How Can I Witness About God When He Lets Innocent People Suffer?
Y’all, I don’t usually take a question and immediately turn it into a blog post, but this one tugs at my heart, and I feel the Holy Spirit calling me to address it.
It comes from my friend Shell Giermann, who I’ve known for many years! If you also want to submit a question like Shell did, head over to our contact page.
Let me give you the scenario as Shell sent it to me. She was talking to a friend. This friend “had a strong faith as a child, still believes there is a God, but really wants nothing to do with Him because of life experiences. Her big struggle is how a God who knows all and loves all can allow babies and children to suffer. (She was abused and lost a newborn who lived for 12 hours- and she never got to hold him.)”
“All that to ask - how do I witness to, encourage, and show God’s love to someone who doesn’t understand how a loving God allows things like this?”
Wow. This one really hit me. Let’s see if we can help Shell’s friend reestablish a strong relationship with the Lord!
The Two Questions
The fact is, Shell gave us one question, but there’s another lurking under it. And the lurker is where we must start. The questions are:
Why does a loving God allow difficult things to happen to “innocent” people?
How do I reach people who don’t care about God (or don’t believe He exists) because they’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer to the first question?
Get ready.
Why Does God Allow Difficult Things to Happen to “Innocent” People?
I’m not going to try to spin this answer. Frankly, I don’t know. Do you know? Does anyone know? If you find out, please drop me a line.
Ok, now that we’ve gotten the honest, human answer out of the way, we can dig in.
No one knows why God allows difficult things to happen to “innocent” people. If you’ve noticed, I keep putting quotes around the word innocent. The reason is simple, most of us are not innocent, at least until we’ve been forgiven and cleansed by the blood of Jesus. But babies and children who are too young to understand? Yeah, they’re innocent.
Even so, this leads us to the broader question. Why does a loving God allow bad things to happen? Well, most bad things happen because of the actions of evil people. But we’ve already answered the question, Why Doesn’t God Destroy All the Evil People? If you haven’t read that, it might be good to check it out and then come back here.
Maybe God Causes Bad Things to Happen Because It’s Part of His Grand Plan
Oh, how many times have you heard some variation of that one? You know, someone passes away, is killed by a drunk driver, is abused by another person, or one of many other horrible things that can happen, and the answer is, “It must have been God’s will.”
RIDICULOUS!
God does not cause bad things to happen. God does not bring wrath or punishment on people who belong to Him. God is never the cause of evil. And yet evil happens, often without explanation.
The Massacre of the Innocents
“When Herod knew the magi had fooled him, he grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. This fulfilled the word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet: A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and much grieving. Rachel weeping for her children, and she did not want to be comforted, because they were no more.”
-Matthew 2:16-18 CEB
These verses record what is sometimes referred to as The Massacre of the Innocents. Scholars estimate that as many as several dozen little boys were murdered by Herod’s forces in a failed attempt to kill the young Jesus. Did God make a plan for this to happen? No. But the event did happen, and it was recorded in the Bible. Matthew even shows how it echoes the prophecy of Jeremiah, written at least 500 years before the birth of Christ.
It wasn’t God’s idea for all these boys to be destroyed. It wasn’t God’s plan for families to be shattered with tremendous grief. It wasn’t God’s plan. Evil is never part of God’s plan.
Why did this happen? We don’t know. But it did.
Does God Even Care?
Shell’s friend has an understandable point of view. Why would we want to be close to and to spend eternity with a God who lets these things happen and doesn’t do anything to stop them?
A quick story. When I was in my early teens, I was desperately in love with a girl. Well, it was most likely just hormones, but I thought I was in love. She lived in a larger town about 25 minutes from us. But once a week my dad and I went to a laundromat in that town, and I was excited to find out we were less than a mile from her house! YES! So, I asked my dad if I could walk down and see her while he did the laundry. The answer was no. Every time we went, the answer was no. I could not understand. I was so close! Do you know why the answer was no? Because the laundromat was on the main road, it was very busy, and her house was on the same road. My dad didn’t want a 13ish year-old kid walking along a dangerous road.
Now, I knew I’d be fine, I was sure I could get to her place safely, and yet the answer was always no. But my dad was much wiser than me, recognizing all the potential dangers that I could not see. God is very much like that to us. He is wise beyond compare.
I did not understand why my dad deprived me; I did not understand why he said no. But I understand now. I’m older, wiser, and have more experience.
Do I understand in the moment why God allows some things that are clearly bad to happen? No. But there are occasions when sometime later, with more experience, perspective, and wisdom He helps me to understand. And then there are some things I will never understand until He gives me full knowledge in Heaven.
Yes, God Cares
“Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Cast all your care upon Him, because He cares for you.”
-1 Peter 5:6-7 MEV
God does care about you and those things that cause you grief. He does care about all that you and those that you love have suffered. But we live in a broken, sinful world where sometimes things happen that we do not like and that we cannot control. I am sorry that is the case, but it’s part of the price we pay for original sin and the gift of free will.
How do we know that what Peter said in the verse above is true? That God really does care for us? Because the actions of those who hurt us in this life, and the unexplainable, painful situations we encounter cannot overcome this one basic truth.
“But God shows his great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.”
-Romans 5:8 NCV
And, for those things that are not directly caused by our sins or the sins of others:
“I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.”
-Romans 8:38-39 CEB
In fact, the only thing that can keep us from the love of Christ is ourselves. We alone have the power to choose to send ourselves to Hell.
The Second Question
And now we get to the (slightly modified) second question, the one Shell originally asked.
How do I reach people who don’t care about God (or don’t believe He exists) because they’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer to the question of unexplained suffering?
Toward the end of chapter 6 of the book of John, many of the disciples stopped following Jesus. The reason was that He taught some challenging truths, and they didn’t want to accept them. It seems that’s where we are with Shell’s second question.
Her friend lived through some incredibly difficult experiences and walked away from God. She could not accept the truth that many uncontrollable, painful things happen in this world, and we don’t always understand them. I don’t like that truth either. Each of us has lived with pain, some of you have dealt with very great pain. Yet you continue to be Jesus followers. Why? And why should Shell’s friend come back to Him? Here is a clear answer I can give you, and it comes from the most headstrong of the disciples.
“From that time on, many of His followers turned back to their old ways of living. They would not go along with Him after that. Then Jesus said to the twelve followers, “Will you leave Me also?” Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, who else can we go to? You have words that give life that lasts forever.
-John 6:66-68
“You have the words that give life that lasts forever.” He has the words of eternal life. And He is the only way to Heaven.
I guess that leaves us with a choice. We can accept that we cannot understand everything that happens in this world, whether good or bad, and follow Jesus to Heaven. Or we can decide to reject Jesus because we think that we should have the same level of understanding as God and go to Hell.
On that second option, I like this quote from End of the Matter (click the link to read the whole post, it’s very good).
“In Job 38, we see the LORD answering Job. Through this address, God shows that neither Job nor his counsellors possessed complete knowledge and how limited human understanding really is. When God responds through this passage, He is teaching that there is something more fundamental than an intelligent solution to the mystery of innocent suffering.”
The Answer
Here is the answer to Shell’s second question. We witness to people who have walked away from God due to unexplained suffering by showing them the love of Christ. We demonstrate to them how God cares for them by caring for them ourselves. We teach them that God’s love is ever present by being ever present vessels of His love for them even through their struggle to deal with unexplained suffering.
We keep loving, we keep supporting, we keep staying close to them. We draw ever nearer to them as we also draw ever nearer to Jesus. Jesus didn’t explain away the pain of suffering, He had compassion and He healed it. He still heals our pain, and we can be part of that healing by always loving those who remain in pain. And He wants us to be part of His patient kindness.
“Don’t you realize how patient he is being with you? Or don’t you care? Can’t you see that he has been waiting all this time without punishing you, to give you time to turn from your sin? His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.”
-Romans 2:4 TLB
That is how we witness to those dealing with the pain of unexplained suffering. We love them and through His love draw them back to Jesus.
The Final Word
I will make one request before ending this time together. If you see value in it, please share this post with anyone you know who has dealt with the difficulty of unexplained suffering, whether they are still a Jesus follower of have walked away from Him. Perhaps it could be part of the healing process.
I pray that it is so.
Love you all,
-Troy
Ready to dig deeper? Sign up for our weekly newsletter and we will gift you with a free copy of our one-page 5 Simple Steps to Growing Closer to God! Just complete the form below.