As C.S. Lewis puts it in one of my favorite quotes in his book "The Problem of Pain"...
"We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
I've been asking myself the same questions lately that non-believers often ask me, or make comment to me about:
"If there is a God, and He is so great and 'loves' us so much, then why is there so much pain and heartache and evil in the world?"
I think the answer is often simpler than one would like to admit:
He allows pain because of the "Fall."
While this is true that the very moment Adam and Eve ate from tree of evil the Father allowed pain, it doesn't mean a whole lot to the person suffering. I didn't - we didn't - eat from the tree of evil. So why do we have to suffer because of someone else's wrongdoing?
I really don't know the answer to this. I don't know the answer to a lot of things.
And because I had not yet really had a long-suffering in my own life, I now truly understand why other people have asked this question too.
"I'm a good person. I do good things. I pray, I go to church, I eat mostly right, I love my children, I work hard. Why do I feel like I'm being punished, tormented, and strung along? Why do I feel like I'm being teased and have a broken heart? If God loves me, why is He allowing me to suffer and not give me what I want?"
I. Don't. Know.
God allows pain because of our sin. Genesis 3 states:
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
As my cousin put it in one of her own blog post, "writing is extremely healing for me."
Forgive my vulnerability and attempt at openness in advance, but indeed, while perhaps not a healing mechanism, writing is therapeutic.
I don't know why there is so much pain in the world. And I don't know why we suffer. And why if God is so good, so caring, so loving, and all things are possible (Matthew 19:26), that we followers of Him experience pain and suffering just like the rest of the world.
I wish that there was a deeper answer I could offer, from the Lord. I wish I could lean down, whisper, and tell you exactly why we go through what we go through, because I want answers myself.
I've been extremely hurt at times, "mad at Him" once or twice, and downright heartbroken - like many of you - I'm sure. The bottom line is, we are on this EARTH and we suffer. The earth was not meant for eternity. Heaven was. Earth is His creation, His land, His place, that He created for us to live until He comes to rescue us.
But He did not promise that there wouldn't be pain.
The only conclusion I can come to from all my readings and teachings and praying is that even though He allows me to suffer, to feel pain, to question Him, to wonder, and perhaps to worry, is that He simply wants to draw me to Himself.
He wants all of me.
He wants me to find Himself amidst the pain and suffering. He wants my heart. He wants me to find comfort and "answers" and safety in His ways and in His words and in His arms.
He doesn't allow pain because He wants us to suffer. I believe He allows it because He wants us to draw nearer, and nearer, and nearer to Himself.
After all, we are His anyway. From the beginning and to the end.
For Genesis 3:19 says:
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”
"No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul."
-C.S. Lewis
