Why does God allow innocent people to suffer?

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Why Do The Innocent Suffer?

Genesis 1:27-28

November 8, 2015

Pastor Vic Willis

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God

he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them

and said to them, ¡°Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth

and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky

and over every living creature that moves on the ground.¡±

Why does God allow innocent people to suffer?

In all my 35 years of ministry this has got to be one of the most

common reasons given for people not wanting to follow God. The logic

goes something like this: if God is all-powerful and all-loving, and God

allows innocent people to suffer, then God must not be good and he is

not worthy of my worship and allegiance ¨C therefore I reject Him.

Because, if God were good, then He wouldn¡¯t allow innocent people to

suffer!

But you know, someone who rejects God for that reason ¨C all I can

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say is, there must be something else going on, because they really

haven't given careful thought to their logic.

Adam Hamilton does a wonderful job of logically and

biblically explaining why an all-powerful and all-loving God would do

such a thing---why God allows suffering.

Hamilton outlines two commonly held but misguided assumptions

that God should prevent suffering is based on. One is that everything

happens for a reason and that only good things happen to Christians.

Those are false assumptions we Christians can get tangled up in all

too easily ¨C to assume that because I believe in God and follow God then

everything is going to be sweetness and light. Take a look at the

patriarchs of our faith and in real short order you¡¯ll see following God in

the OT and Jesus in the NT was more a guarantee of hardship than of

comfort. Joseph, Moses, David, Job¡­then Peter, Paul and most all the

disciples ending up martyred was indication this was no ticket to easy

street.

And we can easily fall into the trap of thinking everything happens

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for reason ¨C it just sounds good! But it's a Hallmark Card kind of

saying, not a biblical one!

Hamilton explains thinking everything happens for a reason puts

God in a terrible tyrannical position ¨C that of making people go through

bad things for some greater good. God doesn¡¯t make bad things happen,

but often God helps us find meaning and strength as a result of going

through some difficulty. But He doesn¡¯t cause the bad to happen.

If we think "everything happens for reason", then it only follows

that Gods plan all along was for horrible things to happen ¨C children

starving to death every day around the world¨C 30,000 of them, or a little

girl gets raped on her walk home from school ¨C everything happens for a

reason makes God the author of those atrocities.

So, these are dangerous false assumptions people sometimes carry

around with them about God and it adds to the pain and fear when a

tragedy does occur.

Now most of us know that just because you follow Jesus Christ as

Lord, it doesn't mean it's all going to be sweetness and sunshine! Most of

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us know that. But the other false assumption I think is a lot easier for us

to embrace ¨C that there is this master plan that God has outlined for our

life and if we simply follow that plan, then everything is going to work

out just fine!

So, Adam Hamilton does a wonderful job of logically and

biblically explaining why an all-powerful and all-loving God would do

such a thing---why God allows suffering.

And it boils down to love! Of all things ¨C God's love!

I know it doesn¡¯t sound like that makes any sense at all, but hang in

there with me! God allows suffering¡­ even the suffering of innocent

people, because He loves us! Now, you would think He would disallow

suffering because he loves us, wouldn¡¯t you, but in fact, just the opposite

is true!

Because God loves us he gives us the freedom of choice. He does

not force good choices on us. If we choose to take a different path than

God's, then because he loves us he allows us to go a different direction.

You see, without that freedom, there is no love! He doesn't make us

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choose the right thing ¨C if that were the case then he could not love us.

Love requires the option of rejection¡ªit requires the possibility that

love will not be returned. A forced love is not love at all! Think of it¡ª

on a purely human level we call ¡°forced-love¡± a creepy obsession

carried out by sociopaths. We put people in jail who do that. God is not

like that. He gives us freedom of choice¡ªeven the choice to not choose

Him. He loves us by giving us freedom, with the hope that we will freely

love Him in return.

He's also given us, out of his love for us, the authority to care for all

that is around us. The passage from Genesis spells that out quite nicely:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he

created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them

and said to them, ¡°Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth

and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky

and over every living creature that moves on the ground.¡± It¡¯s in this

transference of authority that we take on one of our most Godresembling attributes¡ªthat of treating others and the created order with

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