Why Do Christians Suffer? (And how this question has changed my life!)

PLEASE PIN THIS! Why do Christians suffer?

  Why do Christians suffer? That God allows suffering for the world seems to be a no-brainer. God is supposed to protect and bless believers and punish non-believers.

Besides the blatant fact that this isn’t how life goes, this belief represents a sad misunderstanding of God’s character, an issue I will talk about in a later post.

For the moment, I want to focus on Christian suffering. Because I am a Christian, and right now, I’m suffering just about as much as I ever have.

Let’s get one of the more popular questions on the topic out of the way, simply because it’s easy to answer.

Why do Christians face trials?

The answer to that question is found in the book of the Bible that contains the most direct, in-your-face, and comprehensive advice for believers: James. Recognizing that suffering was a major issue that his brothers and sisters in Christ struggled with, he addressed it right out of the gate, in the second verse of the first chapter of his famous epistle.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness [James 1:2]….”

God allows trials to come to test our faith so that we can become stronger. When we grow stronger, we grow more loving, more patient, more able to resist temptation and more courageous in the face of persecution.

Without trials, we would remain like babies in diapers, always dependent on others to take care of us, no ability to live out a meaningful life that glorifies Him.

Thus, there is a distinct purpose of suffering for Christians. Yeah, I know, it would be totally cool if God would make it so that we could be spiritual powerhouses without having to go through hardships, but if that were the case, Christianity would become a commodity.

Let me explain.

The proper Christian perspective on pain.

I once had a Christian friend who began dating an atheist. He eventually became a Christian, but struggled with the hard fact that God allows innocent children to die. One day, he woke up with a revelation swimming through his head: if God protected every child, they would be exploited. They would be taken onto planes, into war zones, etc., because the adults using them would know they would be safe as long as a child was at their side.

In other words, children would become commodities.

 So it is with suffering and faith. If God automatically protected everyone who claimed faith in salvation by Yeshua’s blood, everyone would become a Christian. Not people who cared about God’s holiness or having a relationship with their heavenly Father. Not people who wanted to worship their Creator. Christianity would be even fuller of selfish and self-centered people who justify their sins than it is now.

And, the freedom to choose God, to accept Christ, would be nullified. Nobody likes to suffer or experience pain. So the “choice” to follow Yeshua wouldn’t be much of a choice at all.

Christianity would become a commodity.

Instead, God gives us a real choice. We can go through hardships without His presence and guidance, but with the apparent freedom to live without having to follow moral laws. Or, we can experience God’s comfort in suffering, which, according to our Savior, is certain to include at one point or another persecution for our belief. And that’s all while having to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (see Phillipians 2:12), because believers are to be ever mindful of the Lord’s holiness and how we are to be pursuing it.

So you see that the choice to become a Christian is not an easy one. It may end up bringing more trials than keeping Yeshua at the end of a ten foot pole!

Still, you might continue to find this idea, that a Supreme Being who is supposedly good allows suffering and pain, to be hard to swallow. So let’s go a little deeper.

If God is good, why is there suffering?

People, regardless of their spiritual bent, experience hardships and trials of all kinds. You might think you’re alone in that aspect, based on the happy faces everyone shows on social media. But those happy faces hide a world of hurt. And most of those faces secretly demand a reason for their suffering.

What follows are those reasons, aside from the trials God either sends or allows in order to grow His people’s faith. I end with the reason most pertinent to me at the present time.

Reason #1: We live in a fallen world.

Yeshua promised that in this world, we would have tribulation. Why? Because people sin. I know that’s not a popular word nowadays, and no wonder. We moderns have reached the point where we think we can do life all by ourselves with no help from the Divine, and we don’t want to be told we’re doing something wrong.

The word “sin” comes from the Greek word hamartanó, and enfolded within the word is the idea of having deviated from God’s law, or of having failed morally. The word in ancient Greek was often associated with archery, when an archer didn’t hit the target (see this page at the BibleHub site). In the New Testament, it’s used metaphorically to refer to people breaching their relationship with God by breaking the divine law of love.

Let me break down the “fallen world” thing as it relates to suffering.

When we aren’t walking in divine love, we are selfish.

When we are selfish, we think only of our own wants and needs, ignoring those of others.

When only a small fraction of humankind is living selfishly, they make choices that cause others to suffer, and the suffering spreads like a ripple effect.

But it’s not just a small fraction of the Earth’s population who live selfishly. It’s the vast majority.

That we have produced so many problems on the planet, and well-meaning organizations attempting to solve certain problems end up conflicting with the goals of other well-meaning organizations trying to solve other problems, does nothing to improve the dilemma.

Reason #2: Demons attack unbelievers as well as believers.

Evil spiritual beings exist. They are real. They are not a myth invented by people trying to explain disease and bad luck. A person doesn’t have to believe that the Genesis 1 Creation story requires a literal interpretation to know that it has some basis in real events.

Just so, the serpentine creature’s temptation in the third chapter has basis in reality. The apostle Peter wasn’t being metaphorical when he wrote that “the devil roams about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour [1 Peter 5:8].”

Many Christians have seen demons; others of us have experienced, after telling the devil to go away, in Jesus’ name, a lifting of darkness or an oppressive feeling.

I don’t believe that the enemy of our soul causes nearly the number of trials that some do. For most of us, our stupidity, impulsivity, and sin do the devil’s job without him having to lift a single finger. But sometimes, diseases or accidents are instigated by the invisible realm of the spirit. Once in a great while, a demon directly incites a person to abuse, assault, or murder another.

But those negative thoughts that keep going through your brain? They might equally be caused by the whisper from the dark spirit realm as they are by a brain chemical imbalance. And those whispers bring you down so low that you lose all perspective and all ability to make wise decisions, leading to pain and trials you may otherwise not have faced.

Reason #3: God is disciplining.

The verse from which this reason comes, Hebrews 12:6, has been improperly explained due to the misunderstanding of the original word. God doesn’t make you sick or fall off a ladder and break several bones in order to discipline you. Nor does He cause your boss to fire you or your spouse to leave you.

Rather, His discipline is a strong conviction that is almost physically painful. When it brings suffering, it’s because we ignore the conviction and continue on in our sin. An ongoing fleshly struggle against what we know is right can lead to depression and feelings of low self-esteem, which can lead to further personal problems.

While the Bible verse specifically mentions God’s people, I’m not sure God doesn’t discipline non-believers as well. There are those who pray and have faith in a higher power, and who are therefore one step away from entering God’s Kingdom. I can’t be positive, but I have a hunch that such people experience God’s loving discipline on occasion, too.

Reason #4: We make bad choices.

Ah, and here we land on the reason for my current suffering.

I got in a hurry. And ignored the past.

That’s the long and the short of it. I was impatient to finish a particular task, and I made a decision similar to other decisions under similar circumstances, ending with the same result: I injured myself.

For the past three plus weeks I have been swearing up and down that this is the last time. I will never assume my back is strong enough to handle a certain task. If I feel the slightest inkling that it is not, I will either approach the task from a safer angle or ask one of the males in my household to do the job.

Here’s how everything unraveled.

First, because I was in a hurry to finish a certain task (not to mention, in a circumstance that made the task much harder), I incurred a minor injury of my lower back and piriformis muscles.

Second, I didn’t rest long enough, and I dove back into my regular activities (including full squats) much sooner than my injuries dictated. If I had only taken the time then to research the time frame of muscle strain healing.

So, two weeks later, I made a series of moves (including a full squat for about thirty seconds) that resulted in not only aggravating the existing injuries, but adding to them.

Including nerve damage.

But wait – that’s not all! Third, less than a week later, sick of lying and sitting around all day and needing to move – and afraid that if I didn’t, my muscles and cartilage would turn into spaghetti – I tried an exercise that didn’t bother my back.

An exercise my body wasn’t used to. Involving my legs.

And I damaged both of my knees as well as causing nerve compression on both lower legs. Which led to more time in bed, increased cabin fever, and a constant struggle with depression.

God didn’t do this to me. The devil didn’t do this to me. No choice of any other human being did this to me.

I did it to myself. I caused my own physical suffering, which has led to emotional suffering. I hate sitting around, and I feel guilty that my husband has had to pick up most of my chores for so long.

The real clincher is, this is far from the first time that I’ve done something like this to myself (although I have to say I really outdid myself with this one). That might be the worst. For somebody so smart, I keep doing stupid things, stupid things that cause me physical pain and hinder my progress toward reaching my goals.

Did you see that? My progress. My goals.

Not God’s.

The truth of the matter is that even those of us who want to live lives that please our heavenly Father, we often get off track. We forget to live in the moment, so we get in a hurry. We prioritize our tasks and goals above those which the Lord has for us (see the story of Mary and Martha in the book of Luke). We allow fear to enter into our minds, and so we make decisions and choices based on fear, rather than faith and careful thought. All of these things lead us into a pain of our own making.

But the good news is, there is hope in the midst of any kind of suffering, even that of our own making. The hope is that this, too, shall pass, and that despite our mistakes, God will make everything turn out all right. The hope is that Yeshua doesn’t abandon us when we’re stuck on stupid.

We can also find strength and God’s comfort in suffering. How we do that, what it looks like, and how we grow, vary from individual to individual, from circumstance to circumstance.

If I didn’t believe God allows bad things to happen in order to force me into a corner to reconsider my life, I believe it now.

Here’s what I’ve gleaned from my experience so far.

 The blessings of suffering at my own foolish hands.

I’ve learned that I must listen to the tiniest, quietest complaint of my body when I’m involved in physical activity.

I’ve learned that the world doesn’t end because I go out of commission for a few weeks.

I’ve learned that I couldn’t care less about playing the guitar. And that I care a lot less about singing that I previously believed.

I’ve learned that I really, really want to improve my piano-playing skills (I haven’t been able to practice much lately because both sitting and standing for any longer than a couple of minutes lead to acute discomfort).

I’ve learned, once again, that my husband is a saint (I saw it a decade ago when I broke my arm and needed surgery).

I’ve learned that as long as I keep my mind busy, I don’t need to be running around like the Energizer Bunny on steroids.

I’ve learned what I want to do more than anything right now is learn new things and study.

The flip side of that is, I don’t know that I ever want to write another novel again, or be traditionally published **(more on that later). I’ve realized that my passion and talent for learning and teaching is much greater than my passion for writing fiction.

The second most important thing I've gleaned from this experience is that I am, for the first time, determined to do what it takes to get fit, and stay fit. I want a strong back, and I want to stop being so fragile and weak. 

I definitely don't want to end up looking like what my 88-year-old mother looks like, all bent over with muscles limp as spaghetti.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned these past few weeks?

I CAN relax. I CAN sit around and do next to nothing, and enjoy it.  For two to three days, anyway.

Not only that, but if I do so in short bursts every few weeks, it feels like a vacation. My Energizer Bunny self has always proclaimed that the word “relax” isn’t in my vocabulary, that I always need to be doing something.

Turns out I was wrong.

I do need a literal Sabbath once in a while.

And, whaddaya know? I enjoy not being stressed.

I also learned that maybe, just maybe, God’s will for me is to be much more than to do.

This is how I am overcoming suffering through faith. How about you?

(For more inspiring content like this, you can follow this blog if you have a Google account, bookmark this blog, follow my blog on Goodreads, and/or check out the books in the sidebar.) 

**always take my declarations regarding my writing career with a grain of salt