Why does God make us suffer?

In 1983 a famous Rabbi in the US, Harold Kushner, published a book about the problem of suffering. In it he suggested that we should not blame God for sufferings (which is right); then he goes on to say that God is good, but that He cannot help it when evil befalls His people (which, of course, is a wrong thesis). Perhaps we may remind ourselves at this point of Romans 8:28, where we see the very opposite of Kushner's claim. God not only allows adverse circumstances, He is even in full control and uses them to form believers in His school' (Rom. 5:3-5; Jam. 1:3). His ways ultimately, and surely lead to the fulfilment of His purpose, that we should be conformed to Christ, the Firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). Why do we have sufferings? Is it not also, to make us realize that we are living in a world which is in direct opposition to God's will? (cf. 1 Peter 2:15).

God does not cause the suffering to His own, but He allows it to happen, so that His servants can benefit from the experience (e.g. increase their faith), and also for His own glory. Two examples are: Job, whom Satan tested to the uttermost, see Job 1 & 2, and Peter, whom Satan desired to sift as wheat, Luke 22:31.

The question has been often asked, Why does God allow the people on whom He has set His love to suffer in this way? and the answer is simple. It is because He loves them. There may be, there are, other reasons, but this is the chief. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and if the heart wander chastening is necessary. The wise man tells us, "By sorrow the heart is made better," and experience teaches us the truth of this. How readily will evil attach itself to the best of us! but in the furnace of affliction the dross is separated from the purer metal, and consumed. Moreover, when we endure chastening, God deals with us as with sons; and every trial which visits us, were we but patient under it, would be fruitful in blessing to our souls. True, the experience of passing through the trial is not pleasant; it would be no trial if it were; but a morning of joy succeeds the night of sorrow, and in the quiet after-time we say with David, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted."

Secondly, we are reminded that there is a need for these sorrows, for these trials are for “a season, if need be”. The Father does not cause His children a needless tear. The needs be is to prove our faith. This does not mean to prove whether we have faith, but rather to make manifest the preciousness of the faith we have. Gold is not put into the fire to prove that it is gold, but to bring out the precious qualities of the metal. So God proves our faith by various trials to bring out the precious qualities of our faith. Faith, counting upon God in the trial, leads to submission to what God allows: faith in God enables the soul to wait in patience (James 1:3). Faith in God enables the believer to be steadfast against the attacks of the enemy (1 Peter 5:9). The soul may have true faith, but when the trial comes these blessed qualities of faith — submission, patience, steadfastness, confidence and dependence upon God — become manifest.

(Vv. 2-4). The Apostle commences by encouraging us to rejoice in the trials that become the occasion of developing the practical life of godliness. Firstly, he tells us that trials test and prove the reality of our faith. Secondly, they are a means used by God to develop patience, or endurance. Thirdly, if patience is allowed to do its work, it will lead to a well-balanced Christian life, in which our own wills are refused and God's will is accomplished. For this we must “let patience have her perfect work.” The work of patience is to break down our self-confidence and self-will and teach us that, apart from God, we can do nothing. When patience has had her perfect work, the soul will show its submission to God in trial by bowing to what God allows and waiting for the Lord. “It is good that one should both wait, and that in silence, for the salvation of Jehovah” (Lam. 3:26 N.Tn.).

We still listen to James and he tells us that the trying of our faith "works patience," and patience, as you know, has in it the thought of endurance. It is the testing of your faith that works endurance. God permits the trials to come upon us in order that we may be tested, and patience having worked her perfect work we may be perfect — that is, carried to completion — and entire, wanting nothing. The common notion is that temptations and testings and trials are merely dreadful weights. We say, if only I were not tied down by these difficulties what a good kind Christian I could be. But again I have had to revise my thoughts on that subject. I discovered after all I was not right.

On the other hand, as we find in the third subsection (vers. 5-11), there is a character of suffering on our part which was not and could not be in His. For us there is discipline, because of what we are: the trials by the way being overruled of God so that we should be thus made "partakers of His holiness." As it is put in Romans, "tribulation worketh patience" — the subduing of our wills to God; "and patience experience" — the experience of what His will is; "and experience hope."

Yes, God in infinite and tender goodness can, and does, bring His children through sorrow and suffering. He did it with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and others, and He is doing it to-day. He may chasten for sin, as corrective, or He may discipline the soul as seeing danger ahead, which surely is preventive, and, as in the case of Job, He may put us through a good deal of trial, that we may learn ourselves, and enter better into the knowledge of Him — which is surely promotive.

(2) But though infinitely above man, and beyond his comprehension, God is not indifferent to His frail creatures, nor arbitrary in His dealings with them. When once the soul is subject to God, and has taken its true place, He can unfold His ways to it. As soon as it is ready to admit that God has some wise purpose in view, He will show that affliction is but one of the methods of God's dealings with men, and that it has a definite object. This, Elihu now proceeds to explain. So long as Job accuses, he gets no answer; let him submit and God will make all plain.

The problem handled in the book is the moral government of God: how to conciliate His righteousness with the sufferings, and even extreme sufferings, of a just and godly man? how to understand the permission of evil, in its worst form of malignant persecution, with His own good, and this before and apart from His revelation in Christ and by redemption? The books of Moses prepare the way for His government of a people, His own elect Israel, where all was to be manifest and a testimony before the world. Here it is His dealings with a soul before the true light shone, and the veil was rent, and sin condemned in the cross, along with the expression of exercises of heart and conscience under God's dealings. Now that we are reconciled to God by Christ's death and know ourselves to be in Christ before God, there is or ought to be a wholly new experience. But it is of the deepest interest and profit to see how the believer was enabled, not merely to walk uprightly when things were prosperous in an evil world but to confide in God spite of adversity and crushing affliction, and not only to submit to His will as chastening but to measure and abhor himself in dust and ashes before God. The beginning teaches that not Satan but God is the source of the action, the middle that He only and effectually carries forward the true lesson for the soul, the end that He is exceeding pitiful and of tender mercy. A whole long book devoted to the exercises of a soul in suffering, and he a Gentile, and this in the canon of the Jewish scriptures from the first! But it is not yet what some call the "mystery of the cross:" this was reserved for Christ.