On December 14, 2012,
20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members
in a mass murder
at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the
village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut Before
driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy at their Newtown
home. As first responders arrived, he
committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.There
are no words to describe the anguish being felt by those who are suffering
today; our heart and prayers have – and will – go out to them. There are so
many tragic stories, so much pain. And many people are asking the question,
“Why? Why did God allow this?”
This is just one incident that prompts many of us to ask the question, “Why?”
Events like this are on top of the everyday pain and suffering being experienced in individual lives – maybe including ours. There’s illness, abuse, broken relationships, betrayal, sorrow, injuries, disappointment, heartache, crime and death. And perhaps you’ve been asking the question, “Why? Why me? Why now?”
That “why” question goes back thousands of years. It was asked in the Old Testament by Job and the writers of the Psalms, and it was especially relevant during the 20th century, where we witnessed two World Wars, the Holocaust, genocides in the Soviet Union and China, devastating famines in Africa, the killing fields of Cambodia, the emergence of AIDS, the genocide in Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. And the 21st Century didn’t start any better. There was 9/11 and now the Syrian slaughters, and on and on. Why all of this if there’s a loving and powerful God? Why do bad things happen to good people?
Several years ago, author Lee Stobel had a national survey done and asked people what question they’d ask if they could only ask God one thing. The Number One response was: “Why is there suffering in the world?”
But if you’ve never asked why our world is infected with pain and suffering, you will when they strike you with full force or they come to a loved one. And Jesus said they are coming. Unlike some other religious leaders who wrote off pain and suffering as just being illusions, Jesus was honest. He told us the truth. He said in John 16:33, “You will have suffering in this world.” He didn’t say you might – he said it is going to happen.
But why? If you ask me or just about anyone else, point-blank, “Why did God allow the gunman to do this terrible thing at Sandy Hook School?”, the only answer that can honestly be given consists of four words – “I do not know.”
We cannot stand in the shoes of God and give a complete answer to that question. We don’t have God’s mind. He said “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” ….. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) We don’t see with God’s eyes. The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.[ All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely”
So when we ask about specific individual events and want to know why this particular thing happened, we won’t get the full answer in this world. Someday we’ll see with clarity, but for now things are foggy. We can’t understand everything from our finite perspective. And frankly, the people suffering from the Sandy Hook tragedy don’t need a big theological explanation; any intellectual response is going to seem small and inadequate. What they desperately need is the very real and comforting presence of Jesus Christ in their lives.
But for us, let’s focus on the big, confusing issue of why God generally allows suffering in our lives – your life and mine. This is important: even though we can’t understand everything about it, we can understand some things.
We may not be able to make out all the outlying details of why — they may be obscured from our view — but there are some key Biblical truths that can give us some points of light. And if we follow those lights, they will lead us in the right direction, toward some conclusions that I believe can help satisfy our hearts and souls.
What are those points of light? Let’s look at five of them that maybe will be helpful whenever we are prompted to ask the question, “Why?”
The first point of light: God is not the creator of evil and suffering.
This answers the question you hear so often: “Why didn’t God merely create a world where tragedy and suffering didn’t exist?” The answer is: He did! Genesis 1:31 says: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
But if God is not the author of tragedy or evil or death, where did they come from? Well, God has existed from eternity past as the Father, Son and Spirit, together in a relationship of perfect love. So love is the highest value in the universe. And when God decided to create human beings, he wanted us to experience love. But to give us the ability to love, God had to give us free will to decide whether to love or not to love. Why? Because love always involves a choice.
If we were programmed to say, “I love you,” it wouldn’t really be love. Anyone remember the doll with a string in the back, and when you pulled it the doll said, “I love you.” Did that doll love the child that was playing with it? Of course not! It was programmed to say those words. To really experience love, that doll would need to have been able to choose to love or not to love. Otherwise we would be like robots. Again – real love always involves a choice.
This is just one incident that prompts many of us to ask the question, “Why?”
Events like this are on top of the everyday pain and suffering being experienced in individual lives – maybe including ours. There’s illness, abuse, broken relationships, betrayal, sorrow, injuries, disappointment, heartache, crime and death. And perhaps you’ve been asking the question, “Why? Why me? Why now?”
That “why” question goes back thousands of years. It was asked in the Old Testament by Job and the writers of the Psalms, and it was especially relevant during the 20th century, where we witnessed two World Wars, the Holocaust, genocides in the Soviet Union and China, devastating famines in Africa, the killing fields of Cambodia, the emergence of AIDS, the genocide in Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. And the 21st Century didn’t start any better. There was 9/11 and now the Syrian slaughters, and on and on. Why all of this if there’s a loving and powerful God? Why do bad things happen to good people?
Several years ago, author Lee Stobel had a national survey done and asked people what question they’d ask if they could only ask God one thing. The Number One response was: “Why is there suffering in the world?”
But if you’ve never asked why our world is infected with pain and suffering, you will when they strike you with full force or they come to a loved one. And Jesus said they are coming. Unlike some other religious leaders who wrote off pain and suffering as just being illusions, Jesus was honest. He told us the truth. He said in John 16:33, “You will have suffering in this world.” He didn’t say you might – he said it is going to happen.
But why? If you ask me or just about anyone else, point-blank, “Why did God allow the gunman to do this terrible thing at Sandy Hook School?”, the only answer that can honestly be given consists of four words – “I do not know.”
We cannot stand in the shoes of God and give a complete answer to that question. We don’t have God’s mind. He said “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” ….. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) We don’t see with God’s eyes. The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.[ All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely”
So when we ask about specific individual events and want to know why this particular thing happened, we won’t get the full answer in this world. Someday we’ll see with clarity, but for now things are foggy. We can’t understand everything from our finite perspective. And frankly, the people suffering from the Sandy Hook tragedy don’t need a big theological explanation; any intellectual response is going to seem small and inadequate. What they desperately need is the very real and comforting presence of Jesus Christ in their lives.
But for us, let’s focus on the big, confusing issue of why God generally allows suffering in our lives – your life and mine. This is important: even though we can’t understand everything about it, we can understand some things.
We may not be able to make out all the outlying details of why — they may be obscured from our view — but there are some key Biblical truths that can give us some points of light. And if we follow those lights, they will lead us in the right direction, toward some conclusions that I believe can help satisfy our hearts and souls.
What are those points of light? Let’s look at five of them that maybe will be helpful whenever we are prompted to ask the question, “Why?”
The first point of light: God is not the creator of evil and suffering.
This answers the question you hear so often: “Why didn’t God merely create a world where tragedy and suffering didn’t exist?” The answer is: He did! Genesis 1:31 says: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
But if God is not the author of tragedy or evil or death, where did they come from? Well, God has existed from eternity past as the Father, Son and Spirit, together in a relationship of perfect love. So love is the highest value in the universe. And when God decided to create human beings, he wanted us to experience love. But to give us the ability to love, God had to give us free will to decide whether to love or not to love. Why? Because love always involves a choice.
If we were programmed to say, “I love you,” it wouldn’t really be love. Anyone remember the doll with a string in the back, and when you pulled it the doll said, “I love you.” Did that doll love the child that was playing with it? Of course not! It was programmed to say those words. To really experience love, that doll would need to have been able to choose to love or not to love. Otherwise we would be like robots. Again – real love always involves a choice.
