Why is there so much suffering in the world?

Suffering comes to us from different quarters and for various reasons, but that which is testing the greatest number now, and causing the most suffering at this time is the war, and many are asking why it should be? Why, if God is good, should there be any war at all? That is a question that calls for an answer. God is good, ten thousand times ten thousand voices bear witness to His goodness, but the world as such has rejected God, and despised the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that His goodness would lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4) and has chosen to follow Satan, the adversary instead of God. In Eden Adam listened to the voice of Satan and turned his back upon God and by that act of disobedience sin entered into the world and death by sin (Rom. 5:13) and when sin came in, peace spread its wings and flew away. “There is no peace, says the Lord, unto the wicked” (Isa. 48:22). The world has been Satan’s world since that day and “suffering and sweat and tears and blood” are the result, they are part of sin’s foul brood.

The Bible flatters none; it shatters the favourite but vain fable of evolution; lays bare the terrible root of all the misery; shows that men have departed from God; that they have lost their Centre, hence their restlessness and discontent, and that they have cast out and crucified the only One who could have put them right. It calls upon men to acknowledge their sins, to repent before God, and to do it NOW, because judgment is surely coming. It tells us that "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness" (Mark 7:21-22). And these are the cause of the misery, and these things — every one of them, the pride and covetousness as well as the murder and theft — are not muddle but sin; and this is the root of all the trouble; it is the evil that springs from the hearts of men that has made the world what it is; and can the misery be mended and the voice of the complaining hushed unless the root of it all is dealt with? Impossible.

Let no one suppose that those who suffer most in this world are the greatest sinners; it is often not so, though undoubtedly the greatest sinners will suffer the most in the lake of fire, for at the last great judgment they are to be judged every man "according to their works" (Rev. 20:13). We have no intention of charging the poor and suffering with the greater guilt. What we desire to do is to show, in a few words from the Bible, what is the cause of the universal misery, and it is plainly taught there that the world's misery springs from the world's sins, and the fact that it rejected and killed the only One who could have put it right.

It is safe, then, to affirm that disobedience to God is the secret; and that, but for sin, there would be neither sorrow nor suffering.

What then makes the insurmountable difficulty? That little word, but awful, personal, and universal reality, SIN. Yet it alone accounts for the ruin, the confusion, the darkness, the uncertainty, and the misery for man everywhere. And what is it for a good, and holy, and righteous God? Bible or no Bible, a world wicked and wretched is a fact before all. But it is a notion worthy of the arch-enemy that the eternal God made it as it is; it negatives all just thought of His goodness, wisdom, and power. That it fell into its actual condition through the transgression of its head is the sole reasonable key, as the Bible distinctly declares it to have been the simple fact. Idolatry and philosophy only added to the mischief by denying the good state which a faithful Creator made to hinge on the obedience of the first man. For man was constituted and tried as a moral being. But they do still worse; they lead men to disbelieve in the Second man, Who being God came in the light and love of God to save all who believe on Him; and Who, also becoming man, died as the one efficacious sacrifice for the sins, and rose for the justification, of those who repent and believe the glad tidings. O how worthy of God and His Son!

In considering the fall of man we are apt to concentrate on the dire consequences for the human race, and to lose sight of what that dreadful event meant for God. The consequences of the entry of sin were certainly enormous, and this is seen as we find almost the whole human race swept away at the flood because of the corruption and violence that filled the old world, and as we see the condition of the world today even where there are the external benefits that have been brought by Christianity. Sin brought with it a guilty and defiled conscience, alienation from God and enmity with Him, the principle of sin in man’s nature, and all the sorrow, suffering and death that fill the world. What man did to the Son of God in putting Him on a malefactor’s cross showed what man in his nature, and in his disposition towards the God who has showed him nought but good.

The Bible alone accounts for the presence of evil, and its resultant misery and death. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It is a righteous thing that misery and death, with all their concomitant evils, should be the lot of man — the righteous dealings of a just and holy God with rebels; and, while sin remains, righteousness demands that all these evils — the fruit of sin — should also remain. Even God's saints, while here in the body, are exposed to the sorrows to which humanity is heir. The Lord Jesus Himself submitted, in grace truly, to all the consequences — sin excepted — of taking a place among men and specially the remnant of Israel, a thing wholly distinct from being made sin on the cross. To remove the sufferings while sin is present would be a denial of God's righteous government.

There is also suffering on account of the possession of the Divine nature. Creation groans all around us. From the highest to the lowest—from the head to the foot—from the man set in responsibility to God down to the worm that has its home in the clod at his feet the effects of the fall are felt; and every living thing is racked with pain. The heart of every one is made bitter on account of sin, and throughout all the earth there is a cry.

In fallen humanity man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. Besides the afflictions of man in body, mind, and estate, there are also the oppressions they suffer one from another. In some parts of the earth slavery still exists and in more enlightened parts the rich oppress the poor. James 2:6. Man is very ready to attribute all such things to the Creator, forgetting that God made man upright and God declared that everything that He had made, including man, was very good. It is sin that has brought in the misery, and man, by becoming the willing servant of Satan, has put himself into the hands of his enemy. Besides the afflictions incident on fallen humanity, there are afflictions that fall specially upon the Christian. There are those he may have to suffer for righteousness' sake as well as for Christ's sake. Another class of afflictions which the Christian has to bear is inflicted directly from the hand of God for his good. See CHASTENING.

But the Bible goes to the root of the matter and gives us the cause of man's inhumanity. He is not as God made him. He has broken away from God's rule, and proclaimed his independence of God, as a star might break away from its orbit. And this determination to be master of his own destiny is the cause of every sorrow and calamity. “By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin,” and the terrible consequences of that primal disobedience, which the whole race by nature has willingly endorsed, is that,

Sin, with its dire concomitants of death and groans and travail, has inverted and upset the entire course of nature, and is, without doubt, the parent of every human ill; nor has the curative machinery as invented by man, his education, science, civilization, etc., accomplished any radical improvement. The sore lessons we are learning, at the close of these six thousand years, should teach us that there is a worm at the root, a poison at the fountain-head, that the genius of the physician has never succeeded in reaching nor can reach. The disease is too deep-seated; it is ineradicable. Hence nothing short of a “new creation” can avail.