Arguments citing the “problem of suffering” as disproving the existence of the Lord usually present two alternatives: either no God exists because He would not allow the innocent to suffer, or there is a God, but He is wicked because He allows the innocent to suffer. Likewise, how could an all-merciful God allow for Hell, where the damned are separated from God forever, to exist.
However, constructing two alternatives between no God or a cruel one is a false dichotomy. Sometimes, innocent people suffer for a reason we can foresee – the parent protecting his or her child from an intruder and being killed in the process. In such a situation, the victims are sacrificing themselves for a good purpose, and we can understand what that purpose is. However, what about when people suffer for seemingly no benefit to anyone: for example, cancer in children, people who have debilitating syndromes or handicaps from birth?
Sometimes, even this seemingly useless suffering brings about noticeable good – the deformed child who makes his quarreling parents have to spend more time caring for him and who thus grow closer in the process, or the person with a disease who learns perseverance and grit through his trials, etc. Even so, innocent people’s sufferings will not result in any positive thing noticeable to us.
The fact that innocent people suffer caused much concern in the ancient world. In the Book of Job, we read that Job’s friends blamed his suffering on some sin he had committed. However, Job had not sinned. Likewise, upon seeing a morn born blind, Christ’s disciples ask Him “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind” (Jn 9:2). But “Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him’” (Jn 9:3). Thus at least one reason innocent people suffer is in order to manifest God’s work. If this man in the gospels had not been born blind, the Lord could not have used Him as an example of His power to cure blindness, which He did in John 9:4-7. However, we cannot use people for our own desires – we must respect them as equal to us in dignity. But can God use people as He pleases to accomplish His will?
He can indeed because He created us, and thus has full dominion over us. “[W]e are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps 100:3). He can do with us as He pleases and we ought not to object to His will, but accept it as the will of an all-loving, all-merciful God. From our puny perspectives, the infant who dies of SIDS or the good man who dies of bone cancer seem to be instances of irrational suffering. However, God never allows anything, even those things which we sinful creatures have done badly, to be wasted.
Job complains to the Lord that he is suffering: “From out of the city the dying groan, and the soul of the wounded cries for help; yet God pays no attention to their prayer” (Jb 24:12). The dying still groan for relief, but frequently they receive no better health, and the mentally and spiritually suffering cry for help in their hearts, but receive no satisfaction or fulfillment. But God does not work on our time, nor does he necessarily work in the ways which we want Him to. We cannot make Him bend to our will, but we must bend ours to His. This is part and parcel of the journey of faith. God is omnipotent, we are not, He is omniscient, we are not, He is omnipresent, we are not, He is all-loving and all-merciful, we are not. We ought to trust Him totally.
The Lord heard Job’s prayer just as he hears all who pray to Him with a “broken spirit… and contrite heart” (Ps 51:17). From Job’s perspective, it seemed that God had abandoned him because He left Job without family, friends, livelihood, food, etc. But God asks Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundation so the earth?…Can you bind the chains of the Plei’ades, or loose the cords of Orion?” (Job 38:4, 31). In other words, Job has no conception of the whole story of life. He knows but a part of one of the letters of the story of life. But God knows all, for all relies on Him for its existence. We cannot, then, question God about suffering, for He alone is fit to judge and order the universe. We, like Job, do not have the capacity to know the ordering of all things. Rather, we must surrender to the Lord in all things, trusting in His merciful love, that He will ordain all things for the best. With this reality in mind, to disbelieve God because innocent people suffer is to hate Him. If we fall into this trap, our hearts will not be “of those who seek the Lord” (Ps 105:3).
But alas, in our fallen human condition, we often grow weary when we experience trials, and can easily grow lax in our duties toward God, and even fall away from the Faith. It is easy to trust God in theory: that He will make everything work out the best it possibly can, if we leave all cares to Him. But in practice, we daily try to make things go our way, despising authority which sets limits on our actions, and not accepting things good in themselves with humble resignation to the Divine will.
But thankfully, the Lord has revealed to us the meaning of all suffering: Jesus Christ in His Passion and Death. No one has ever experienced more physical, mental, and existential pain, than Christ did on the cross. Yet no one has ever accomplished a greater or more charitable deed than did Christ when He endured HIs Passion and Death to saves us. God the Father let His own Son suffer, to the point that, taking on all sin so that He could destroy it with His death, the Son justly cried out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1). The Father allowed Christ to be forsaken in the measure that Jesus had taken on all sin, and thus all suffering and pain, that humanity had ever committed and would ever commit. But brought the most excellent and incomprehensible good out of this greatest suffering.
We have a role to play in Christ’s Passion and Death. We have crucified Him every time we have committed mortal sin. “Every mortal sin [figuratively] crucifies Christ again,” because Christ would have endured everything He did even if only one mortal sin had been committed, because His love is so immense. With every venial sin, we spit upon, strike, rebuke, and whip Christ. We are the crucifiers who justly deserve Hell. Yet, this same Lord Whom we have crucified has died to give us eternal salvation, and He wants us to be saved more than we are able to want to be saved. “[H]ow much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:14). Despite our wickedness, we have hope through the Blood of Christ, shed on the Cross in its entirety. We can thus make it our aim to unite our entire lives to Christ, both our sufferings and our joys. By uniting our sufferings to Christ, we participate in His sufferings on Calvary, and so participate in His redemption of mankind. Our suffering now has meaning in Christ, because though this pain will last for a little while, “[w]hen Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col 3:4). If we unite our suffering with love, then, we should “rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, as you attain the goal of [your] faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet 1:8-9).