Perhaps the most persistent and frustrating problem for people who profess a belief in a God of infinite goodness is the phenomenon of suffering. Everyone suffers, and much of the world seems sunk in the problems of poverty, violence, and all kinds of misery. Even in places and times where there seem to be good reasons for happiness and contentment, there is often great suffering. Even the people who seem as if they have everything going their way are sometimes tormented by untold interior pain that those around them never see.

Some people simply are never bothered as much as others by internal questions about the reasons for suffering, and how suffering can be permitted by an all-good God. For many, though, this area poses a difficult challenge, perhaps the most difficult challenge, for our personal faith. The Judeo-Christian tradition identifies sin as the reason for suffering. Although individual suffering is not necessarily a punishment for personal sin, all human suffering arises in one way or another from sin. The history of human suffering thus begins with the original sin of Adam and Eve, and in a sense the situation worsens with every personal sin throughout the ages since then. At least on one level, this is a rationally satisfactory answer, in that it identifies the root of suffering. However, suffering remains mysterious. Even if sin causes suffering, could not God prevent much of the suffering in the world? After all, it is not as if there is just a little suffering here and a little suffering there. It is all over the place, affecting every person, no matter how good or bad the person, in every situation. If God is all-good and all-powerful, why must there be so much pain?

This problem of suffering has challenged, and unfortunately sometimes broken, the faith of countless Christians over the past two thousand years. It is a problem that is not solved simply by more knowledge of the Christian religion. Years of study in theology will not necessarily inoculate a person against the nagging doubts that can re-emerge particularly under the pressure of intense personal suffering. Even great holiness, while it may mean that one can keep the faith in the face of such doubt, does not exempt one from the doubts themselves. Many possible reasons have been offered for suffering throughout the history of Christianity, and often these reasons have a certain validity, but generally they do not really seem to explain the full scope of human suffering and how it relates to the goodness and power of God.

People who raise basic theological questions about the suffering in their lives are often referred to the Book of Job in the Old Testament. I am not sure this is always wise. The story of Job is part of divine revelation, and it is a story from which a theology of suffering can certainly draw some valuable insights, but a clear answer to the problem of suffering is not one of them. Indeed, strictly speaking, the book does not even attempt to give an answer to the problem of suffering. The only real answer given by anyone is that of Job's friends, who attempt to identify suffering as a direct punishment for personal sin, and they are rebuked by God for taking this position. God ultimately saves Job from his misery, but no real explanation is ever given for why the suffering was necessary in the first place. However, in the end God does answer the laments of Job with what amounts to a declaration of God's own omnipotence, omniscience, and supremacy over the universe as its Creator. This is not exactly an answer to the problem of suffering, but it is in a way a declaration that no answer should be necessary for us. This is true. The knowledge that the whole universe was created by and is under the complete dominion of the all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God should, from a rational perspective, enable us to accept whatever happens to us. So, to summarize: first, all suffering is caused, directly or indirectly, by sin, but it is not necessarily a punishment for sin, and second, the reasons why God permits suffering may be mysterious to us, but because God is all-good and all-knowing we should accept suffering when it is inevitable, and trust in God that there is a reason for it. All this makes perfect sense. So why do so many Christians clearly find it painfully inadequate?

In the end, perhaps the reason no response to questions about suffering ever seems adequate is that most people are not really looking for an answer in the sense of an explanation. What people really want more than an explanation of suffering is understanding and assistance from God in their times of suffering. Most people can usually accept the idea that some things are simply beyond their full understanding and comprehension, but they need to feel confident that God loves them. I suspect this is really the basis for most of the crises of faith over suffering: not a rational difficulty in reconciling the existence of suffering with that of an all-good God, but an experiential difficulty in maintaining confidence in God's love for us amid all this suffering.

Although God never actually abandons us, when things are darkest in life it may appear to us that God has abandoned or even betrayed us. Indeed, in the case of God the very idea of abandonment implies the idea of betrayal. There is an implicit arrangement in the relationship of faith: We trust in God, and God takes care of us. We expect this, not because we deserve it, but because He said He would. What we find difficult to believe is that so much suffering is necessary with God ostensibly taking care of us. Sometimes it seems as if God is taking care of us, not in sense that a mother takes care of her children, but rather in the sense that a Mafia don might "take care of" an informant. However much we may know that this is impossible, God sometimes may seem to be intentionally piling problem upon problem, pain upon pain, misery upon misery, suffering upon suffering. God, in short, can sometimes almost seem to be torturing us. The bottom line of the problem of suffering is that when we find ourselves in these situations we feel hurt by God, and ultimately we feel separated from God, and that we have lost God. These feelings can affect anyone. Even a figure of such heroic sanctity of Mother Teresa could write at one point "The damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist." From our natural perspective, suffering appears to be the one place, the one experience, in which we cannot find God. In these situations rational explanations of suffering may or may not be helpful, but by themselves they are almost sure to seem inadequate, because what we are seeking is ultimately not reason but love.

When we suffer, we instinctively want to know that God has not abandoned us, that He is here with us in our suffering as well. This can be very difficult to believe, especially since reason does not necessarily help us here. Reason may tell us of the infinite power and goodness of God, but reason never says anything about God sharing in our suffering. In suffering, it would seem, we as human beings are in a certain sense radically alone. However, it is here, where we cannot find an answer adequate to our need anywhere else, that faith requires us to turn to the person of Jesus. Amazingly, miraculously, here we do find an answer. Not an explanation. An answer. Jesus offers us far more than the rational explanations that can often seem so hollow. Good Friday is a day more associated with suffering than any other day in the Christian calendar. Sometimes, deep down, when we are suffering, and we feel completely abandoned by God, we may wish that God would share our suffering, that He would feel the pain that we feel. On Good Friday we commemorate the fact that one day, almost two thousand years ago, He did.

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?"
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"