They can enable us to show others genuine compassion and love. They can refine us to be more charitable, empathetic, and influential humans. They can instill in us a powerful need to serve. Maybe one reason for the tragedies and difficulties in our lives is so we can use our agency and faith to rely on and see the infinite power of Jesus Christ in our lives.
Doing so allows us to better understand Him. To build our relationship with Him. To become more like Him. To fully comprehend that He truly did sacrifice everything He had for all of us.
Yes, life can be hard. Really hard. But when life knocks you down and you still manage to use your last drop of energy to turn to the Savior, you will see that He is always there, and He will always come to your rescue.
He understands. He will not abandon you. Even though He might not be able to give you the full answer yet, He can help you find comfort and gradual understanding. For two chapters, we get to bask in the glory of a perfect world, but then in Genesis 3, the devil struck.
He deceived the woman by telling her that if she disobeyed God she would become like Him—knowing the difference between good and evil. Bad things happen because sin is written in our DNA. All the things after sin entered the world, reflect the enemy. Bad things happen because of sin. While it is true that nothing happens outside of the will of God—He is not surprised by anything that happens but He is not necessarily the cause of it. To understand how this works, think about a parent-child relationship.
As much as parents probably wish they could control the behavior of their children to the minutest detail, every child has free will—just as the parents do. This has been said more than once. The child knows the expected behavior but chooses to run even though they were warned about the potential consequences.
The parent sees the child running but decides to allow them to run and the child falls. Did the parent cause the child to fall? I hope your answer is no and that you understand that while the parent was not the reason the child fell, the parent permitted it to happen. This is kind of how the permissive will of God works. He allows us to exercise our free will even though He knows there will be consequences because we chose a particular action.
He teaches us through our experiences how to depend on Him. And then, He uses those bad things to make us stronger; He uses them for His glory to teach others how much better life is when we depend on Him.
Where is God in your tragedy? The beautiful thing about God is that He is not untouched when we suffer, God is with us even in the midst of our suffering. He waits patiently as our Father hoping we will turn to Him for encouragement and strength. The Old Testament book of Job dramatizes this point.
Jesus reinforces it. Then Jesus heals the man. This teaching sets Christianity apart from the versions of Buddhism that teach karma and reincarnation.
Within that logic, our present circumstances are the result of past actions: sins in a past life can determine suffering here and now. Not so in Christianity. Indeed, if anything, Christianity reverses that paradigm: those who live in privilege now are warned of an afterlife of suffering if they do not take the radical medicine of Christ. While we can absolutely look for meaning in our suffering, we should not use it as a measuring stick for guilt, or think that if we only prayed harder or had more faith or did better, our lives would be suffering-free.
From a biblical perspective, we must also reject the idea that if God loves us, he cannot intend for us to suffer. This premise crumbles on every scriptural page. Time and again, we see those who are chosen and beloved by God suffering. Indeed, our beliefs about God and suffering expose the fault lines between our natural assumptions and the biblical narrative. The loving, omnipotent God of our imagination would move swiftly from creation to new creation, from the garden of Eden of Genesis to the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation.
But the God of the Bible charts a different course. He spreads his story out over thousands, even millions, of years and weaves in all the mess of human history—sin and sex and death and historical accident. And at the center of history, he stakes the cross of his beloved Son.
It is not even Plan B. It is the lynchpin around which all human history revolves, the central peg of reality itself. Indeed, it is the lens through which we visualize the narrative itself. But it is not the last word. The Lord of the Rings kindled my imagination as a child. My father read it to me. At a low point in the narrative, two central characters, Frodo and Sam, discuss where they are in the story. Sam recalls how he used to think that people in tales went looking for adventure because their lives were dull.
The hobbits do not know how their story will end. If it ended in this moment, it would be bleak and hopeless. But the story goes on. The story leaves Frodo scarred in body and mind. But it is a victory nonetheless, and one of which he and Sam hear songs sung and stories told.
Finally, changed and matured, Frodo goes with the elves to their land across the sea. The journey of all the central characters is through darkness—even death—to new life. But tap them on the shoulder at the darkest moment, and none would know where they are in the story.
And there is hope for today and tomorrow. Well, one day he will. Evil was defeated on that first Easter, and one day it will be removed altogether. How do you fix a story that is broken? We all have our stories. Some of them seem beyond fixing. The Christian faith says you fix a broken story by embedding it in a much bigger story in which good wins, and evil loses. One day there will be justice. One day all suffering will end. One day there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
This is an extraordinary description of the tenderness of God and of his plans to put right all the wrongs in this world. God does not always offer us answers.
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