Suffering can bring glory to God.. but can't there be another way?

[marcosgpro]

Hello fellow believers. I am a true believer in Christ and the bible. I am not looking for a debate. I just want some help with dealing with this issue. I am struggling with my faith because I just have a hard time accepting God's way of using suffering to bring us towards him. I honestly believe that God's way of saying that he uses suffering for good and to bring glory to him is a cop out and selfish. I'm not trying to offend anyone or God, I am really trying not to . but since God gave me reasoning and logical thinking , then I am using it to make sense of the world and so far , logically speaking this is the only way I see it. Thankfully, I haven't personally went through terrible tragedies like having cancer, an accident, got shot, starved, got abused, etc.. I am not being ungrateful at all. I actually feel blessed and I thank God for all of that. I see good things in the world, I see people making it thru trials with Jesus. I am aware of good things.
I know in the bible, that Jesus says he will provide peace and comfort to those who seek him, to not worry about tomorrow because he loves us so much. If we seek the kingdom of God first, everything else will be provided. (matthew 6:33). However, I feel overwhelm by all the negativity , and tragedies of the world. it affects my heart. what about the people born in North Korea,or in Syria? they never asked to be born, they suffer through immense pain, and most of them just die in suffering. they never make it "thru" their trials. what lesson have they learned through that? how does that bring glory to God? and I thought God says he will help anyone through their trials? . or even people in living 1st world countries like America, they still get abused by police, gang members , get raped, have an abusive relationship, the government imprisons someone to prison for life when they are actually innocent. everyone is not trying enough to fix this. everyone who are like me, who don't go thru these things, are lucky enough to have a job, education, money good health , and go on their way of life like everything is okay. I don't want to be like those people.
I am sick of all these mass shootings increasing where there seems to be no solution or end to all of this. let's face it: the world is extremely ugly. I want to be caring. but so far, is just being a burden, because I know no matter what, I have to accept the world how it is and it always been like this for thousands of years. no one has a true answer. and I like to be a caring person and a Christian. sure maybe all of this brings glory to God. but why put us in this disgusting world in the first place? I never asked to be born here and now I have to earn my way to God and hopefully endure the suffering to "learn" a valuable lesson. how do I make sense of all this ? how can I tell a kid who is suffering all his life with cancer and only have 4 more years to live? "sorry kid. God is either just using you for his glory, or is just part of life and you just have no choice but to accept this thruth. there's no other way. but you will make it through. " how can they accept that? where's the value in all this?

I am not expecting an answer. this is more of me expressing my frustration and endless cycle of praying to God and trying to be closer to him , trusting him , putting more faith in him, and yet feeling confused, depressed because I am finding a real hard time accepting the way God works. does anyone feel this way? what are your thoughts? please pray for me . and please forgive me if I offended anyone. I am just seeking comfort and answers. to summarize these issues into questions: 1) where's the value for people who don't make it through trials? suffer all their lives and just die.. 2) do you believe it is a cop out that suffering brings glory to God and is used for good? so we have no other choice but to go through it? and accept it? do I have to have this mentality that one day I have to suffer through something because Jesus suffer as well? I know Jesus forgives my sins. and I am forver grateful for that. but do I deserve to suffer? I do I have to earn it by going through trials? if I don't, then is it a bad idea to just avoid all of this together?
3) does God help anyone go through their trials? or only people lucky enough to learn about Jesus?
4) is God mad at me for thinking about all of this? thanks.

 

[faroukfarouk]

Isaiah 48.10 says: "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction".

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

1) if you refer to Christians, then heaven awaits. God knows how much we suffer and he suffers with us. Jesus cried when he saw the burial procession just saying. No one, not God nor man gains from evil and suffering. God's ready to make it all up in heaven.

Every day he takes home souls to comfort forever. It's no mistake God is good.

2) This is a hard one. We'll all die sometime and many does so through pain and suffering. The problem is often referred to as the problem of evil. Hmm...
One may once again think about the reward awaiting in heaven, but I'm afraid I'll kill myself if I ever suffer to much...
It's in fact something which plagues my quite a bit to be honest. I'm very scared of how God thinks about me if I ever did leave the world like that.
Will I end up in hell for breaking under extreme circumstances or will God in his mercy understand me to some extent?

(This is why I pray daily for a sudden and unexpected death over cancer and stuff. Preferably Heart attack etc.)


3) No, God hates sin even more than we do. I believe he expects us to hate it too. Having thoughts and asking questions is part of our intellect, a intellect given us by God to begin with.

---------------

2) is the hardest one to me to be honest.

 

[Light of the East]

What you appear to be asking about is the ages old question of theodicy - where is God in suffering and if He allows suffering, is He a good God? Men and women have struggled with this question for centuries, some of them quite deeply. There is no pat answer. Everyone looks at this from a different perspective. I can only offer some thoughts, but nothing that is a real, true answer.

1. Suffering can first of all be a natural consequence of our decisions. When I was a fool, back in my sinful teenage and early twenties years, I chose to follow sin. These choices led me into a lot of pain, sorrow, and suffering, yet as all fools do, I kept right on choosing sin for the momentary pleasure it gave me. Was it God's fault that I overdosed on drugs? Was it God's fault that I caught sexually transmitted diseases? Was it God's fault that I woke up with a throbbing headache and miserable hangover? Some suffering cannot be blamed on God, but on our freewill choice to do that which He has warned us is not good for us.

2. Suffering may be the way that God keeps our eyes on heaven. This life is not the true life. It is an illusion of truth. We live in a world that we think is good and normal and desirable. People who have life good (the rich, the powerful) don't think about heaven. They have their heaven here, so they don't think about God or about loving Him. The good things of life become idols which they cling to, ignoring the God who loves them and desires their love in return.

3. Suffering in places like the Middle East, or like the Christians of the first century, who lived day by day in concern that they would be rounded up and fed to the lions, focuses your thoughts on death. The monks of many centuries ago would often keep a real human skull in their cell to remind them of the nearness of death and how short life it. Too much pleasure, too much good stuff in life (all the "toys" of life we have in rich countries) can turn our thoughts away from being ever-vigilant and ever ready to meet death in a state of peace with God. I can't imagine what it is like to be in the Middle East at this time, but I am sure that the Christians over there are very aware of death and make sure they are in a state of friendship with God by means of partaking of the Sacraments.

4. This one I don't understand fully, but I will mention it. The Church teaches that our suffering can have value for others. By accepting our suffering and offering it back to God as a sacrifice, we join that suffering to the Cross of Christ, filling up that which is lacking in the suffering of Christ. (I can't find the verse in which St. Paul said that, but it is in the Bible). This seems odd to the Western Protestant ears, and the first time I read it, it was like a slap in the face, but somehow our suffering completes the work of Christ on the Cross. In short, there is something salvific, according to St. Paul, in the suffering we "offer up" to the Cross of Christ.

Oh, I found it......Colossians 1:24 I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church,

That is hard for the Western mind to accept in the way that Christ's sacrifice has been presented as full payment of a legal debt. The Eastern Church does not recognize this particularly Anselmian and Augustinian approach to salvation. Somehow, St. Paul says, our suffering is completing the work of Christ. That is hard to understand, and perhaps harder to accept. We want life to be good....no, we want it to be heaven on earth because we don't understand that this life is not heaven. It is still under the effects of Adam's sin.

One last thing....I write these things, but I myself often have problems with saying "Where is God?" in doubt and fear. Where is God when little Alfie is being murdered by heartless savages in Great Britain pretending to be doctors when they shouldn't be allowed near a sick person? Where is God when Islamic butchers run wild and kill the innocent in the Middle East? Where is God when people are cheated out of their life savings, when crooks and thieves are allowed to run our country, when the wicked hold the upper hand, when no one will close down Planned Parenthood? Why does God not intervene in a spectacular manner?

It is all too easy for me to imagine what I would do if I were God. I would smite the doctors trying to kill little Alfie with paralysis and pestilence. I would make the bombs of the Islamists go off early and fulfill their desire for suicide without having any innocent people killed. I would......this, that, the other.

But I am not God.

I do not see as He sees. I do not understand everything that ever will happen. I am a poor, sinful speck of dust in a universe so immense it boggles the mind to think of it. How dare I tell God what is right? Perhaps there is a whole plan playing itself out that in the end will result in more good than I could possibly imagine, something so beyond my comprehension that if I were to see it, my mind would not be able to comprehend it. Perhaps suffering is something so miniscule in the great scheme of things (although when we are going through it, it certainly does not seem miniscule) that in heaven we will look back on it and despise it as trivial. The many milenia of martyrs for the true faith are all in heaven now, wearing their martyr's crowns and enjoying the special privileges of their faithfulness to Christ, even unto the point of death. Do you think that a one of them regrets now having gone through the suffering they endured?

I will be the first to admit that I do not do suffering well. I don't like it, and I don't like seeing others suffering. As I said, if I were God, I would walk through every hospital I could find and empty them all out. Little Alfie would walk out of that whorehouse in London that calls itself a hospital. There would be no cancer, no COPD, no spina bifida. There would be no poor having their faces ground under the boot heels of the rich. Every man who raised his hand to brutally beat or sexually molest a child would suddenly disappear in a flash of lightning with howls of anguish.

But there would also be no saints who shine like the sun for exercising their faith through suffering. There would be no people who, after lying in a hospital bed thinking about death, decided to repent, call for a priest, and ask for the Sacrament of Confession. There would be no deathbed repentance similar to the thief on the cross. There would be no examples for the rest of us that God is sufficient in our suffering, that He is faithful to those who love and call upon Him, and that the next world is worth the small price we pay here and now. There would be no examples of courage to inspire us to great deeds of moral value.

I can do two things with the suffering I see.....it can either cause me despair, or it can cause me to seek to say with Lot "Yea, though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him."

I am not there yet, but I aspire to someday say the latter with all my heart.

 

[marcosgpro]

Fellow brothers and sisters. Thank you for you advice and thoughts. I still don't know how to approach all of this. but this help comfort me somewhat. I at least can be thankful that all of this is all temporary. I am nothing but a grain in the sand of life, a short wind passing through in a few seconds. maybe it is a good thing that God is opening my heart to this. It is the only best way I have to see it in order to endure through life. I will never be able to find the answer for every bad situation, to be explain this to myself or others going through trials, or even I do find answers, only God will provide the best answer. I feel detach to the world now. but in a good way, God has opened my eyes to realize that this is really temporary , the good and the bad. we are just passing through life to go to our final destination and that is hopefully Heaven. A lot of people (including Christians) mostly think about college, relationships and their career, which is not bad at all, God want us to be responsible and wise while thinking about our life. but it becomes a real issue if we don't put God first in our minds. I learn to change my way of thinking and putting God first more because that is the main goal of life. everything in life is temporary , however, what I am seeking is ever lasting life.

 

[mdamon0501]

I wouldn't allow your feelings towards suffering to cloud God. I believe now, that while God has multiple ways in which he draws us towards him, that suffering can be one of the most powerful, and permanent ways in which he engages our hearts.

From my time in the scripture, I find that it speaks directly to my own experience. I see God working within the hearts of men, and in order to do so, this does require some of us to suffer. I believe one can make the distinction between wrath and suffering in the Bible, one is given for rebellion against him, but on the other hand all of the Apostles suffered for their faith. Suffering in my opinion is not exclusively negative.

I like the description in Acts chapter 9. I like the way the Bible describes the event, because I think it mimics quite closely the same sudden shock of my own experience.

Acts 9:4

and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"

That image of a man falling to the ground is repeated multiple times in the Bible, and the use of those words makes complete sense to me. For after all that I had gone through, with the death of prominent figures in my life, the obliteration of all (what I would consider now vain) dreams, and an oppressive weight upon my shoulders as I tried to find any meaning by which I could pick up the pieces again. A day came, where I was sitting at my desk inside my home.

It was like any of the other days of that two to three year period when all that had happened had crushed my spirit in totality. I had no motivation to do anything. It may very well have been multiple days since I had taken a shower, and I would only leave the safety of my home to go get food. I had for a long time put upon my shoulders the heavy amounts of blame which one could expect from defining (at the time) my circumstances from a worldly point of view.

The room itself was trashed from wall to wall. Sitting there I felt lifeless. It was a solitary numbness which had been chronic for the better part of five years, as my entire life had been collapsing in around me. An emptiness which I can only describe as thirst, where there is no water.

"Here I am," I used to say to myself, "A twenty-five year old man, fallen from the heights of success back to the poor house."

The previous night I had experienced a strange dream which I had been meditating on that day, and then I suddenly glanced over in the corner to the pile of books which I had on top of a tool chest. On the very bottom, buried beneath a host of other material, was my Bible. I had not opened the cover of the Scripture in nearly a decade, from the time of the death of my Step Father. I cannot say particularly what it was that possessed me that day to open it, but I did. Interestingly, the Scripture helped me come to terms with the dream I had just had, and just after noontime, it was as if all the weight of everything that had happened up until this moment, was lifted off my shoulders. Not temporarily as I had experienced it in the past, but totally, and for good. I have searched, and perhaps still am searching for the words to describe the totality of the moment, but Acts 9:4, and the Bibles repeated description of "falling to the ground" before God, is perhaps the best words I have found to relate to it.

I would have never imagined that during that dark, and empty time that I would ever be reading my Bible sometimes up to five hours a day, as I am now. Nor that I would be back in the pews of a church, or talking with my friends about God whenever the conversation warranted it. Nevertheless, there it is.

When I think about the broader scope of human suffering, I find no historical evidence which suggests that human suffering is getting worse. In-fact, I think the vast amount of evidence is quite to the contrary. Certainly the capacity for human suffering is much greater when its machinations are turned against us, I think that truth can be easily seen in the absolute devastation that men like Adolf Hitler enacted upon the world, but I constantly look back at Genesis to see those words which I love so much when I am pondering such dark themes.

For me, it was made evidently clear from the earliest pages of Scripture that Gods world is not evil, or bad in any way. For each creation which God made he saw was Good, and at the very end of Genesis Chapter 1, we had the statement:

Genesis 1:31

God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.

I do not believe that this verse is in some way invalidated by the story of Adam and Eve in the following sections. If we believe that all the words of the Scripture are true and infallible, then even the fall of man cannot do away with the fact that Gods creation is Very Good, not matter how dark it seems at any given time.

God Bless!

 

[Radagast]

let's face it: the world is extremely ugly

The ugliness in the world is the result of sin.

The solution to sin is Jesus.

now I have to earn my way to God

That is not what Christianity teaches.

 

[Radagast]

Here, by the way, is a Christian book I would recommend:

 

[longwait]

Hello fellow believers. I am a true believer in Christ and the bible. I am not looking for a debate. I just want some help with dealing with this issue. I am struggling with my faith because I just have a hard time accepting God's way of using suffering to bring us towards him. I honestly believe that God's way of saying that he uses suffering for good and to bring glory to him is a cop out and selfish. I'm not trying to offend anyone or God, I am really trying not to . but since God gave me reasoning and logical thinking , then I am using it to make sense of the world and so far , logically speaking this is the only way I see it. Thankfully, I haven't personally went through terrible tragedies like having cancer, an accident, got shot, starved, got abused, etc.. I am not being ungrateful at all. I actually feel blessed and I thank God for all of that. I see good things in the world, I see people making it thru trials with Jesus. I am aware of good things.
I know in the bible, that Jesus says he will provide peace and comfort to those who seek him, to not worry about tomorrow because he loves us so much. If we seek the kingdom of God first, everything else will be provided. (matthew 6:33). However, I feel overwhelm by all the negativity , and tragedies of the world. it affects my heart. what about the people born in North Korea,or in Syria? they never asked to be born, they suffer through immense pain, and most of them just die in suffering. they never make it "thru" their trials. what lesson have they learned through that? how does that bring glory to God? and I thought God says he will help anyone through their trials? . or even people in living 1st world countries like America, they still get abused by police, gang members , get raped, have an abusive relationship, the government imprisons someone to prison for life when they are actually innocent. everyone is not trying enough to fix this. everyone who are like me, who don't go thru these things, are lucky enough to have a job, education, money good health , and go on their way of life like everything is okay. I don't want to be like those people.
I am sick of all these mass shootings increasing where there seems to be no solution or end to all of this. let's face it: the world is extremely ugly. I want to be caring. but so far, is just being a burden, because I know no matter what, I have to accept the world how it is and it always been like this for thousands of years. no one has a true answer. and I like to be a caring person and a Christian. sure maybe all of this brings glory to God. but why put us in this disgusting world in the first place? I never asked to be born here and now I have to earn my way to God and hopefully endure the suffering to "learn" a valuable lesson. how do I make sense of all this ? how can I tell a kid who is suffering all his life with cancer and only have 4 more years to live? "sorry kid. God is either just using you for his glory, or is just part of life and you just have no choice but to accept this thruth. there's no other way. but you will make it through. " how can they accept that? where's the value in all this?

I am not expecting an answer. this is more of me expressing my frustration and endless cycle of praying to God and trying to be closer to him , trusting him , putting more faith in him, and yet feeling confused, depressed because I am finding a real hard time accepting the way God works. does anyone feel this way? what are your thoughts? please pray for me . and please forgive me if I offended anyone. I am just seeking comfort and answers. to summarize these issues into questions: 1) where's the value for people who don't make it through trials? suffer all their lives and just die.. 2) do you believe it is a cop out that suffering brings glory to God and is used for good? so we have no other choice but to go through it? and accept it? do I have to have this mentality that one day I have to suffer through something because Jesus suffer as well? I know Jesus forgives my sins. and I am forver grateful for that. but do I deserve to suffer? I do I have to earn it by going through trials? if I don't, then is it a bad idea to just avoid all of this together?
3) does God help anyone go through their trials? or only people lucky enough to learn about Jesus?
4) is God mad at me for thinking about all of this? thanks.

We should be grateful that God did not think like us. "Why do I have to suffer so brutally on the cross inorder to save them all?"

 

[marcosgpro]

We should be grateful that God did not think like us. "Why do I have to suffer so brutally on the cross in order to save them all?"

I am. However, let's be honest it does not make the physical, emotional pain that anybody goes through any easier. It doesn't make me gladly accept any future upcoming brutal trails that I have to go thru for his purpose. it doesn't really make innocent children in Africa, Syria in war life any easier, they won't understand what was their purpose for all the pain if they died so young before even hearing the Gospel. And if they did I don't know how will they accept the word of God while they going thru so much misery. It's easier to talk about misery when we on a computer and talking about this. But try to picture being in that place of misery for days, and years and is really easier said than done. I know God won't give me a trial that I won't be able to handle, but he may also give me a trial that I won't be able to handle for another purpose, possibly to rely on him more. but I love to not go thru any brutal pain (surgery, accident, anxiety attack, etc.) and still be obedient to him without having to bear so much misery for such amount of time. all I can do now is accept how the world it is, and try to remain positive and faithful for as long as I can bear. hopefully, God will give me strength and peace through any incoming trials that I and any loved ones will face. it's just really hard to accept this.