Chapter 4 Suffering

“The God that allows all things, redeems all things.”  Richard Rohr

We believe that suffering can only be understood within the context of God’s overall plan for everything that he has made.

As described in the previous chapter, we believe that the eventual destination for all of humanity, indeed all of creation, is a wonderful environment where everyone will reach full maturity and enjoy an abundant life.

But how can this state of full maturity be achieved? We suggest that God has created us with the ability to become fully mature but that achieving such a state requires a process.

Nature provides us with countless examples of entities that have taken time to form. Scientists estimate that the galaxies took billions of years to form and that our Earth has taken over four billion years to reach its current state. Many living things in nature begin as a seed and take time to reach maturity as they undergo change and growth. Every adult human being has gone through the process of conception, fertilisation, embryonic development, birth and the myriad different experiences that make up childhood, adolescence and adulthood. But how many reach full maturity?

What is full maturity? We would suggest that it is consistently living in agape love; in other words, consistently demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). We believe that the only person who has so far consistently demonstrated these attributes is Jesus when he lived on Earth two thousand years ago. So how does God make it possible for each one of his children to reach this state of maturity?

We believe that it is achieved through a process, and usually many and varied processes, each providing opportunities to develop and mature. Just as a child learns to walk through a process of trial and error and learns to talk through a process of listening and imitating the sounds they hear, we mature as individuals through undergoing countless different processes in our lives.

We suggest that it has never been God’s intention for any person to reach full maturity during their life on Earth, as our physical bodies are not capable of performing to the level required for this. We get tired and fail to show the kindness that others require. Our memories are fallible, and we may forget to show the goodness that we intended. We often fail, not necessarily through lack of good intent but rather through weakness.

We propose that full maturity can only be achieved once we have received our immortal bodies. If this is true, then what is the purpose of this current life? Might it be that God’s principal intention for our lives here on Earth is the multiplication of humanity and that his secondary desire is that each of us should proceed as far as possible along the path to maturity?

The first command that God gave us was to go forth and multiply (Genesis 1:28) and we can observe that the principal occupation of humanity throughout most of history has been to raise the next generation. Until recently the populations of all countries have nearly always increased, and the total world population is still increasing despite declining birth rates in some regions.

To achieve population increase, God had to endow us with the desires to procreate, protect and prosper. We believe that these fundamental desires are imbedded within the physical nature of most people. Without these desires the population would not have increased, and humankind may well have become extinct.

The desire to procreate may not be fulfilled for each person, but those without children are often involved in the development of others in their community. However, all too often this desire becomes corrupted and leads to the unloving use of sex, including many forms of sexual abuse. Lust, vanity, selfishness and oppression may all arise when this desire is allowed to run riot.

The desire to protect is essential for ensuring that each generation has a good chance of developing towards adulthood and independence. It takes three forms: protecting oneself; protecting one’s family; and protecting one’s community or tribe. But again, this necessary desire can become distorted and result in unnecessary violence and war. Fear of others, racism and prejudice of all kinds can also develop when this desire is not held in check.

The desire to prosper is one that ensures that people lead as good a life as their individual circumstances allow. We believe that God wants us to enjoy the wonderful environment that he has created. However, this desire can easily mutate into envy and greed, and the desire of any one individual, family or community to subjugate another for their own benefit can bring about terrible suffering.

Suffering can also be caused by thoughtless actions and accidents. As the popular but crude saying goes, ‘Shit happens’, and often it is impossible to determine the underlying cause in an environment in which so many people are acting according to their own agency and freewill.

Some suffering is caused by sickness and genetic defects. This is also unavoidable in this current age, especially with various pollutants finding their way into our bodies.

We believe that God’s eventual aim is to establish a great multitude of unique sentient beings living in a loving relationship with him and their neighbours. If everyone had the same genetic make-up and similar personalities, the resulting society would be boring and lack diversity. An element of randomness is essential for creating a society composed of many different types of people.

Thus, our current world has been deliberately designed to include an element of randomness when new beings are formed through procreation. This process generates great diversity, but the downside is that it allows viruses and bacteria to mutate, which is the cause of much of the sickness in the world. It is also the reason for the genetic defects and other ailments experienced by some at this time.

God has designed our bodies to fight sickness and to heal from injury, but this cannot be guaranteed while we are in our mortal bodies. Our mortality is essential at the current time to ensure that the world does not become overpopulated, as this would dampen the desire to procreate and constrain the process of multiplication.

Any system created in a physical environment is limited by design constraints. For example, it is not possible to design a water cycle without also creating the possibility of flooding. Although Earth's environment is very beautiful and provides abundant resources, some of the design compromises have an inherent potential for suffering, and this problem is further exacerbated when humans interfere with the balance of nature. Many people suffer the effects of natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, which are caused by the natural processes inherent in the formation of Earth, a living planet. We believe that God through the Holy Spirit gives warning of such events, but currently most people have not learnt to hear this ‘still small voice’ (John 14:26) and act on these promptings.

Life on this Earth can be tough, full of suffering and is often cut short. God recognises this, and to demonstrate that he understands our experience allowed Jesus to suffer one of the most barbaric executions that we have invented. God is with us in whatever we suffer and knows our pain.

We believe that in order to achieve the formation of a very large number of people, each of unique character, the current world is the best possible environment that God could have created. God is achieving his principal objective for this age (we call it the age of multiplication) and often achieving his secondary objective of people progressing along the path towards maturity. God accepts the inherent and unavoidable design constraints in his creation as he knows that he can remove every tear in the ages to come. The issue of why God does not intervene to stop our current suffering will be explored in a later chapter.

Maybe when we have been raised in the next age and have experienced our new body for a significant time, we will look back at our life on Earth with all its struggles and suffering as the necessary birthing process that had to be endured because it led on to a wonderful, abundant life. Jesus even suggests that the suffering on Earth is akin to ‘birth pains’ (Matthew 24:8 and John 16:21). We do not wish to minimise the depth and impact of the experiences we go through, both good and bad, but suggest that this current life is just a phase that we must endure.

Future environments will be different. No one knows for certain what happens after we die, but we believe that we will all be given a new body that is capable of consistently demonstrating agape love, and we will be provided with as many opportunities as are required for us to continue the process towards full maturity.