The Unresolved “Why” of Suffering
By Andrew and Rachel Wilson
Here are three insights from Christian writers that, more than any others, have helped me cope with the unanswered questions.
Intellectual
Most cultures and societies have suffered far more than ours and yet have not seen it as a reason to doubt the existence of God. Why? Because they assume that, if there is an answer to the why? question, we wouldn’t necessarily know what it is—our knowledge is just too limited. In our culture, though, we assume that the answer to the why? question is something we would know, and so we get extremely frustrated when we can’t resolve it. Underneath our frustration is an overwhelming sense of self-assurance, the conviction that, if something is out there to be known by anyone, it will certainly be known by me. Which obviously doesn’t follow.
Emotional
Humility before God involves acknowledging that although we may not be able to imagine a world where all suffering is made up for, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen; it just means that our minds are limited. In fact, holding to that idea—that all things will one day be renewed in a way that atones for everything bad that has happened, no matter how unimaginable that may be—is at the very center of Christian hope. Paul himself admits that no mind could ever conceive what God has in store (1 Cor. 2:9).
In other words, suffering makes no sense now. It isn’t supposed to. But in the power and love of God, one day, it will.
Spiritual
We worship a crying God—a God who became like us, suffered bereavement and loss, wept at gravesides, and cried out in anguish as he died. So when we experience suffering and face all the unanswered whys?, we may never know what the answer is— but we know for sure what the answer isn’t. It isn’t because God doesn’t love us. It isn’t because God doesn’t care. It isn’t because he is distant or unsympathetic or cold or merciless. The cross proves that.
I don’t know why God permits so many bad things to happen, but then I wouldn’t expect to—I live in the confident hope that he will one day renew the world, so that even the darkest and most terrible evils of this world will be undone and swallowed up in victory.
Taken from The Unresolved “Why” of Suffering by Andrew and Rachel Wilson, Copyright © December 21, 2021, pp. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
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