Does God Make Us Suffer?
I received a comment from Marilyn in response to a devotion I wrote for cbn.com, “Embracing Surrender,”. She said she doesn’t believe God sits up in heaven and dreams up hardship to put us through.
I agreed that God is not vindictive and doesn’t sit around thinking of ways to make us suffer. I agree with her that He is our deliverer, not our persecutor.
God is love. He’s compassionate and merciful. He’s with us always and is good all the time. He is our Savior and Deliverer. Furthermore, His grace is available and sufficient for whatever we face.
In addition, if we love Him and are called for His purposes, He works all things together for our good. I’ve seen that happen, even when the “things” came from foolishness or self-centeredness on my part. I don’t yet see the good from some “things,” but I believe His Word to be true.
I know sin leads to consequences which often involve hardship and that God warns believers that we will suffer.
Nevertheless, I’ve continued to think about the question Marilyn raised, resulting in a different perspective.
I don’t consider myself to be a mean, vindictive mother. And yet, when my children were young, I made them sit inside and memorize their multiplication tables. We worked on them for days, until the facts were mastered.
From my perspective, multiplication tables are an unpleasant, necessary preparation for success in life.
However, young boys see things differently. To them, learning such “worthless” information was hardship. Some days, it was real suffering—like when we hit the 7 and 8-times tables, or when the sun was shining and friends were gathered to play.
All that suffering was intentionally dreamed up by their teacher and enforced by me, their mother—even though we didn’t know what they would do in the future. It’s part of growing up. If their teacher hadn’t dreamed it up, I would have.
If I inflicted such suffering on my own children over something as mundane as multiplication tables, is it really a stretch to suppose that maybe God would occasionally assign hardship for one of His children?
It could be we won’t be able to do the work He’s prepared for us unless we go through boot camp first. Maybe we don’t yet have a skill we’ll need, or our character is lacking in a particular area.
I think the real problem behind the question is that we can’t see far enough down the road, we’re looking from the wrong perspective, and we don’t have enough faith in the One who does know our future.
“We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). Work is prepared and waiting for us. If we aren’t prepared for it, we’ll fail.
I’m still not ready to say that God sits up in heaven planning ways for us to suffer, but neither am I ready to declare that He won’t send us to boot camp if we need training. It really doesn’t matter whether He uses circumstances for my good, or if it is especially prepared for me. If He is with me through the trial, and I learn what I need to know, that’s good enough for me.
I’ll let the theologians figure out the final answer, but the question no longer troubles me.
It may feel like suffering from my perspective, but—even if it feels like hardship—if God can do something today to prepare me for tomorrow, it is good, loving, and merciful of Him to do so.
And He is all those things. All the time.
When in the midst of a trial, how do you move beyond the blame game so you can receive God’s grace to get through it?
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