Sep. 20, 2006 - The Problem of Suffering

Posted in Sermon notes

Here is another Sermon by my sweet husband:

The Problem of Suffering

Intro:

1. Tragedy is constantly in the news. Every generation has its fair share of natural and unnatural disasters. We deal with emotional and physical suffering on a day-to-day basis, the innocent and the guilty, the young and the old, Christian and non-Christian alike. Grief, pain, heartache, disappointments, trials and tribulations, death and disease—are all a part of our existence.
2. Many through the ages have abandoned their belief in God because of the presence of evil, suffering, and death. In 1851, Charles Darwin rejected Christianity after the death of his daughter. Similar stories can be told of Mark Twain, Ted Turner, and on and on.
3. Many people choose not to believe in God because of the existence of suffering; it is one of the atheist’s favorite arguments against belief. 
   1. Their argument goes something like this: If God cannot stop suffering then He is not all-powerful. If God will not stop suffering then He is not all-loving.
   2. Here is a quote from H. J. McCloskey: “Evil is a problem for the theist in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil on the one hand, and the belief in the omnipotence and perfection of God on the other. God cannot be both all-powerful and perfectly good if evil is real.”
4. So, how do Christians reconcile the existence of suffering with the existence of an omnipotent and all-loving God? How can there be a loving God in charge of a universe full of sin, suffering, and death?
   1. First of all, such a statement recognizes the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. If God does not exist and we are here as a blind cosmic accident, then there is no such thing as right and wrong. It would be no more wrong for the innocent to suffer than for the ice to melt or the sun to burn. To use this argument is to admit that life is something special and that there is a standard of right and wrong, of good and evil.
   2. Second, we must get our answers from the Bible. 
      1. We can sit here all day and come up with hypothetical situations and “what if” arguments, but that doesn’t prove anything. Their problem is reconciling what the Bible says about God with what they see in the world. So the Bible is where we must go. 
      2. And the fact of the matter is, the Bible definitely affirms that God is all-powerful (Jer. 32:17; Lk. 1:37) and all-good and all-loving (Mark 10:18; 1 Jn. 4:8, 16) and that suffering definitely exists. The Bible never denies the existence of suffering or says something to the effect that only evil people suffer. What the Bible does however, is tell us how evil, suffering, and death came into the world and of the ultimate victory over it. But it has no problem reconciling the existence of God with suffering, and neither should we.

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Sep. 22, 2006 - Great post!