As an adult who has grown up in the church my whole life I have seen many people come and go through those doors. Most come looking for something they don’t fully understand. They were told their life would be better once they really gave the Jesus thing a chance. Others were dragged by family members or friends whose hope was to unknowingly dunk them in the baptism tank and trick them into heaven. Others, still, were led by the Spirit with their eyes still blurry from the scales which had just begun to fall. 

As a rule, humans are very different from each other, especially in America. We pride ourselves on our rugged individualism and our ability to do it all on our own, with taut bootstraps and blistered hands. However, one thing I know we all have in common, from the wealthy business owner in the front row to the addict suffering withdrawals in the church bathroom to the young mother on the brink of divorce is that we all suffer. 

I’ve thought of every way to write this, with those close to me who are currently enduring extremely difficult circumstances staying close to my heart and at the forefront of my mind. Thinking about my own life and trials, this past year has been the most difficult and if, in the midst of my suffering someone came up and said, “Take heart, Christian, for your suffering is meant for the glory of God.” I can’t sit here and type a lie to say I would hear the truth in what they said; thank them for their optimistic eternal outlook. My first response would be to say, “But, I’m different. I have changed, my heart is clean, I am not supposed to endure heartbreak that feels like it will crush me. I pray for my family daily, how can they be going through hell if I have invited heaven into their homes?” Dare I make myself my own god with a skewed sense of justice and a bent toward moralistic therapeutic deism rather than trust in a Creator who made me for the purpose of worshiping Him, both in and out of my own suffering. 

Mishandling of Job and Suffering

Growing up in church, a pastor who announced that he would be doing a sermon series on suffering would hardly ever need to say which book of the Bible we’d be flipping through. Job, of course, is the quintessential sufferer. A good man, even in the eyes of God, “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” – Job 1:8 (NIV) I encourage you to read the story yourself, but to summarize, Job is a wealthy man who has his entire fortune, estate, and nearly all of his family wiped away in a single day, only to have to his good health tainted with sore boils “from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.” – Job 2:7 (NIV) 

Job is the example most used and most often misunderstood by the church. Joel Osteen wrote in 2018, “In the middle of Job’s darkest hour, when he was the most discouraged and didn’t think it would ever work out, God said to him… “I will fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.” God is saying to you what He said to Job. Joy is coming, breakthroughs are coming, healing is coming, promotion is coming. God is about to fill your mouth with laughter. He’s going to do something so amazing, so extraordinary, you’ll be so overwhelmed, so grateful that all you can do is laugh. Your mourning is going to be turned to dancing, your sorrow turned to joy.” 

I don’t have time to break down how categorically false that statement is, though I will say the verse he uses is taken so completely out of context that it is not even God who says those things, it is Job’s friend Bildad who spends 22 verses accusing Job of bringing calamity upon himself through sins he committed knowingly or unknowingly. Bildad’s understanding of God’s justice is skewed and he “comforts” his friend by telling him to repent of his sins because God does not bring suffering on blameless men. It was bad theology when Bildad said it and it’s bad theology when Osteen says it, too. 

Job is a story not just about the good that God can bring into our life when we are faithful, but ultimately that the good he brings in is undeserved on our part. What have men done that we can compete with the holy justice of God? Here is not where we find our solace in suffering, it is where we learn that we are to “repent in dust and ashes.” – Job 42:6 (NIV) for “The Almighty… is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. Therefore men fear him; he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit.” – Job 37:23-24 (ESV)

I make this distinction because I have held a false view of God’s justice in our suffering due to a misunderstanding and mishandling of the book of Job. It gives us a false sense of righteousness, lending our response to either pride or despair, depending on our circumstances. Pride if we are faithful and have a bounty, despair if we are faithful and receive poverty in return. 

Just like the rest of Scripture, we are not meant to find ourselves in the stories, but to scan them for the glory of God, who is truly at the center of every text. Do not find your answers for suffering in the similarities between your and Job’s stories. Instead, extrapolate the message of grace that is sewn into each and every word of the book – we can do nothing to earn his love and mercy, for it is freely given to those who have faith in the Lord. We are not the determiners of righteous judgement, thank God. 

Muddy Mercy

A much more clear picture of the “why” in our suffering comes in John chapter 9.  

“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.” – John 9:1-7 (NIV)

How telling that Jesus’ own disciples seemed to look to our broken justice system of suffering in repayment of bad deeds for their answers. Jesus not only healed this man of his affliction but He showed His disciples a clear picture of what His mercy looks like to those who are broken. Blindness, both literally in sight, and spiritually to God, is a result of the fall. All of us are born blind and because of our sin nature, we are undeserving of Christ’s muddy mercy which allows us the privilege of seeing His glory. Why was this man born blind? For such a time as this. That His glory would be made manifest to those watching and to those who would hear about the miracle. 

Is that not true of all human suffering? We suffer not because, like they say in Bruce Almighty, “God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I’m the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he’d rather tear off my feelers and watch me squirm.” This is a flawed, humanistic view of God which places us as the victims of His cruel wrath. But friends, it is not so. We suffer first because we live in the consequences of Genesis 3. As long as sin exists in our universe, so will our suffering. Not because of God’s actions, but rather because of our own, which pulls us away from God and back into our own individualistic hell of our own making. Natural consequences exist for our own bad choices, which are not to be blamed on God, and should not be viewed as a punishment from Him, but from our own selves.

The great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon says it like this, “Again, in troubles which come upon us as the result of sin, we must not think we are suffering with Christ. When Miriam spoke evil of Moses, and the leprosy polluted her, she was not suffering for God. When Uzziah thrust himself into the temple, and became a leper all his days, he could not say that he was afflicted for righteousness’ sake. If you speculate and lose your property, do not say that you are losing all for Christ’s sake; when you unite with bubble companies and are duped, do not whine about suffering for Christ— call it the fruit of your own folly.” (Spurgeon.org)

Secondly, we suffer because of God’s grace. It sounds like an oxymoron, but hear me out. After he was healed of his blindness, John 9 says Jesus later found the man and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.” – John 9:35-38 (ESV) This man’s blindness was ultimately the conduit which brought him to belief in the Son of God, who not only saved him from his physical blindness but also from his spiritual blindness. Were he not to have lived through the pain of his circumstance, he likely would not have met the Messiah who healed him with muddy mercy. 

Our own comfort can be an enemy to our growing relationship with Jesus. To quote Spurgeon once more, “It is often so; God makes us ill in body that we may have time to think of Him, and turn to Him….What would become of some people if they were always in good health, or if they were always prospering? But tribulation is the black dog that goes after the stray sheep, and barks them back to the Good Shepherd. I thank God that there are such things as the visitations of correction and of holy discipline, to preserve our spirit, and bring us to Christ.”

Suffering and the Gospel

2000 years ago, Jesus went to a cross and suffered the wholeness of God’s wrath upon Himself for us. His grace poured out upon sinners that though we would endure trials and hardship in this life, we shall be reconciled to Him in His glory in the next. Peter puts it clearly when he says, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed.” – 1 Peter 4:12-13 (ESV) Without Jesus, our suffering will lead to evermore suffering. But purpose changes all things, including perspective. Peter can say “Rejoice!” Because even though our souls may be cast down, our health may be failing, our marriages broken, our suffering remaining, we have a hope in our Lord that He has and will redeem us and we may worship the Lamb who was slain so that our suffering is no longer in vain. 

I leave you with this prayer of encouragement from Paul, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith — that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.” – Ephesians 3:14-21