WEEKLY ARTICLE

by Betsy Childs

  Weekly Article

September 21st 2006

Pain and Purpose
Betsy Childs

Imagine walking into a room to find an infant wailing as if her life depended on it. An adult, piercing the infant's skin with a sharp object, is causing the distress. Any compassionate person would attempt to intervene and rescue the child, wouldn't he? But let's add a few more details into this scenario. What if the woman wounding the infant is a doctor and her instrument is a syringe? What if she tells you that this child must be immunized, or later she could contract a serious illness?

Sometimes something that seems terribly cruel or senseless has a good purpose. That purpose is not always as readily apparent as in this scenario. Although someone familiar with preventative medicine may see the purpose in causing pain to a helpless child, the child itself cannot understand why she is in pain.

There are times in life when we are like this infant. We cannot imagine why God--the one who is supposed to love us--doesn't step in and stop our pain. Assurances from others that God knows best are about as useless as a mother's soothing assurances, drowned out by the infant's cries. "If you love me, why don't you take away this pain?" ask the child's cries.

Philosophers and theologians have wrestled for ages with the questions that arise from pain and suffering. It is tempting to think that if we had more knowledge, we could resolve the Problem of Pain. If we only knew why God allows what seems to be senseless suffering to exist, it would cease to trouble us. But even if the doctor explained the biology of vaccinations to the infant, her mind could never understand it; neither can we, with our finite minds, grasp the divine purposes of God, even if He were to draw back the curtain of his will.

Yet there is reason to hope. As a child grows, he learns to trust his parents long before he learns how inoculations work. A shot might hurt a six year old boy just as much as it hurt his infant sister, but he clenches his teeth in determination to be a big boy. Although he may fear the pain, he doesn't fear that his mother has turned on him by allowing this doctor to hurt him. Why? He has come to trust her. She has told him that this shot will hurt, but it is for his good.

If your "why" questions seem to fall on deaf ears, try asking some "who" questions. Who is God? What do you know about his character? Do you know Him? Are you willing to trust Him in your pain until He reveals his purpose?

This is the kind of trust that Jesus demonstrated for us in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed to his Father, "Let this cup pass from me, yet not my will but yours be done." We are assured in God's word that "this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17). This is not something that we can prove to ourselves. We are given the choice to trust God. Suffering is inevitable. If we choose to trust God in our pain, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Betsy Childs is associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

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