The Genesis of Human Suffering: A Biblical Perspective
God’s role in human suffering is a common question in Biblical conversations. Some people ask why God cannot stop human suffering if He is loving and all-powerful. According to Gardner (2007), “the fact of suffering presents the most common doubt to belief in a loving and all-powerful God.” Suffering is an intensely personal experience, and amid personal distress, the woes of other people often seem inferior to individuals. Other people can neither experience nor understand what the sufferer experiences at a given moment. Besides, suffering evokes strong emotions, and people respond to it in deeply personal ways (Wilson n.p.). Often, the suffering individual sits alone, like Job in the Bible, and harbors questions, doubts, and despair. Intense suffering and deep grief force individuals to think about their relationship with God. These thoughts orbit around whether God, since He created the world, is ultimately responsible, or if society should blame human beings for evil and suffering. Despite persistent devastation and suffering, God allowed human beings to have free will, which was a cause of pain, which is also a basis for trusting in a loving, all-powerful God. This research explores the genesis of human suffering, God’s eternal perspective, and a Biblical view of God’s role in pain.
The Creation Perspective
God created the heavens and the earth and concluded that everything was good. When He created man and woman, He also declared them good (Hebrew Bible, Gen 1.27-31). God intended to create a world without sin and suffering. Hence, He made human beings in His image with the ability to understand, choose, and love. Without free will, this concept of morality and love would lose its meaning (Gardner 43). God did not create amoral programmed robots, but people made in His image. Gardner says that God risked rejection when He gave human beings free will (43). However, God provided a choice so that love for Him would be genuine and not forceful.
Initially, Adam and Eve fellowshipped with God, and they could reason and choose between obedience and disobedience. They were genuinely free, and they could choose to respect God’s role as the supreme authority and to enjoy close communion with Him. They also enjoyed the free will to commit the supreme sin of rebelling against God and face the consequences. Therefore, they chose to obey themselves rather than God. Consequently, suffering and pain began when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. God did not cause actual suffering. Instead, He created the possibility of pain and suffering since He allowed free will. Adam and Even were free to choose between obeying God to avoid suffering and rejecting Him to live in a world of suffering and pain. In effect, God created people of free will for whom moral evil and suffering were a possibility. The Bible does not provide an explicit answer to God’s reasons for allowing free will. However, one could conclude that God intended to create people who could love and glorify Him freely, without manipulation or coercion.
God’s love is closely related to the genesis of suffering since He created man out of love. Genuine love is impossible without free choice to accept or reject it. For instance, when a man expresses his love for a partner and asks her to marry him, he must consider the possibility of rejection. In this regard, God made human beings with the freedom to either love or rejected Him. Real love requires acceptance of either option (Hicks 29). Suffering began when God’s creatures rejected his love, and from this perspective, God only permitted suffering, but He did not directly cause it. In the context of modern society, the best moral systems often have free will, and to become morally responsible, one ought to choose right over wrong. God gave human beings free will, but their choice led to suffering.
The prevailing impression is that free will causes the most suffering in a world of natural law. Pain and suffering arise from the free will to do the things that cause pain. For example, a finger feels pain when hit by a sledgehammer, and this pain is avoidable. Most people often experience suffering since they find themselves in situations where accidents happen. Those who believe that God is responsible for suffering must ask themselves if they want a world with or without free will, and understand that free will causes most suffering. The ability to exercise the gift of freedom in a world of natural law creates the balance that society needs. For example, when one chooses to run on an ice-covered surface, his or her free choice could lead to a fall, pain, and broken bones. Gravity seems uncomfortable at the time of the fall. In this context, God does not enable the fall to happen; instead, He sets up a world in which the individual can exercise his or her free will, or rather choose to run on ice or not. The resulting fall, pain, and suffering are in God’s permissive will, but not His directive will. Gravity might be involved in the fall, but it is not directly responsible, and the world is a better place with gravity. Without it, human beings would simply float in space. As such, human life would be nonexistent if free will and order described by natural laws were missing. Most times, suffering occurs when free will either bump into the uniform behavior of nature or leads people to choose destructive behaviors.
Relating Suffering to Evil, Pain, and Death
The free-will decision of Adam and Even to sin brought pain, devastation, and death to a good creation. The sin resulted in labor pain, painful toil by man to survive, and cursing of the ground (Hebrew Bible, Gen 3.16-17). Besides, death entered the world due to the sins of Adam and Eve, and as a result, sin altered the world as it introduced both moral and physical evil into the universe. The physical world has experienced agony due to the fall of man. From the Bible’s beginning to the end, evil and suffering manifest differently. Clearly, all the Bible’s stories show that evil causes suffering, rebellion causes pain, and sin leads to death. The world is an imperfect universe, which signifies that even Christians should expect and accept suffering as part of life in this fallen world.
While death seems natural in the current society, it was unnatural to human beings when God created Adam. God allowed the possibility of death, but it was never a necessity. Death came about as a consequence of sin since initially; man was not created to die. Death remains the epitome of suffering as nothing matches the pain of losing a loved one. The Bible reiterates that the wages of sin is death, signifying that without sin, death would be less painful, or nonexistent entirely, but the curse of the fall intensified when sin entered the world.
Today, human beings are largely responsible for evil, suffering, and death since they rebel against God and exercise inhumanity to one another. Concerning the majority of today’s suffering, the blame of evil rests largely with human beings rather than God. God considers sin a rebellion against Him, and the man declared his moral independence from God after the original sin (Hicks 23). In essence, sin became an evil act since it signified rebellion and angered God. Although man still bears God’s image, he is an imperfect being whose only redemption is to surrender unconditionally to God’s will. God did not make the world with the sufferings as it is today, and as sinners, human beings completely contrast God’s original creation. The resulting chaos, suffering, and pain come from man’s rebellion against God.
Some physical suffering and evil come from one’s free choices that might not be morally wrong, whereas others are outcomes of sinful behavior. For example, building houses in areas vulnerable to flooding and earthquakes and choosing occupations characterized by the risk of injuries might result in suffering. Besides, some people find the thrill of riding motorcycles at high speeds, while others enjoy the thrill of bull riding, all of which result in suffering. By contrast, examples of suffering caused by sinful choices include smoking that causes lung cancer, alcoholism that causes liver cirrhosis, and sexual immorality that causes STDs. Physical suffering could also arise from worry, overeating, and unjustified anger. Ideally, ungodly people are more likely to suffer wrong for their transgressions than Godly people. However, such suffering does not liberate the sufferer from the guilt and responsibility of his or her sinful behavior. The consequences of sin are sometimes so severe that the sufferer repents strengthening his or her relationship with God. When the sinner takes the step, God does not guarantee pardon, and as was with Job, the sufferer might experience prolonged suffering.
God’s Perspective of Job’s Suffering
Discussions about human suffering from the Bible’s perspective often begin with the story of Job as the story epitomizes God’s eternal attitude of suffering. Job was one of God’s most faithful servants at the time of his suffering, but he lost his sons and daughters, sheep, servants, and oxen, and lay in unrelenting misery for weeks and months nursing open wounds all over his body. God took away Job’s three daughters and seven sons, and all of his wealth. At the height of his suffering, Job became repulsive to his wife, abhorrent to his brothers, while even little children watched him distastefully. Initially, Job took in the suffering with remarkable submission. He was confident and trusted in the will of God since the creator gave him all the wealth, and He could rightfully take it all away if He saw fit (The Hebrew Bible, Job 1.21). However, as the suffering persisted, Job’s confidence in God’s will wavered as he vowed more about his righteousness, rather than God’s justice. For instance, Job demanded that God reveal His face and show him his transgressions since he considered God his enemy (The Hebrew Bible, Job 13.23-24). In effect, Job’s suffering pushed him to a point where he doubted his faithfulness and considered God an enemy.
Accordingly, those close to Job understood his suffering differently. For one, Job’s three friends believed that only some grievous sin could make a man suffer as Job did. Hence, they believed that God was punishing Job for some unforgivable sin. In other words, Job was experiencing the wages of sin. By contrast, Job dismisses their theology and reminds them that wickedness and suffering are unrelated, just like prosperity and righteousness. As the suffering intensifies, Job silences his friends’ superficial theology and reminds them that sometimes, the goodhearted suffer more than the wicked, and vice-versa. However, Elihu, one of the central figures in Job’s story, tells off both Job and his three friends. Elihu condemns Job for justifying his righteousness rather than believing God’s work. He also condemns the three friends for falsely accounting for Job’s sufferings. According to Elihu, Job is an imperfect, but righteous, man loved dearly by God, and whose suffering should draw him closer to God.
Consequently, Job’s suffering can be explained in two perspectives and is in no way God’s punishment or manifestation of anger. Initially, God took away Job’s wealth and caused him pain to show his glory and prove to Satan that Job valued God more than his wealth. However, God prolongs Job’s suffering to polish his righteousness and remove pride. According to Piper (1985), Job’s suffering is not a sign of God’s anger; instead, it is God’s way of removing the deeply-rooted sense of pride that only He understood.
Lastly, Wilson (2019) offers an overview of the Bible’s entire perspective of suffering. He says that suffering occurs in physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional aspects (The Hebrew Bible, Psalms 34.19). In addition, Apostle Paul encountered many types of suffering and is part of all Christians’ existence. Unwise choices could lead to suffering, as seen in the book of Proverbs, which states that lazy people die of hunger and harm befalls fools (The Hebrew Bible, Proverbs 19.15; Proverbs 13.20). Furthermore, Wilson (2019) says that suffering happens for a reason as God uses circumstances to accomplish His will or teach important lessons. For instance, Hosea married an unfaithful woman as part of God’s plan to show His love (The Hebrew Bible, Hosea 3.1). Hosea suffered the embarrassment of marrying a woman many people despised, but God accomplished His will. Although tragedies might be hard to understand, God uses them sometimes to transform people and call them to repentance. Therefore, God uses some tragedies to make human beings reflect if they are ready to meet Him.
In conclusion, God gave human beings free will and the power of choice, but man exercised his free will to commit original sin, which became the genesis of suffering. Although freedom is the foundation of God’s love, it creates the possibility of doing the wrong thing. God simply created the possibility of suffering, but His creatures, who enjoyed free will, actualized sin and suffering when they rebelled. The majority of the suffering arises from sinful and free choices, but morally right actions cause other forms of suffering. Job’s story epitomizes God’s eternal perspective of suffering, signifying His intent to prolong suffering even for the most obedient followers to accomplish His will. Therefore, while human beings might doubt God’s love and presence during pain and suffering, God has good intentions, and He gave people the free will to avoid some sinful behaviors that cause direct suffering.