No one likes to suffer. We avoid it as much as we can. Yet, suffering is a state most of us will enter into at some time. If God permits suffering there must be a good reason.
First, the ability to feel pain is a necessary part of our human body. It is a neutral condition. If we did not feel pain, then we would have no warning when we are doing something dangerous. There are some people who do not feel pain, and they are in constant danger precisely because they cannot gauge what is beyond the human body's limits.
Still, there are many different forms of suffering besides physical pain. Emotional suffering can be the worst type of pain for many people. Feeling unloved is perhaps the greatest suffering anyone endures.
No one understood suffering better than Jesus. His ministry was full of physical healings. The power He displayed was remarkable. He is the Power that could not just stop illness, but take away the cause of suffering. The root cause of suffering is sin. If there is suffering in the world, it is because we fell away from God's plan for us. Seeing how much suffering there is today, we know that sin is oozing in every family, in every society, in every human person.
Of course sin results in innocent people suffering along with the guilty. That is why children tend to suffer and why we find their suffering the hardest to endure. Many people reject that God exists based on the fact many children suffer. Is this a just judgment?
With freedom comes the ability to affect not just our own lives but that of others. We were made free precisely because in order to love, we must be free to not love. A rock is perfect in its function but no one wants to have a rock as a companion. God made us to be companions for one another. Love must be a choice freely made. Therefore, we are also free to choose to live in a way that will bring us suffering. If we choose to do evil things, we will sometimes cause innocent people to suffer as a result. It isn't God's will, it is our wills that make suffering a reality. So, God has nothing to do with children suffering, rather, we have caused it by our evil choices.
Jesus plainly spoke of the necessity of suffering in this present life. We do not have the foresight to know what good awaits us after we suffer our own death, but we have Jesus' words that there is no suffering in heaven since everyone does God's will.
Jesus told His followers they would have crosses, or suffering, to endure in this world. There is a command from Jesus to take up our cross. In our present life, God's will is that we trust Him. If we rebel against our pain, we find a bitterness inside ourselves. We become a slave to suffering, forced to obey its laws and hating what it does to us without a means to stop it.
If we accept our sufferings, then we find a peculiar thing happens. We become able to endure it much better. We can empathize with the suffering of others. We end up loving others more. Accepting suffering causes us to lift ourselves up to God as an offering of love in obedience. It becomes the choicest of gifts because it has cost us the most, the sacrifice of ourselves.
As for the meaning of suffering, it leads us to a new birth in Christ. We are transformed. We are not broken as much as reconfigured into a new person that knows God has a plan for us. Those who suffer are like Christ, and just as Jesus is risen, they too will be raised up. There is a surge of spiritual growth when we take up our cross and carry it.
The next life of everlasting happiness is our promise in Christ. The suffering we endure now will be long forgotten in God's house.
A long time ago I thought I was a writer. Because my parents were practical, I went into teaching. About ten years ago, I began to write again.
I hold a B.S. degree in Elementary Education from Penn State University (University Park). I enjoy gardening, reading, Pittsburgh sports, and cooking, but not in that order. My regular job is being a wife and mother.
