Why we Suffer
We are made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore Justice and Love are our inherited characteristics. So it is only natural to want someone who has done wrong (Sinned against your person or society ) to suffer prison or fined. When the wrong doer has served the time or paid the fine, it is said they have paid the price.
You will often hear active Atheists claiming God is Cruel to allow suffering. We know that through suffering sins are forgiven (paid the price) so when we suffer we can offer up our sufferings for our sins or sins of others or family. Someone may suffer and God may watch the response of the close family with regard to the care and devotion given.
Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry are often very vocal when highlighting child suffering and other historic events. Often when a child or adult has suffered either a disease or victim of crime or accident there is a response.
Some one being a victim of knife crime, the family may campaign for knives to be binned and embark on an education and marketing message.
A classic example of this is Sir Kevin Sinfield who has embarked on a running campaign for Neuromuscular disease (NMD) and has raised millions of pounds to fund help and research into this disease. This all happen because his great friend Rob Burrow CBE, who sadly died from MND in June 2024. The question is would the good that has obviously come out of this tragedy have happened if Rob Burrow CBE had remained healthy?
So you see that suffering is like a two sided coin. Consider now the good that arose from Christ’s suffering on the cross for our sins and that eternal life is now open to us.
Heaven has no suffering, This was highlighted when during an apparition of the Virgin Mary to Ivanka in Medjugorje.
Prior to the apparition Ivanka had dislocated her shoulder and was in great pain, but during the apparition she was seen to move her arm smoothly and with no difficulty, she later said that there was no pain and movement was easy. After the apparition the pain returned. So when in the presence of Heaven all pain and suffering is gone.
The Train Journey
By Louis de Berniers
Author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Today I read how Louis de Berniers lost his faith in God after a train journey accident as a young man.
The story goes that he went to Columbia at 19 years old and was on a train from Bogata, where he was sat next to a young lady of similar age who was very flirty, they got on very well against the back drop of a language barrier.
After some time the girl (Maria) suggested she get some drinks and wouldn’t accept Louis’s attempts to pay. Now this meant going from one carriage to another to get to the drinks carriage. This was in the 1970’s and Columbia was far from being an affluent country quite the opposite, so the railway lines were in a poor state with only urgent maintenance being performed. the train would generally bump and Jolt through its journey.
To get from one carriage to another meant the performance of a precarious step between the carriages. At the time Maria made her step the train jolted and she fell to the side and suffered horrific injuries from which she died some two hours later.
This had a profound effect on Louis and made him question his faith in God. How cruel can God be to let this happen to such a young girl who he had spent a very pleasant few hours getting to know.
He ends his narrative by asking to meet with God in an ally where he would ask him where he was when Maria died?
Well this story is indeed tragic, happenings like this have the capacity can challenge anyone’s belief in God. But is God to blame? What would God say in response?
In these deliberations we are essentially putting God in the dock and applying our morals and our laws of righteousness, which, when compared to God’s purity and ultimate knowledge of everything is completely flawed
There could be many approaches to this so we shall put a couple here.
The Girl was unknown to Louis but for a few hours but would be well known to God, nobody knows when or how God will call a soul back to himself. God could know that the Girl left to continue through life would have moved into sin and thereby be further away from God, so by taking her soul now she could be saved.
“What did it profit the man who gained the whole world yet suffered the loss of his soul”.
It is also necessary in these cases to go back to the basics. In the beginning we were given free will, but we knew God. God wasn’t distant, God was with us everyday. We chose by our actions to do things our way an accept Satan into our lives.
So God allows us to live in our man made world where we have total freedom to do as we like ( Only our own laws to monitor our behaviour ). We have made a world of Have and Have-nots. A world dominated by Greed, Sex and Power.
Columbia in the 1970’s one of the have-nots of this world, struggling to maintain a railway which in other parts of the world would be condemned. So is it God’s fault that man built a railway not fit for purpose and within that design allowed passengers to make a precarious jump from one carriage to another?
God’s defence could run something like Man’s fall from grace is the Tragedy! Man wanted to go it alone and embrace all that the evil one has to offer, God gave us a roadmap back to God that only a few have accepted. If man puts greed before safety, tragic instances will follow.
I gave you freedom to choose, use it well.
You have made your own world.