Conversations on 13 Ways - Problem of Unnecessary Suffering Pt. 1

13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird addresses the problem of unnecessary suffering. The Bible has two ways of looking at this dilemma. First, we are born in sin, not the world God intended for us, so suffering is necessary. Many will protest that view but I know no one who has never needed negative reinforcement in their lives. Just try not saying a word of discipline to your employees for two weeks. Things slide out of control. It's a fallen world. Suffering leads us to desire the good that God has in store.

Second, God makes some strange promises in the Bible to Abraham. He grants him a land where God's people will live, but it won't be for another 400 years. Poor Abraham, Isaac, and even Jacob will never see the Promised Land in their lifetimes. They will live as strangers in their own land in their lifetime. Later, Moses meets the same fate; teased by the Promised Land but not allowed to enter in life. In Exodus 3, God reveals His "name forever" to be The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Is this God the God of three dead guys who never saw the Promised Land? No, that wouldn't make sense.

There is something beyond this life. It's there teasing us all the time with the question, Where did all this come from? What is beyond beyond, so to speak. Wittgenstein called this "the mystical" and concluded, "The mystical is that we exist" [Tractatus]. The Bible presumes that there is something beyond life; two things to be exact. One is ineffably sublime and wonderful; the other unspeakably horrible.

What if we draw the line at the end of physical life? We might have precluded a full understanding of what suffering is. If God picks us up when we die, what do we have to worry about? Without God and this life after death, we would live in a world of irreconcilable differences and infinite injustice. Ironically, the pivot point in our history is a moment in time when God died in our place and returned to life. The resurrection of Christ answers all these questions completely. Lots of people will protest that interpretation, but it is far more than mere coincidence that the Gospel of Christ sows together 1,500 years of scriptures and answers every question fully. Not even an educated group of people can conjure up something as flawless as Jesus. Look at the deviations within church organizations since that time. Flawlessness is not a human characteristic, but a divine one. Even to those who want to believe Jesus is a myth, they have to admit He exists on paper and, unless we deliberately distort His words, He's flawless.

And what more unnecessary can we get than the crucifixion? Jesus said He could have gotten a fleet of angels to rescue Him. He didn't. Did He suffer unnecessarily? I think not. He suffered for our sake to show us the way to eternal life. If you make a decision that Jesus is who He says He is, then you cannot believe suffering is unnecessary. Even, and especially, Christ's suffering was necessary to bring about the resurrection and answer this question for all time.

The folks of flight 1220 are afraid of the plane crashing. That is understandable. But it is the scares that warn us of the gravity of our situation. It might be a close call in an airplane, a disease that we have to deal with, or a death that shocks us. It's hard to say, but suffering is necessary. If God chose to suffer so we could believe in Him, who are we to say we don't deserve suffering? We ultimately cannot count on the material for support, it will always crash. We are forced by circumstances to look to the mystical. Reality is calling us to faith.