This is new to me, although people who have read CS Lewis and his many writings on grief, may find a similar theme.

I think many of us would easily admit that the biggest question about God in this world is “why does He allow suffering”? For awhile, it didn’t make sense to me either. I heard all the platitudes about Christ’s being beaten and spit on as being equal to our own suffering and while that may seem comforting to some, it didn’t answer anything for me. I did not see how Christ’s own suffering had any equivalence to the suffering of someone like Amanda Berry, who was raped repeatedly for over 10 years while barely ever seeing the light of day in a sick human’s basement.

But, I think I also missed the point. I think we all miss the point. Death, corruption, pain and sin are all things that are part of our universe now exactly because God loves us and He allows us to have freedom to hurt or maim. He also gives us the freedom to choose life and love. As cold as it may sound, if God intervened in every situation, when a human would choose evil, there would be no consequence because God would step in and set everything right. He would be a Macchiavellian/nanny God. There’s also another purpose that suffering serves, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Jesus’ own suffering wasn’t an equivalency of pain. It wasn’t like that torture machine in The Princess Bride and Jesus experienced pain at “11” while the rest of us experience it at “7” or “8”. Rather, the significance of Christ’s suffering comes from his loss of the full connection to God He had and the darkness He saw when the uncreated light of God was taken away from Him. When his humanity was fully exposed to the magnitude of separation from God, He experienced what death really meant to us apart from God’s presence. It was like suddenly having all of his senses taken from Him.

Many also ask why God allows natural disasters and freak accidents? I see these things all as still a part of our free will. The universe is corrupted and the very fabric of reality and creation groans for it’s redemption (Romans 8:22). When God’s reality will finally collide with our reality, then creation’s harmony and true nature will be revealed.

As Christians, we now have the ability to turn suffering from it’s own chaos and point towards the order found ultimately in God. Every bit of suffering is used in order to bring us into total communion with the triune God. This turns mourning into joy, despair into strength, and pain into hope. If we allow it, suffering’s thorny tendrils can consume us and draw us away from his divine presence, but as priests we now have the ability to bless creation and make the elements that oppose us sacraments of God. Learning and practicing this will eventually make “love your enemies” seem not so much like an impossible task.