We can know God’s view only through Scripture.
God doesn’t feel pain – not physical pain, but emotional pain, yes. The Bible talked about God feeling sorrow, grief, etc.
What kinds of pain are there?
First, pain that we bring upon ourselves, through accidents or through sin. This can be physical pain or emotional pain.
Second, pain that others cause us. Again, this can be through accidents or through sin. It can even be persecution, and it can be emotional pain or physical pain. It can even be caused by spirit beings, including God and demons.
Third, pain can be caused by nature. There are earthquakes, floods, blizzards, diseases, and other such problems. Sin might be involved in our suspectibility to these events, but sometimes it is just we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. And unless our lives get cut short prematurely, we all get old and have pains associated with old age, and even our dying sometimes includes pain.
Pain is a big problem, not only to the people who are in pain, but for Christian apologetics. The problem is often put in this way: if God is all-powerful, and he is all-good, then why doesn’t he stop all this pain that we see around us?
Why doesn’t God protect his people from accidents, from being innocent victims of people or of natural disasters?
Is God able to prevent problems? Certainly. Then doesn’t he love us? Why does he allow the pain and problems that we see?
Basically, it would be a far different world if he did. Consider what would happen if God prevented all our accidents. We would become careless. If God prevented innocent people from getting killed, he would have to stop every bullet, to stop every knife, stop every bomb. Actions would not have consequences – it would be a rather different world – an absurd world. He would have to stop us as well, all our hurtful actions and hurtful words. We’d be in a straightjacket.
The critic would like a world in which people can decide what to do, and yet have their decisions always turn out right. It is an unrealistic world. God does not force people to do good, and he does not remove the consequences of bad.
Pain is simply part of the way the world is. Now, it wasn’t always this way, and it won’t always be this way, but for right now, this is the way it is. God made the world without any sin, and he made Adam and Eve without any sin, and there was no pain and suffering.
However, sin did enter the picture, and emotional pain entered the picture, and physical pain and murder entered the picture. And Genesis 3 even tells us that relationship between humans and nature also changed, so that pain came from the physical world as well, so that even so-called natural disasters are ultimately caused by sin.
This did not take God by surprise. He knew it would happen and he already knew what he would do about it. He knew it would happen, and he could have stopped it if he wanted to, but he did not. And the question is, Why not?
God doesn’t like pain, he doesn’t like for us to suffer, but he was willing for pain to enter the world. Why is that? Presumably because it was the only way to get to something that is more important than our temporary comfort. God doesn’t like sin, either, but he allows it, even in us. We seem to get away with it, without punishment, even though our sins affect other people and inflict pain on them. His mercy toward us is part of the picture of him allowing pain in this world. He allows things that he does not like, and if he didn’t, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.
-- God did have a plan to do something about it. He did not exempt himself from pain, but in Jesus he became human, willing to suffer alongside us.
However, Christ does promise us trials. – but he has already shared in the suffering we go through. He is not asking us to endure something he hasn’t already endured. Suffering is part of life.
What do we learn through pain?
· Moral choices do matter. What we say and do does affect other people. Therefore we should repent. – that was the lesson of Luke 13:1-5
· To comfort others – 2 Cor 1:3-4
· To trust in god – vv 8-9
· Romans 8:17-18, 28
· Romans 5:3-4
· Hebrews 12:11
· 1 Peter 1:6-7
· James 1:2-4
· Compassion, love, faith
We know in general, but often not in specific cases. We don’t always know what specific lesson we are supposed to learn. Maybe we will learn later what it is, maybe not.
Answers do not make our pain go away. However, we have no choice but to trust in God. No one else or nothing else is trustworthy. Atheism certainly doesn’t help us deal with pain. We have to trust that God has a good reason, just as a child must trust a parent when the child has pain. Sometimes pain has to be caused on purpose, as in a surgery, even when it is for the child’s good. The child is too young to understand, so must trust the parent.
In this life, there is no complete answer. We do not have the full picture; we do not understand it all. We don’t know why babies suffer and die. Knowing that there will be an afterlife certainly helps (1 Cor. 15:19). Some pain, nobody learns anything from. It is just pain. The baby dies just like the parents want her to.
Therefore we have to trust God, knowing that 1) he really does have the power to bring good out of pain, and 2) that he has our best interests at heart. He has proven his love to us on the cross. Evil is conquered (surprise!) through forgiveness.
Pain will be eliminated (Rev. 22), for the victory has already been won, and it was won on the cross. Just as Jesus overcame death through his death, he has overcome pain through his suffering. This was planned in advance – it was not a “patch.”
This is our faith, our confidence.