Suffering With My Thoughts on Suffering, Part 1

Last night on campus, the UNC Christian Apologetics Club hosted a debate on the problem of suffering between UNC's own Bart Ehrman and Dinesh D'Souza, a Christian who's written lots of books and was a part of the Reagan administration.

Since I wasn't invited to be a part of the platform (apparently you had to have your own Wiki page) I figured I'd spout off here to my little blog/Facebook family.

First, in spite of what many well-intentioned Christians try to say, the Christian story doesn't give an answer to where suffering comes from. Before creation, in God's "history," somehow something that wasn't good or loving was introduced.

We get hints that angels rebelled, but what is rebellion? How did that concept come to be when there was just God and angels hanging out?

What we get in the Scriptures is the story that picks up when God decides to create. And what we get is a good God who creates a good creation and puts good people who bear his image in this idyllic location.

And God says to them--go and enjoy! Play, explore, enjoy one another, enjoy me, have lots of sex, do whatever you want and enjoy all of this creation. Just this one thing, this one tree in all of this vast paradise that you need to avoid. Eat of that tree, you'll die.

Of course, that's what happens. And so suffering results. Five thousand years of human history tell our story of suffering and pain and brokenness. Of people suffering and inflicting suffering on one another.

And so suffering, contrary to at least one opinion, is not God's problem. It is emphatically our problem. Humans suffer. God does not. We introduced suffering into a good creation. And we bear the scars and experience the consequences.

Suffering is our problem, not God's. Unless God chooses to enter into the situation, we are stuck in suffering without hope for redemption.

But the Christian story is this: when we were dead in our suffering, God did not leave us there. He rolls up his sleeves, and enters into our junk. God chooses to make our problem his problem. He enters into our suffering, takes it on himself, and he conquers and redeems it.

That's the good news. That's the God of the Christian story.