Why does God put me through so much pain?

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).

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.

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 Christian is not exempt from the sorrows and sufferings that are the common lot of mankind because of the entry of sin into the world, but in his trials the Christian has a resource of which the man of this world knows nothing, even in our God and Father and in His dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith brings God in between the heart and its sorrow, resting in what God has spoken, having the assurance that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). We may not be able to understand God’s ways with us, for they are past finding out, but we know that God’s ways are perfect, and therefore turn to Him, and to His dear Son, to find true solace and sympathy in sorrow, and comfort that is beyond anything man can give.

Down the ages, God has often allowed His own to be evilly entreated, and it is not always possible for us to understand why He should allow wicked men to persecute and slay His saints and His servants. We do know that God allows these things for the purifying of His people, and that all His actions towards His own are in the perfection of His love and wisdom; and even if wicked men seem to prosper, and the righteous are put to grief, yet the day is surely coming when, at the judgment seat of Christ, we shall understand as we cannot now, the ways of God, which are past finding out.

Thus, although the world be a ruin before God, and although it is too evident that Satan is the restless worker of all evil here below, which is brought before us in the plainest manner in this book, God who is above it all, and who seems to take no part in it, carries on His gracious ways, and this to convert and deliver those who have been wretched, vile, and rebellious. It is not that retributive government to which man's heart would constantly limit God, but a government of souls while the world goes on in pride. Man likes to see people punished when they deserve it. It is natural to the heart. There is something in our nature which, when one is not actually suffering or dreading it, likes to find some (shall I say good or bad?) reason why another should be punished if he does suffer. This was at work in the three friends. But the book of Job is intended to show that they were all wrong in their application of this truth. Not that there will not be perfect retribution when the time comes for it, by the only One capable of carrying it out; but that it is only partial now. Christ alone will act perfectly in it by-and-by; but the time awaits His coming. There will be no adequate retributive government till the Lord Jesus takes the reins. He Himself was in this world the greatest of sufferers, as we know; and so the saints were sufferers before Christ, and still more since Christ. At any rate, the grace now displayed is such that God counts it a privilege given us to suffer for His sake; so that we surely ought to be able to bless God for it in a way that Job and no other could, because we have Christ fully revealed. Job did not know why his gracious Master gave him up to such tremendous and reiterated trouble. He had to learn why, and to learn it slowly and painfully, but blessedly at the end. We begin where he ended. Having in Christ the true light of God, we have not only His perfect love, but that there goes on a kind of divine government quite different from retribution; that there is a gracious dealing of God for the good of souls, and connected with it a moral government, unheeded by the world, which, spite of all appearances to the contrary, never fails. It is not a government consisting in what is public, or what natural men can judge of. It is none the less God dealing with souls, and to all that bow to His word and to Himself ineffable blessing. The discipline may be painful, not to say that it must be. What blessing can there be without it in our nature and in this world? The cross tells what it cost the Lord Himself to make our blessing a righteous thing; the manifestation of the same truth in the highest and deepest way. Where is there a single joy for us, once dead in sins but now saved by grace, that had not its root in the sorrows and sufferings of Him who bore our judgment? And so it is for those that learn what sin is in the presence of God.

The characteristic of comfort is that it strengthens the soul to bear its burden with fortitude as well as resignation; and it accomplishes this result by considering the trial in the light of the glory of God. When sorrows overtake and overwhelm the soul, it gives itself many a bitter pang by reiterating the question — Why do I suffer this? Why has this come upon me? And under these circumstances there can he no real comfort, until such a one lays hold by faith upon the fact which scripture abundantly reveals, that the clouds and storms are but agents in the development of the beneficent purposes of God. All things are working together for the accomplishment of good; and this to those who love God and who are the called according to purpose. This we had not known but for the word of God; but He has given it for our comfort, and that we may thereby trace His hand in each event, minute or mighty, which befalls us. Leave God out, and all is confusion and anarchy: a crowd of pitiless misfortunes grinding man to the very dust of the ground from whence he was formed. Bring God in, and the man of faith can rejoice in tribulations also.

God’s comfort can meet us in whatever trial we may be found, for He is the God of all comfort, ministering to the troubled heart a divine solace that dispels anxious care, and brings into the soul the sense of His great love, and the realisation that He knows all about what is happening, not a disinterested spectator, but One who is ordering all for His own glory and our greatest good. He can comfort directly as we go to Him, and pour into His listening ear what afflicts us. Every feeling of the heart is known to Him as is every circumstance in which we find ourselves. Perfect love and perfect skill blend in the circumstances directly ordered of Him, and all that He may allow the enemy to bring against us is controlled by Him, for the enemy is not free to do as he pleases with us.

"That there is abroad among us an unsound view of supreme goodness (or benevolence, as it is called), cannot, I think, be denied. It is akin to that spurious humanity, which so shudders at putting a criminal to death, as to prefer keeping him alive even where there is no human hope of his being recovered to virtue, but every probability of his incurring more and more desperate hardness. The benevolent man is supposed to shrink from inflicting bodily pain on any one, whether for his own good, or as a necessary process for defending others; and where this morbid notion prevails, we must expect people to be much shocked at the broad facts of the natural history of animals, to say nothing of man himself … Pain and suffering are undoubtedly among God's most efficacious means for perfecting all His creatures, and, not least, man; but they must needs be with Him means not ends, if we are to attribute to Him in any sense that which we are able to recognize as goodness; and consequently they must be His plans, either partial and subordinate, or finite and transitory. All theology which contradicts this, darkens and distorts the face of God to us." (Soul, p. 43-46.)}

Circumstances painful to the flesh are the most profitable for the soul. It would be useless for a father to inflict a punishment which would not be felt as one by his child. The work and power of God in us, as well as our own weakness, are manifested in these difficulties. When something trying is before us, God's answer is: "My grace is sufficient for thee." God would have us in His presence in joy; and all which makes us suffer in the flesh is especially profitable.