How can we make sense of what has happened recently? More than 125,000 dead and the death toll is climbing. Where is God in the midst of such suffering? Here are some thoughts on the issue:
1. The biblical perspective commonly taught on the subject of suffering is that it can be used by God either as a form of chastisement or temporary judgment (as opposed to final judgement in hell) for sin. It can also be used by God to build character, build faith and perseverance and to reveal what is in the heart of man. Suffering teaches us not to rely on ourselves but on God which is ultimately crucial if we are to learn to appropriate grace. But one may ask how does such a theory sit with the thousands who have died? Especially the young children and infants. Here we turn to our next possible answer.
2. The second biblical answer we can give is that suffering is caused as a result of the sin of man. When Adam sinned, the natural world fell into bondage to decay and nature began to progressively breakdown. Natural calamity like earthquakes, etc. result simply because of the breakdown of natural order. God does not cause the suffering but allows it because his salvation of the world is being systematically unfolded in his perfect time. God's approach in dealing with the issue of sin was first to address the evil in the heart of man by Christ's death on the cross. By the cross, the penalty and power of sin was broken in the life of the believer. The next stage of salvation is the second coming when God will transform the physical bodies of all believers and restore the natural order disrupted because of sin. God is not sitting by idle in the midst of sin and suffering. He is intimately concerned about it but we must trust that the unfolding of his perfect salvation can only take place in his perfect timing.
3. The philosophical perspective on the quest for meaning in suffering is a more complex one. When someone asks for meaning in suffering, there is a presumption of order and logic, ie. a rationale answer, that things must ultimately make sense. This presumption can only stand if one believes in creation and the fact that the universe is ordered by an Almighty Being who works all things for a purpose. Without the acknowledgment of the existence of God, we are only left with evolution, which is ultimately the theory of randomness and chance. In such a theory, there is no place for the question "why". Things just happen because it does. Natural forces of physics, chemistry and biology interplay. DNA, molecules and forces determine our future. There is no higher purpose, no transcendent rationality. Like the role of the dice, things just happen. As a philosopher once said, "DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is and we dance to its music." Without God, when we look out at the stars and shout for an answer, there is only the defending silence of an disinterested universe. The atheist who tries to disprove the existence of God by pointing to the lack of meaning in the present suffering finds that his denial of God invalidates his very question. Without the presumption of God's existence, he cannot justify his need for a reasonable answer to his search for meaning.