpose for mankind.
Jesus Christ tells us that His mission includes the offer to us of an abundant life (John 10:10). Psalm 16:11 tells us that �at [God�s] right hand are pleasures forevermore.� The Bible also reveals how God will lighten our burdens and how relief will one day come to the whole world. It also tells us of a time even further beyond when suffering will completely disappear.
But that is not the condition of humanity in our age. Jesus understood that suffering is an inextricable part of this physical life. He reminded His followers, �In this world you will have trouble� (John 16:33, New International Version).
Suffering strikes rich and poor, religious and irreligious, small and great. In this life virtually everyone will experience it. Disease and health problems seem to strike most people at some time or other.
In centuries past common diseases caused immense suffering. But in spite of advances in medical science that have greatly lengthened the average life span, we know we will still die. Rather than having our lives cut short by the killer diseases of earlier years, now many of us will expire at a greater age from such debilitating afflictions as cancer or heart disease. Many will lose their mental faculties long before their bodies wear out.
In poorer nations, suffering and death from diseases that are largely preventable still cut an enormous swath of misery and despair.
Barbarity is responsible for much mental and physical suffering. Nothing reduces man to brutal cruelty more quickly than war, and man is always fighting his fellowman. A few decades ago historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote that in 3,421 years of recorded history �only 268 have seen no war� (The Lessons of History, 1968, p. 81).
War causes not only deaths and crippling injuries on the battlefield but heartbreak, the destruction of families and poverty. It sows the seeds of enmities that last for centuries. Jesus prophesied that the period immediately before His return would see the greatest suffering of all time, much of it directly attributable to warfare (Matthew 24:6, 21-22).
After the terror of the wars of the first half of the 20th century and the worldwide disruption they engendered, mankind has enjoyed a moderate reprieve in the sense that wars since then have been regional rather than global. Yet nothing has changed in human nature that offers much enduring hope for the future.
Suffering exacts its greatest toll on people in poorer, backward countries. In many countries people struggle simply to have enough to eat. Current Events magazine observes that the hunger never ends: �Approximately 800 million people-most of them children-suffer from the effects of constant hunger,� and �35,000 children each day die as a result of conditions that can be linked to a poor diet.�
�... You have the poor with you always,� said Jesus (Matthew 26:11). This is depressingly true not only in pockets of poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America, but virtually everywhere. What makes the existence of the abject and underfed more tragic is that much of this kind of suffering is avoidable.
