Yesterday, the husband of the principal of the school we taught at the Bahamas died suddenly from blood leakage on his brain. His name was Troy and he was in his mid-50s and just a few weeks away from experiencing the joy of giving his daughter away to be married. So tragic. So random. So few answers to be found. 

Why did that happen to him? Why didn’t God step in? Why is there so much pain in the world? Why do good people suffer while others seem to cruise through life untouched? At some point in life, most of us will bump into a version of the same question: If God is good and all-powerful, then why…?

We’ve all asked those questions. And if you haven’t yet, you probably will.

This Sunday, Cory Hoogsteen and I will be kicking off a new sermon series called “Why? A series exploring how we reconcile a loving God with the suffering of the world” where we’re going to spend some tome wading into the deep end of that question. The theological term for this is theodicy—the attempt to make sense of how a good and loving God coexists with a world that is so often marked by pain, injustice, and suffering.

And right off the top I want to set your expectations accordingly: this series will not offer easy answers. Or, perhaps, any answers! Not because we’re dodging the hard stuff but because we’re being honest about it and the truth is, people way smarter than us—prophets, poets, theologians, philosophers, armchair philosophers, and suffering saints throughout history—have been wrestling with this question for thousands of years and nobody has landed a clean and tidy explanation that wraps it all up with a bow.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t better theodicies than others but it just means that no matter how one slices it, the challenge will never seem to perfectly resolve. And if someone tells you otherwise, I think they’re probably either lying or just ignorant. 

Consider the book of Job. It’s one of the oldest pieces of writing in the entire Bible. And guess what it’s about? A good man who suffers terribly for reasons that are never explained to him. Job cries out. His friends try to offer theories. God eventually speaks – through a series of unending questions to Job. And God’s answer doesn’t provide a rationale as much as he provides a reminder: we are human and God is God. There’s a curtain between us that we simply don’t have the ability to pull back and see. 

So… if you’re coming to church hoping to finally unlock the mystery of why bad things happen to good people—brace yourself for a bit of disappointment. But also—maybe a little bit of freedom.

In my own experience, I know that deep down, answering the why might seem like it’s what I need but truthfully, it rarely resolves the grief or anger or disappointment that suffering brings on. I think sometimes what we need isn’t a solution but maybe just permission. Permission to ask the hard questions. To sit in the tension. To be honest about our doubts. To trust that God isn’t fragile or offended when we wrestle. And maybe to realize that we’re not alone in that wrestling. That’s the direction I hope we’ll move in with this series.

So come. Bring your questions. Bring your story. Bring the parts of your faith that feel strong and the parts that feel shaky. Come with your assumptions and presuppositions in tact but with an openness to be challenged and redirected. I’m praying that God will meet us in all of it.

Perhaps along the way, like Job, we’ll discover the presence of God in our suffering is better than any explanation of it.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Steve