Suffering as a Challenge to Faith

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Life, as we all know, is "unfair." It’s an observation expressed by people who are suffering, or whose loved ones are suffering, by the rhetorical question, “Why me?”

I believe the question of suffering is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to faith. And it’s not only expressed by people who haven’t embraced faith, but also by people who are believers. We simply can’t understand why God’s view of fairness doesn’t coincide with ours. The question is also often framed as, “Why does God allow people, including good people, to suffer?"

At the outset, I will answer, as I often answer such questions in these blogs, by saying, “I don’t know.” But I’m not alone in my inability to offer a good explanation to a question that is as old as Job.

The book of Job is said to be the oldest book in the Bible, and it deals with the question in a sort of indirect, and not very satisfying, way.

Blameless Reputation

Job is a righteous, wealthy, and faithful man who has a large family, great prosperity, and a blameless reputation. Satan (literally "the accuser") challenges his faithfulness, arguing that Job serves God only because he has been blessed. God permits Satan to test Job.

So Job, one after another, loses his livestock and wealth, his servants, all ten of his children and his health. But despite his grief, Job initially refuses to blame God. His situation is not lost on his friends, who debate his situation.

Since they believe God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked in this world, they conclude that Job is a sinner. Job passionately rejects their conclusion, insisting on his innocence while continuing to cry out to God for an explanation. He questions, laments, and even accuses God of unfairness — but he never abandons his relationship with God.

Rabbi Kushner
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Elihu, a young friend, offers another perspective, suggesting that suffering may sometimes instruct, discipline, or deepen a person's relationship with God, and that’s pretty much where we are left. Elihu’s comments are undoubtedly the right road to understanding suffering, but it’s a hard road to travel.

Among the most famous books in the modern era about the “problem of evil” or the “problem of suffering” is Rabbi Harold Kushner’s 1981 book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, written after the death of his son from a rare genetic disease.

Kushner rejects the traditional view that God directly controls everything that happens. Instead, believers should remind themselves that a good and loving God wants people to be happy and free from suffering. And much suffering occurs not because God wills it, but because the world operates according to natural laws.

He asks people to stop asking why “God did this to me,” but in the light of faith, to ask, how to respond to what happens.

If we Christians think that God is aloof and insensitive to our suffering, we need only to think about Jesus’ suffering, particularly his horrendous death, and recall Jesus’ words in John’s gospel.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

The problem with "atonement" 

Traditionally, the church has explained Jesus' suffering and death as a matter of atonement - as Fr. Dirk Dunfee, S.J. recently put it in his blog - that humanity's sins "racked up a cosmic debt that Jesus paid on our behalf. People struggle to accept (this idea) because they think it makes God into a demanding and even bloodthirsty accountant." 

An alternative explanation is that Jesus was fulfilling his mission, and the will of his Father, as an outspoken critic of religious and secular authorities of his time and paid the ultimate price.

Like us, Job never receives a complete explanation for his suffering, but instead, comes closer to understand and encounter God. Pope John Paul II wrote that suffering remains a profound mystery, but one illuminated by Christ's Cross.