Why Do We Suffer?

by Francis MacNutt
Spring 1996

My article in the last Newsletter on why we suffer the desolation of spiritual "dark nights" drew more letters than any article we've ever printed. Clearly, it touched a responsive chord in many of your lives. It seems good then to carry that topic one step further and talk about the meaning of suffering in our lives.

We open that difficult subject by saying right off that the origin of evil (including suffering) has always been seen as a great mystery in Christian life — a mystery impossible for us to understand — second only to the Trinity, three persons and one God. How can you reconcile your suffering with an all–powerful, all–loving God who creates everything that exists? Does God send you the suffering and sickness you endure?

The Old Testament stresses the point that there is only one God who created the world and causes everything, and most of the ancient Biblical authors assume that evil is caused by God! This leaves us with problems, but if you believe that God causes everything, what else can you say? For example, when King Saul grows jealous of young David's popularity, "An evil spirit from God seized on Saul. He fell into a frenzy while he was indoors. David played the harp as on other occasions: Saul had a spear in his hand. Saul brandished the spear; he said, 'I will pin David to the wall!"' (I Sam. 18: 10– 11).

According to this view of the universe God causes everything and so you end up with the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" And how can an all–holy God cause evil? — things such as murder? You can only explain that in terms of God punishing evil people, like Saul, for their sins.

This leads you to a further conclusion: if you lead an upright life, God will always bless you, even in this life. If you sin, though, God will punish you with suffering. Many of the Psalms reflect this attitude.

The entire book of Job, on the other hand, calls this attitude into question. Job is an innocent man who suffers, and his "friends" give him all the traditional answers: "Job, you must be guilty. Confess your crimes and God will restore your health and property." Job keeps on claiming he has done nothing wrong to deserve his miserable fate. At the end of the book God finally speaks and says, to paraphrase, "None of you know what you are talking about, but Job is closer to the truth than the rest of you, and I'm going to restore everything to Job; more than that I am going to double it!" It's important to note that Job is one of the last books of the Old Testament to be written (probably in the 5th century BC). The culmination of the Old Testament teaching on suffering, then, is that its ultimate cause is a mystery. The final lesson is that "faith must remain even when understanding fails" (Introduction to Job, p. 755, New Jerusalem Bible: Doubleday, 1985). It's significant, too, that Job's friends think that they are defending God's honor by repeating the traditional argument that you must have sinned to deserve sickness.

These legalist "friends" have many parallels in our own Christian world — some leaders still teach that the only reason you are sick is because you have sinned. They counsel, "If only you had faith, you would have been healed," or "You must harbor unforgiveness or your arthritis would have disappeared." Such teachings remind us of the exhortations of Job's friends (this is not to say that some arthritis could not be connected to unforgiveness, but many other factors could also be involved, such as diet, stress, heredity, etc.).

But then, when Jesus comes on the scene the teaching on suffering is further refined beyond what we read in job. In his teaching you see him picking up on the mystery aspect when he asks whether the 18 people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them were any worse than anyone else living in Jerusalem. 'They were not," he says (LK. 13:4). He goes further than that though, when he picks up on the Genesis theme of the Fall affecting all of us with a global evil — ultimately Satan is the one directly causing our sickness — not God. Jesus rebukes sickness when he meets it; he sees it as an enemy, not as a blessing sent by God. He heals everyone who asks for help and does not tell invalids to suffer patiently because God sent them their illness as a "blessing" to test their endurance.

Speaking humanly, Jesus' attitude is far healthier than the view that God tests the saints by sending them illness — the belief that sent C. S. Lewis up the wall when his wife, Joy, died of cancer (see his book A Grief Observed). Any ordinary person would have trouble believing that God loves us, if he makes us sick in order to test our loyalty. Any parent who acted that way we would see as a sadistic ogre. Isn't this exactly what Jesus is getting at when he says,

There is so much more we could say, but for now here are a few simple reflections:

• God loves us, truly loves us, more than any human father or mother can — no matter how wonderful our parents may have been. When you suffer, know that most of it comes because of the broken, fallen, and evil state of the world into which we are born. Ultimately the cause of sickness is Satan, who hates us — not God, who loves us. Most sickness is indirectly caused by Satan who has drawn the world into its broken, wounded state. Some sickness, however, is directly caused by demonic influence, such as the "spirits of infirmity" mentioned in the Bible.
• Jesus died for us and gave us the Holy Spirit whose love and power will undo the effects of sin, which include sickness. Jesus, through his Holy Spirit, forgives our sins, begins to heal our broken hearts, our broken bodies and our broken relationships.
• Much healing occurs in this life (Paul calls it a "down payment" on eternal life) but the rest will happen only after Jesus brings us victory over our ultimate enemy, Death.
• Nevertheless, Jesus tells us we will suffer in this life. The forces of evil will cause us to suffer. We will, for example, suffer rejection and persecution.
• But nowhere does he say we must have sickness. Sickness is not the same thing as suffering. It's just one among many conditions that cause suffering. The Gospel shows us that Jesus wants to heal our sickness — certainly for the most part.
• There are root causes of sickness that we may have to face before we are healed. It's not that Jesus doesn't want to heal us, but we must do our part (see the chapter in my book Healing on the various reasons people are not healed.)
• Yet, ultimately, we are dealing with mystery. Jamie Buckingham, shortly before his death, said, "I understand much less than I used to, but I believe more."

In the midst of sickness, we want to continue to praise God but not because of our sickness, we praise God in spite of our sickness; we praise God in the midst of our sickness.

Francis MacNutt is a Founding Director and Executive Committee member of CHM.