Last month in Cambodia we were immersed in a beautiful culture and nation that has been marked tragically and severely by suffering, violence, and loss.
Today, half of the population of Cambodia is under the age of 20, and 80 percent is under the age of 30. Only 3 percent of the population is over the age of 65.
A generation of Cambodians has been wiped out. Mothers, fathers, grandparents – gone. Bearers of culture and tradition and love – erased.
This is because 2 million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979; 30 percent of their population died in the less than 4 years. Even more killings continued until a treaty was signed 22 years ago in 1991. Entire families were wiped out by execution in prison/torture camps; exhaustion from 14-16 hour workdays in the fields; starvation; disease; and land mines.
Sadly, forces of violence and dehumanization have not grown weary over the years. They follow us into the present.
Last month the world was blindsided with news of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 little children were shot and killed in their classrooms, as well as six school staff members.
A few weeks later, we were again stunned by the news of the 23 year old woman who had been gang raped on a bus in New Dehli for hours, then left to fight for her life in a Singapore hospital. She died days later.
This kind of news is difficult to stomach. It’s difficult to begin to express the human depravity and evil that are behind such actions.
And yet other forms of this dehumanizing evil are around many of us often and were certainly around us last month. It was all around our hotel, as I painfully saw young women, just like me, lined up outside the bars on our block, a red light district in Phnom Penh.
And as we crossed from Cambodia into India, the gut wrenching news followed: 600 women were raped in 2012 in New Dehli alone, and every 20 minutes a rape is reported in India.
In both countries, it was extremely difficult for me to look upon the men who perpetuate such violence against women with God’s eyes.
The horrible mystery of evil and suffering is one that has kept many from believing in an all-powerful, perfectly loving God. For a long time it kept me in bitterness and confusion, not understanding and bereft of hope.
I don’t know the reason for such tragedies and suffering. What I know is that we live in a fallen world, that we have free will, and that we often use that free will to run away from God and into sin and brokenness.
But I am no longer satisfied with this simple answer, however true it is. Because this is a big issue, not just to me, but to all 7 billion people who walk this earth. Because we have all experienced suffering in some form or another in our lives, and it is keeping millions from the ONLY hope that exists in such pain.
It is personal to me because it is keeping my family and friends from seeing the truth about their Creator.
These past few weeks, I’ve searched for answers. Here’s a glimpse of what I got.
In Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he writes that the only way to know a human law is unjust is if there is a divine law, a higher law, from God. If there was no God and no divine law, there would be no way to know if a particular human law would be unjust or not. Then, when someone says, “That law is unjust,” it would only be according to their standards, and why should their standards be privileged over someone else’s?
Taking this a step further, if there is no God and there is no higher divine law, then how can we say that any historical event is unjust? If there is nothing but nature, then there is nothing more natural than violence. It’s how you and I got here: natural selection, the strong eating the weak. If there is no God, then on what basis could you object that the natural order of violence is unnatural? On what basis could you ask for a better world?
So, if you don’t believe in God, suffering and evil is as big or is even a bigger problem than if you do believe in God. We don’t sidestep the problem of evil by denying the existence of God; we actually make the problem bigger (philosophically) for us.
But if we do believe in God, He offers us three ways in which we can face suffering and evil in our lives, as it is presented in 1 Peter 1:3-13. This involves: (1) looking back to something, (2) looking ahead to something, and (3) looking into something.
(1) In order to face suffering and evil in this world, we must look back to what Jesus did on the cross.
In the Old Testament, suffering and pain is likened to fire, or a furnace through which you put gold or other metals. In Isaiah 43, God promises us, “When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame be kindled upon you.” God does not say that we will not go through fiery trials, or even if we will go through fiery trials; He says when you go through fiery trials, I will so love you that it will be as though I am walking with you, and if you sense I am walking with you, you will not be consumed, but refined. Suffering will not give you bitterness, but character of soul and faith.
How do we know this is true?
This is the answer of the New Testament.
Not until you get to the cross of Jesus Christ do you realize how far God went to be with us in our affliction.
On the cross we see God, the subject of unjust suffering, weakness, and death. We see the Father losing His only Son. We see Jesus screaming out in pain, “WHY?! Why have you forsaken me?” He suffered everything we have ever suffered and more because His sufferings went way beyond the physical. He was experiencing cosmically what the world’s sin deserved.
It should come as no surprise to us that the human race wants to be its own master. We want to be in charge, but the natural consequence of that sin (to refuse God in our lives) is in fact what we choose: to be cast out of the presence of God. When that happens you lose the source of all light and life.
Jesus experienced cosmic, absolute, infinite suffering. He experienced and suffered hell. Literally.
Let’s take our question to the cross. God, why do you allow evil and suffering to continue?
The cross might not tell you what the answer to that question is, but it can tell you what it is NOT. It cannot be that He doesn’t love us or that He doesn’t care. We don’t know the reason, but we know that it cannot be that He is indifferent to us because He plunged himself into our sufferings and experienced it so that some day He could end all evil without ending us.
The cross tells us what the answer can’t be: that He doesn’t care.
Because Jesus went into the ultimate furnace for you, the only furnace that can really consume you, there’s your assurance that He is walking into your personal furnaces with you. No matter how hot it is, He is walking next to you.
(2) In order to face suffering and evil in this world, we must also look ahead to the living hope, or the power that gets you through that furnace, an inheritance kept in heaven that is not strictly spiritual, but is physical too: the promised new heavens and new earth. We know with certainty that we will get it because of the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. His resurrection is the foretaste of the resurrection to come.
Scripture tells us that this resurrection is not compensation for the life we lost; it is the restoration of this life! This world, your body, your loved ones, your homes will be restored to you, as pure and unfading and imperishable and unspoiled!
Scripture says that suffering and death will be swallowed up by victory. This means that every tragedy and every injustice will be brought up into our future glory and resurrection and make it even better and more glorifying than it would have been without those experiences.
Dostoyevsky gets to the essence of this hope we have in the glorious, future resurrection, in The Brothers Karamazov, where he writes, “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed, that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
(3) Lastly, in order to face suffering and evil in this world, we must look into the gospel, the story of God saving us through Jesus Christ!
Hebrews 12:2 states, “For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross.”
What joy do you think motivated Jesus to take on hell?
We know that Jesus’ living hope is not the bliss of heaven with His Father because that is what He left to come to earth.
What did He not have in heaven that caused Him to come to earth? What could make infinite suffering worth it?
Isaiah 53 says, “My righteous servant shall justify many.” This tells us that you (yes, YOU!!!) are His living hope!
You are what He did not have in heaven. For YOU He came to earth, went to the cross, and plunged himself into hell.
You – perfect, restored, glorified – YOU filled Him with so much joy and infallible resolve that He went into the furnace and came out with joy.
The thought that you are His living hope will make Him your living hope. It will enable you to walk through the furnace with Him. Maybe you won’t see Him, but you will trust that He’s there, and that He loves you, and you will love Him no matter what comes your way.
