Why is suffering a problem for christians

Suffering can never be a stimulant for goodness in a society that is increasingly concerned about individual comfort and happiness over virtue and faithfulness. There is no room for it as such. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Translation: suffering is void of any meaning. Perhaps this is a source of relief for some people. It was for Susan Jacoby, a New York Times writer who found solace in the fact that her disbelief in God freed her from the particular difficult task of squaring away a benevolent deity and a shivering homeless person.

It also excludes the countless comforts and joys that accompany Christianity, like eternal hope and ultimate justice. For Jacoby and the millions of others who hold a similar worldview, life is simply unjust. Their only choice is to swallow the pill and move forward. This type of dispassionate, secular analysis completely contradicts most historical and current outlooks on suffering, which view it as an opportunity to triumph, a test to overcome, or a punishment to learn from.

Even today, the overwhelming majority of cultures around the world attribute evil to unseen forces. However, contemporary Western secularism denies such a spiritual dimension. Unlike traditions that uphold contemporary cultures, from Confucianism to Zoroastrianism to Christianity, the secular perspective cannot comprehend the inveterateness of human misery.

This is why many sufferers turn to religion in the grip of pain, for the secular mindset offers no tenable or real help in alleviating the pangs of calamity. According to the Harvard professor, mankind is marching merrily onward to the tune of the Enlightenment. Through mountains of data and graphs, Pinker assiduously demonstrates how things are looking up. His deafening triumphalism drowns out the cries of the individual.

No matter what technology is created, legislature passed, or wars won, the powers of evil will always regroup and strike again. The deepest pits of despair can only be filled with one thing. It is something that secularism feigns to possess but fails to deliver, especially in times of extreme and imminent grief—hope.

Although widely avoided because of its grim nature, this is the news that every secular atheist must bear to the sufferer. Your little, short life is all that there is. You must dig within yourself to muster up the strength to discover meaning and purpose. You are the captain of your soul and must navigate the storms of this life. If you crash, then you must repair your shattered vessel and set sail again until you finally sink to oblivion. All hope resides within your own willpower and circumstances.

What a truly depressing message to the person who actually reflects on the depth of shortcomings, imperfections, and inadequacies within himself—for the person who feels as if she has nothing to offer or save herself with? Furthermore, what disheartening news to the widow and the orphan, to the dying and the marginalized? Christianity concedes that the issue of suffering will never be entirely resolved by human hands, which is why it turns to supernatural resources for help—the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of his everlasting dominion.

This is the hope that one day all agony will cease. Until then, believers walk in a personal relationship with their savior, knowing his wisdom and fortitude will guide them through present trials and eventually into a peace and joy that makes up for and far exceeds all previous pain. Fyodor Dostoevsky understood this better than most:. Christianity is sensational in its take on suffering, being the only religion that instructs its followers to embrace it.

The Bible is filled with teachings and examples of this counter-cultural approach. The Book of James exhorts Christians to be joyful for their trials. Job blessed God even though the Lord had allowed everything—his family, wealth, livestock—to be stripped from him.

These anecdotes serve as evidence to the fact that Christianity sufficiently provides sufferers with endurance to face the how question. Why does this seemingly backward mindset help a sufferer become a stronger and more complete individual? The fearless and otherworldly ways in which its martyrs approached death emboldened bystanders and outsiders to pursue Christ.

Jesus has suffered in ways that go beyond anything we can imagine. He did this to give us life, so that the evils we face need not absorb and overwhelm us. Suffering does not have to have the last word in our lives. God has not left us alone in our suffering. If we turn to Him, there is strength we never thought we had. There is comfort we never thought was possible. And there is hope for today and tomorrow.

Well, one day he will. Evil was defeated on that first Easter, and one day it will be removed altogether. How do you fix a story that is broken? We all have our stories. Some of them seem beyond fixing. The Christian faith says you fix a broken story by embedding it in a much bigger story in which good wins, and evil loses.

One day there will be justice. One day all suffering will end. One day there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. This is an extraordinary description of the tenderness of God and of his plans to put right all the wrongs in this world. Some Christians therefore wonder why he did not create the universe without this potential for evil and suffering.

This suggests that, because evil and suffering clearly exist in the world, either God does not exist or he cannot be omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. Some religious people find that when they experience evil and suffering, it can present a challenge to their faith.

They may reject religion as a result. What is the problem with evil and suffering for Christians? Christians believe in an omnipotent and omniscient God, so some find it difficult to understand why evil exists in the world when God has the power and knowledge to prevent it.

The problem of evil and suffering Various types of evil and suffering are evident in the world.