Is God Indifferent to our Suffering?

Is God indifferent to our suffering?

1 Corinthians 15:22
22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (NIV)

There are times when it seems God has no heart when He allows the atrocities we see and endure. How can a good God seem so indifferent to human suffering? These are human thoughts with limited human understanding. It is only when I look deeper into God’s motive that I can see how what feels jarring has another side doused and set on fire with pure love. When God punishes the whole human race by allowing the sinful nature to be passed on by birth because Adam ate a piece of forbidden fruit is one of these times. The punishment was the sinful nature bringing with it horrific pain and suffering.

Before eating the forbidden fruit, man was innocent, but not perfect. In other words, Adam had not sinned because His character was pure, but because his innocent mind was unable to conceive a sinful thought. It seems like it would have been better for God to never have allowed temptation. However, God’s purpose of creating man was to have a loving relationship. And true love requires a choice. God allowed temptation to give Adam an opportunity to choose Him or reject Him. This was the only way for God’s purpose to be fulfilled in man.

Nevertheless, it seems that God could have limited the punishment to Adam and Eve. But God knew every life would have ended the same. He would have needed to send billions Jesus’s to die for each soul instead of one man for every soul. The potential of life change would be limited to one soul at a time with bloody crucifixions happening by the millions each day. How much worse would the world be then?

He punished all of mankind because of one man’s sin so that He could redeem mankind through one man, Jesus. To defeat sin for all in a single moment on Calvary reveals His goodness and power not to mention how it minimizes the horrors of sin.

When God seems to allow or even condone barbarity, whether in Scripture or in our life today, we must trust Him and seek the Spirit for wisdom to discern the deeper truth. If we ask for wisdom, He will give it, then we will see the power and love of God.

Prayer: Lord, help me today to not blind myself by not looking deeply enough into what you have allowed in the world and in my life. Help me to see Your loving purpose in all things. Amen.