Sin and Suffering

Bailey: “George! Is that you? What are you doing back here? It’s been ages.” 

George: “Bailey! I can’t believe I ran into you. It’s really been too long. How are you?” 

Bailey: “I’ve been pretty good. What about yourself?”

George: “Oh, I’ve been alright. It’s been a long year, you know.”

Bailey: “I know how you feel. But hey, it’s good to be home, right?”

George: “It’s been fine.”

Bailey: “Are you sure you’re alright, George? We’ve known each other a long time – I think I can tell when something’s up with you.”

A little while later, farther down the road, after a little more talking: 

George: “… so, yeah, that was what happened. I think I was in denial about it for a while, but it’s sinking in more and more. Coming back home has been really hard, too, because last time I was here, I was alright, you know? I was still a kid, I was still ok.”

Bailey: “George, I don’t have any words. And honestly I really don’t know what words could help you with that, but I am so sorry that happened to you. If you ever need any help or anything really, please tell me. How have you been holding up?” 

George: “To be honest with you Bailey, it has been really bad. Some days are alright, but then something happens and it all comes tumbling down on me again. I’d hoped that a change of pace or somewhere familiar would help clear my mind—make the problems all go away, you know? But it hasn’t, I just feel empty most days.”

Bailey: “I’m so sorry. Have you been going through this alone? I mean, have you been able to talk to anyone? You don’t have to carry such a huge burden by yourself, you know.”

George: “Besides you, not really. Because talking about it, that just makes it more real, and that is a reality I don’t want to deal with.”

Bailey: “I understand. Well, if you can’t talk about it very well yet, have you been able to pray about it? But then again, I’m sure all this has made talking to God a lot harder. Would you say it has, or…?”

George: “No, you’re right, it definitely has. Because when it comes to God, I have tried to think about this in relation to Him and pray to Him, but every time I do, I just get mad. Because it seems to me as though God let this happen to me. And I can’t understand why He would do such a thing. I don’t really ask ‘why’ of God much; with every other painful thing in my life, through all that hurt, I never really was a big “why” person. But now I am. Because it feels like all these terrible things we go through are just to boost God’s ego. After what happened to me, it seems to me that He made us, He stuck us between salvation and damnation here on earth, and then sat back and said ‘The worst things on this earth are going to happen to you in this life that I gave you, but if you don’t come to me at the end of the day and love me and serve me in spite of it all, you will go to Hell.’ And sure, He did put in some work, Jesus died on the cross. But He’s the God of all creation, He could conquer death any way He wanted to. But instead, I, His child, just had my mind and my body ripped apart by evil people and evil things, and I am supposed to turn around and say God is good? I am supposed to act like this hasn’t affected my relationship with Him? He says I am His. He’s supposed to look out for me. Why do I need to show up for Him instead? He’s supposed to be almighty, He is God.”

Bailey: “George, I think you’re forgetting one of the most important points in this: how we were created. There’s a line in Paradise Lost, when God is describing man to His Son as Satan is heading to corrupt man, that God made man ‘sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.’ That’s what this all hinges on. Because God did not create man with a war in mind, God made him to live a life of perfection, to glorify God and have perfect oneness with Him. 

Originally, man’s existence was pure bliss, ‘cause God is good and gave that to him. But God also gave us free will, because forced love and worship is hollow. If we did not have free will, we truly would have been born into a life with no choice, just as you were saying earlier. Before the Fall, man was choosing God over sin and selfishness and Satan, but all that was perverted when Satan, not God, came in to destroy the happiness man had and Satan lacked.”

George: “Ok, ok, I get that – but that can’t be all of it. I know that’s true, but it’s pretty poor consolation. Because, with what you are saying, even though I have done as I should and followed God, I just have to be ok with evil inflicted upon me. I just can’t see why this happened and why it’s ok? Did all these things happen to me so that when I come running back to God He can use me as an example to his angels and to Lucifer? So that he can show them and the world how great He is, to say ‘My child has just been completely broken and desecrated and still loves me.’ That just seems selfish. That seems like God made mankind just to stoke his ego. Why should we play into that? Why do we have to keep loving Him? We wouldn’t have to prove we love Him if He looked out for us. And that’s why I can’t think about God or pray right now. Because I know that God is the true God and I believe in Him, but I am mad and confused. And I know you could tell me ‘Well duh, George, that’s what sin does: it separates you from God.’ I know there are flaws in my thinking, but that is what I’m thinking. I guess my big question in all this is how is God not selfish? That’s what I don’t have an answer to.”

Bailey: “Ok. I think I see, but could you clarify one thing? I just want to be sure I’m not misunderstanding you. Because it seems that your biggest issue in this is the fact that God is forcing us into a choice between Heaven and Hell in spite of all the pain we have gone through or will go through. Is that what you are saying is selfish?”

George: “Pretty much. I guess a better way to phrase my question would be, ‘Isn’t God selfish for making us, since by making man he is condemning a large part of His creation to hell and to suffering?’ Because in giving a man existence, God is forcibly signing him up for a war between Heaven and Hell, and our reaction to earthly pain is what will determine which we go to. Of course our other option, if God had never made us, is oblivion—never existing in the first place. But if God is good and His actions are good and His creation of us is good, then wouldn’t that mean that existence, even an existence that is damned on earth and perpetuated in hell, must be better than not ever existing at all? 

So that thought led me to think about Paradise Lost, how there is a part in Book 2 where the demons have been cast out into hell and they decide this exact thing. They acknowledge that the only thing worse than hell would be if God sent them to oblivion, and made it as though they had never existed at all. What do you think of that? Do you think it’s true that existence, even one that leads to eternal damnation, is better than never existing at all?”

Bailey: “Well, George, I think your ideas about this have been heavily impaired because you have tried to reason out all of your pain by yourself, instead of turning to God and His word and seeking answers there. You have thought yourself into a little wormhole where for God’s goodness to exist, existence must be better than oblivion. But that doesn’t matter at all. That might matter for the demons, but not us. Because we have the option of salvation and they do not. And I would also say that what you see as a war for man, between Heaven and Hell, is to me a gift. 

Though life can be and often is a horrible struggle, there is a way out of what our forefathers doomed us to. God did not have to give us a way out. He did not have to send Jesus. Because again, when He gave us the option to stand on our own, we lost the battle against ourselves. God created us into a perfect world (a proof of His goodness and love), but He didn’t take that away from us. We chose disobedience. And that was the original struggle, the struggle which should have left everyone born doomed to damnation. Not because God wanted to force us there, but because man chose power and knowledge over perfection in and relationship with God. 

Your pain is not because God gave it to you, your troubles in your relationship with Him are not His fault, they are ultimately because man let Satan sway him long ago. If God had abandoned man (and you), that would’ve meant allowing evil to have its way in our world forever. It would’ve meant no Jesus, no salvation. But the fact that we have the ability to struggle between Heaven and Hell, the fact that Heaven still is an option for mankind, is a good thing and a proof of God’s goodness. We can leave the sin which corrupted our world and be with God how He intended us to be with Him. God has promised us a new Heaven and a new Earth, where everything will be good and perfect. And that is where we one up the demons once again. They are doomed for all eternity; they cannot give up their ruin. So don’t compare your position to theirs— you do not have to choose between hell and nothingness.”