Stu Crosson writes on God, pain, and suffering.
Suffering is a universal challenge we face and have to endure as human beings.
The level and type of suffering we encounter in our lives depends on many factors, but all of us will experience some level of pain, trauma and grief.
If you profess no faith in God, the reality of suffering must be accepted and faced with the best resources you have at your disposal.
Richard Dawkins claimed that the universe had "no design, no purpose, no evil, no good; nothing but blind pitiless indifference".
Wow, that’s a bleak assessment of life. For several decades, I embraced that worldview, but found it to be a hopeless way to live in the face of suffering.
But the follower of Jesus has their own difficulties to reconcile on the topic of suffering. It shouldn’t come as a surprise — after all, Jesus promised us that "in this world you will have trouble" — but it does present us with the difficult question: if God is all good and all powerful, why does he allow us to experience suffering?
There is no simple and straightforward answer.
Eastern religions face the question by assuming that suffering is the result of human desires and the way to finding peace is the path of "non-attachment", or to relinquish your desires.
Is it humanly possible to relinquish your love for your child? To my Western Kiwi soul that seems like another hopeless and impoverished way to live.
What if there is real meaning in our suffering? What if God is bringing something beautiful to life by the struggles we face in this life?
You might well reply "it’s easy for you to say Stu, living in the relative comfort of your Dunedin home in 2025. What if you were living in Eastern Ukraine or what if it was your daughter who was killed by Hamas?"
There are more questions than answers when it comes to suffering, and while my life has been touched by degrees of pain and heartache, I believe the Bible gives us three good reasons for understanding and living hopefully with suffering.
First: God is not indifferent to our pain. You might know that the shortest verse in the Bible is John 11: 35 "Jesus wept". The event that provoked this was the death of Lazarus and Mary’s grief at the death of her brother.
God is recorded in Scripture as being "compassionate, gracious, slow to anger and rich in love" and we see that repeatedly displayed in the actions of Jesus.
Second: My hope is placed in a saviour who promises me a life to come which is defined by the absence of suffering. A life with "no more death, mourning, crying or pain". This is my eternal hope.
Third: The basis for my hope in this restful eternity in heaven is that God entered into this world to suffer in the person of his son Jesus and he suffered more than any of us have: emotionally (betrayal), physically (crucifixion) and spiritually (separation from God).
So, my faith holds that God is not some distant deity indifferent to my plight but a compassionate saviour who enters into our suffering and promises to never leave us nor forsake us.
Regardless of your current framework to understand suffering, I want to invite you to think again. What if your present suffering does have an eternal purpose behind it? You may not see it in the pain of the moment, but God’s word invites you to consider his plans.
My current journey involves supporting a wife with an incurable disease. It’s painful to watch, but I know that my God is good and one day she and I will be clothed with a heavenly body where joy and peace are our complete and permanent reality.
The witness of scripture is that suffering has meaning and purpose.
Here are the Apostle Paul’s words: "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us". Romans 5.
That doesn’t make the journey easy. That doesn’t mean we have no questions. But once you have tasted this love, a measure of God’s healing and peace is yours, and that will enable you to face another day with a quiet and deep assurance that all is well.
■Rev Stu Crosson is the senior minister at Hope Church, Dunedin.
