As Christians, we have to hold up our hands and say that we don't know why there is so much suffering in the world. We might say that all suffering is the result of our sin, but then did God not create the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil? Did God not create Man with the ability to choose freely? Did not God create the Devil?
While it is true that God did not create Evil, what we human beings cannot understand is why God could not have created the world without the need for evil. This is one of the hardest questions to answer. But does it really need to be answered?
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Passion Sunday bids us reflect on Our Lord offering Himself as the sacrifice for sin. He follows the Law laid down by God through Moses: sin requires sacrifice.
Does the Father send His Son as a sacrifice for sin in order to fulfill the Law? It is possible that the Father, knowing that His Son has to die on the cross, sets up the whole sacrificial system so that those who live before the Incarnation have a chance to participate in Christ's death.
Does Christ follow the Law or does the Law follow Christ?
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If that's hard to understand then you appreciate the difficulty there is in trying to second guess God. God has the whole of Time and Space in front of Him. He doesn't even have to work chronologically, though we are bound to Time. It is as if we live and the world is created around us as the Lord desires.
But this still doesn't answer the question: why suffering? If Jesus has to suffer and die because we suffer and die then why suffer in the first place?
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We can look to the book of Job for answers but we find that God confronts Job with what Job cannot do, and that includes understanding the extent of Creation. We may have all science at our fingertips. We may have all philosophy at our fingertips. But these are all created too. In order to understand Creation fully, we have to be able to stand apart from it. We have to be like God in order to see.
The point that God makes to us is that knowing why there is suffering will not help us when there is suffering. Knowledge is not a medicine. Only Christ is the true medicine for all our sin, sickness and suffering. If we look for meaning in our suffering then we have three choices.
We can look for meaning in this world and watch as this meaning crumbles to dust along with everything else. We will never be satisfied.
We can say there is no meaning in suffering and thus trivialise the pain and heartache of millions. We will live our lives in sadness in the knowledge that this is all there is.
Or we can look for meaning beyond Creation and see the cross as the window into a world that is only accessible to God. God chooses to suffer because we suffer. We suffer because of sin but God does not in any way let sin have the last word. His wrath against Sin is the Cross. And suffering is the cross we have to bear.
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Answering the question "why is there suffering?" does nothing for us. God asks us to have faith. God asks us to trust Him.
Our pain does not mean nothing, no matter what causes it. We must have the humility to know that we cannot know and just offer true love wherever there is pain. Love is the power of power of God's Passion and no human understanding can ever grasp it.
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