If God is real, why does he let little children die of AIDS? Why does he wipe out thousands of people with earth quakes and hurricanes? Why did he let my friends kill themselves? Why doesn’t he wipe out disease, hunger and war? If god really cares about us, why doesn’t he do something?
Why do bad things happen to good people?
I struggled with these questions for years and years. Even now, as I say them, I feel a knot of anxiety in my chest. I am seriously asking these questions. I really have friends who have killed themselves. I obsessively watch the new, and usually know about which diseases and natural catastrophes are plaguing humanity during the current news cycle. Just recently, a Thai navy seal named Saman Gunan died as he was trying rescue a boys school soccer team who has been trapped in a cave for nearly two weeks. If there’s ever been a case of something extremely bad happening to a good person, Saman Gunan certainly qualifies. And, I’m sure you can think of even more poignant examples. But, my purpose for now is not to make a detailed list of every horrible thing that has happened in the history of humanity to date. My purpose is to attempt to answer one of the fundamental questions of human existence. Why does suffering exist?
Hinduism addresses this question in its core text, the Baghavad Gita. According to this ancient story, suffering is an inevitable part of life. It’s every person’s duty to understand their role in society, in their family, and in the grand scheme of the universe. Only through performing one’s duty faithfully can one eventually escape suffering through a cycle of death and rebirths.
Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, explained that suffering comes from desire, which is quite insightful. Think about it: Whenever you suffer, it’s because you want something you don’t have. You want a good meal, you want a boyfriend or girlfriend, you want a job, you want a vacation from your job… no matter what it is you don’t have, the fact that you want it is what causes you to suffer.
So far, I’ve already mentioned two of the four biggest religions in the world that have put the question of suffering at the very core of their teachings. I can also mention how many atheists and agnostics think about the idea of suffering. Many atheists and agnostics, who believe there is no evidence or insufficient evidence that any gods exist, instead base their worldview off the idea of materialism. I don’t mean consumerism, the idea that the best pleasure in life is to gain material things. I mean the idea that all that we should consider are the physical things we can detect with our five senses. Another name for this mind set is “naturalism.” Many materialist or naturalist atheists and agnostics believe that suffering a random consequence of existence. If you or your friend gets hit by a car, it’s because someone wasn’t paying attention. They were distracted by a random coincidence, like a glare on their windshield or the sound of a large metal crate falling off its carriage.
These are all very interesting ideas to me, well worth discussing. But, at the moment I want to discuss how my religious tradition addresses the problem of suffering. I’m mainly mentioning other traditions and philosophies right now to show that I understand and appreciate them. Studying faiths and beliefs other than my own has always intrigued me, and I’ve learned a lot from doing so. All the same, I am a Christian and at this point, I want to delve deeply into my own religious text to see what it has to say.
This may be my own experience, but I feel like in the West, Christianity is often depicted as ignoring the question of suffering. Critics of Christianity say that the eternal, pain-free concept Heaven is a childish conciliatory fantasy to make up for the traumatic experiences we all have here on Earth. There are many strong criticisms of Christianity worth talking about, but in my opinion, this is not one of them. Critics like these have never read the book of Job.
Job is actually considered to be the oldest book in the Bible, in terms of being written first. The book of Genesis describes the beginning of the universe, and so it’s put first in the narrative order of the Bible. But judging by contextual clues, many Bible scholars believe Job was actually written before Genesis. There’s a nice, succinct list of reasons for this belief at www.lavistachurchofchrist.org.
At this point, I want to point out that Christians and Jews both regard the book of Job to be sacred scripture. While I’m sure that many of the things I say will be in agreement with how many Jews interpret Job, I just want to mention that I am approaching this book from a Christian perspective and there will certainly be many places where I part ways with the Jewish perspective.
The story of Job is an archetypal story of bad things happening to a good person. Job is a “blameless, upright” man who honors God daily. He has ten children, and is one of the wealthiest men in the region. Then, in a single afternoon, he loses everything—his wealth, his children, and eventually his health. This all takes place in the first two chapters. Even worse, this all happens explicitly with the consent of Yaweh, the god who Job honors so devotedly. Then, for the next 35 chapters, Job debates with his friends about the justness of his fate, and the justness of the god who has allowed him to suffer to such an extreme. Finally, in the last five chapters God himself answers Job. Job accepts God’s answer, and in the end everything he had lost was restored to him.
Is this a satisfying end to the story? I actually think it’s not, in the brief summation I’ve given here. It is a very childish, surface-y idea that God would allow his own creations so suffer so drastically just to prove a point, and then set everything back up as if nothing happened. I remember feeling that was when I was young and first told this story in the basic form I already stated. But, I was still supposed to respect and appreciate this story. Rather than walk away from my faith, or deny my own misgivings and accept it blindly, I decided to actually read the book. As of today, I’ve read and reread Job more than most other books of the Bible. Although I still find its message disquieting and, to be honest, ultimately dissatisfying, I still feel there’s so much to learn from it that I decided to dedicate a whole journal to it.
For however long it takes me, I plan to carefully and seriously read Job. I want to share my thoughts and questions with you, and I thank you for joining me as I take this literary journey. At any rate, I hope you’ll appreciate that Christians such as myself are unwilling to overlook the question of suffering, and neither is the oldest book in our sacred scriptures.