Digging Deeper into God's Character and Nature
More than one person has commented about the title of my book “Why God Wills You to Suffer.”
“Don’t you mean Why God Allows You to Suffer?” they ask. When I answer, “No.” I usually get a look of resistant consternation.
After a little conversation I usually determine the reason for their
unspoken rejection of my title and why they think Will should be
replaced properly to Allow is because they cannot conceive of God
Willing suffering. And the reason they believe that is because they have
been steeped in a point of view that places man’s exercise of free will
on a par with God’s Sovereignty.
The allowance-reasoning goes something like this:
God gave man free will to choose God or reject God. In rejecting God,
man chooses to go his own way. In going his own way man suffers the
consequences of his actions, both individually and universally. God
steps back, in a sense, and allows the results of man’s decision(s) to
manifest itself/themselves.
Compounding this is the fact that all of creation is under a curse, which itself groans Romans 8:22;
awaiting the day when the curse is lifted by the ultimate intervention
of God Himself. This implies that God is standing at a distance,
awaiting that day.
Thus the reasoning continues, God allows suffering, but is not a part
of suffering; nor is suffering an attribute of God. It is not God’s
Will that man should suffer. God only wants the best for man and
suffering is not part of that Will. But man chose to rebel against God
and the result of God’s justice is, in part, an imputation of suffering
upon the world. Suffering is the result of man’s sin, which is a result
of man’s exercise of his free will to rebel against God. Suffering
therefore has multiplied as much as man’s rebellion and sin has
multiplied.
That’s the “why God allows suffering” in a nutshell and it
makes sense to a lot of people. It makes sense because when people try
to match the infinite goodness of a loving God with the incomprehensible
level of suffering they see in the world –especially the suffering of
innocent children, or suffering as a result of catastrophic events –they
can’t reconcile the two. And it also “fits” because by cherry-picking
certain Scriptures, you can build a legitimate case for the position.
Add all this together and we have a doctrine of Deist-like
construction, where God winds-up the Universe like a big toy and lets it
go, watching it run-down with only limited interference [via an
occasional miracle, just to prove He is still around.]
But the whole “allowing” thing breaks down under further examination.
The first area is the notion of the ubiquity of God’s Omnipotence. Is
God not all powerful? Is not God all knowing? Are not all things under
His control? Are not all things held together by the Word of His Power Colossians 1:17?
If so, then this notion of Deism, even a partial-Deism, “winding up and
standing back” is nonsense. God is either in control or not.
The second area of concern is that of God’s Justice.
I once heard a woman whose son had been severely injured in a car
accident with a drunk driver ask: “So…why does my son have to suffer for
the free-willed actions of the drunk driver?” Good question.
Likewise,
in my book I recount the suffering of “Robert” who lost his beloved wife
to cancer. Why would a loving God ‘allow’ her –and her entire family –
to suffer the pain, the agony, the loss? Who’s sin was it that caused
the cascade-effect of this tapestry of suffering that God allows? Was it
Robert’s, the grandkid’s, his boss’, the neighbor’s down the street, or
do we have to go all the way back and blame Adam and Eve?
Theologians, pastors and lay people who subscribe to the
allowing-doctrine would say, yes, you do have to go back to Adam and
Eve. They sinned and we suffer, end of story.
Okay, let’s go with that and follow a little imaginary Q&A:
- Q: How is it just and fair to impute suffering upon the descendants of Adam and Eve, when it is they and they alone who were the rebels?
- [Answer: because the sin-nature has been inherited by mankind through Adam and Eve Romans 7-8.]
- Q: Okay, let’s go with that. Who then created man with a capacity to inherit the sin-nature and programmed it into all humanity?
- [Answer: God, since God created all things.]
- Q: Okay, then there is no Deism at play here, right? God, being totally Just, in charge, and the Maker and Designer of the Rules could not be Just and Good if He “allowed” man to do anything outside of God’s scope of control, because there is nothing outside of God’s control. Right?
- [Answer: No…Oh, wait… Well, yes, right.]
- Q: Therefore, the notion that God allows man to suffer is a non sequitur. Given the nature, the capacity, the purity, and the power of the Almighty God, it does not follow that there is anything outside of God’s control and therefore His Will, correct?
- [Answer: Correct. But then you are saying that God is responsible for man’s sin.]
- Q: No, I never said that. Man is responsible for his own sin. The Almighty God remains Pure and Just, even though man remains culpable before the bar of God’s Justice and even though all creation has been choreographed by God to behave as God intended from the beginning.
- [Answer: But then you are suggesting that God "intended" man to sin by His Divine Will. You are saying that God's Will and His Intentions are the same?
- Q: Yes. When faced with his inability to understand the complexity of God’s purity, man devises a god of his own making that he can understand. This is why some people believe God “allows” things to happen and hold to the idea that man's consequences for his sin were something God never intended, never Willed, but allowed to happen as a "natural" consequence. Their concept of God is not big enough to believe that God can remain Just, Pure, Sovereign, Righteous and Good, while at the same time choreographing all the variables controlling man's fall and man's redemption.
My third area of concern is the impugning of God’s character.
The notion of ‘allowing suffering’ implies a certain standoffishness
of God from man, like someone who doesn’t want to dirty their hands. Is
God so pure that He doesn’t dirty His Hands with suffering?
It is true that man’s sin has separated him from God, but has God
ever been separated from man? [Where can you go from His Spirit? Psalm
139:7]. I think not. God is ever-present, or He would not be God.
How does the allowance doctrine explain Christ’s suffering on the
cross? Isn’t Christ God? Didn’t He take-on suffering on our behalf? The
allowance position agrees --yes, Christ is God and He did suffer; but
that He only did it on Calvary, “once for all.” 1 Peter 3:18.
I submit
applying 1 Peter 3:18 to fit the allowance doctrine is taking it out of
the context of the chapter. Asserting exclusivity to the “once for all”
claim ignores the entire Word that reveals repeatedly the character of
God as a sufferer.
It is we who interpret "once for all" in a time-linear manner. In a multi-dimensional multi-spatial universe, something happening "once" can also happen simultaneously across the entire time-spectrum, to all dimensions. Once again, we see here how the application of certain thinking places limits on the nature and character of God.
We know the Holy Spirit grieves from Ephesians 4:30.
We know that God
grieved looking for Adam in Genesis 3:9.
We know that Hosea was used a
type of God’s suffering in the entire book of Hosea.
The examples go on
and on.
So I don’t think that you can reasonably connect Christ’s
Passion as a one-time event while discounting God’s suffering throughout
the breadth of human history.
The bottom-line is that God cannot be truly God if man’s free will is
on a par with the Almighty’s Sovereignty.
Man’s decisions do not poke,
prod, or provoke God to take some action that God does not Will. God is
what He is and He does not change.
Some will point to the Scripture 2 Peter 3:9, noting the “…God is not willing that any should perish…”
and suggest that man’s free will decides his own eternal destiny.
Although this is true, and I agree with it, it is not a point of
connection to a doctrine that suggests that the presence of universal
suffering hinges upon the decision of any one man or of collective
humanity.
The proof of this claim is in the fact that God Himself has a
long-suffering nature, as illustrated by the very same 2 Peter 3
chapter. Remove the existence of man and all of creation and you would
still be left with a God who has a long-suffering nature. Suffering
pre-existed man.
Conclusion: We of all creatures in the universe are the most fortunate. We have a
divine connection – made in the image of God – whereby we may have
fellowship in His sufferings Philippians 3:10. As hard as it may be, we
are called to rejoice in our sufferings Romans 5:3-10, knowing that the
cross we bear today yields an eternal weight glory and honor to Him who
bore a cross for us. 2 Corinthians 4:17
