A liberating faith

 ”God has sent me to reassure the poor that He loves them; to bring release to the captives and to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”  (Luke 4, 18)

Faith sets us free for life

Every human being wants to live,  develop, and realize him- or herself, but is submitted to many constraints, limitations, restrictions and inhibitions. How  often do we have  to yield,  comply,  put up with others or resign ourselves to something. Our freedom is limited by fear, mistrust, secrecy, caution and all kinds of considerations. One person’s freedom limits the freedom of others. How much freedom is really left for employees and employers in a market economy with commercial rivalry and competition?  How much free unfolding and growth is there for those who suffer from hunger and live in poverty,  or those who “have everything”  but are ill?   Can we talk about  liberty and  freedom in prisons, camps and dictatorships?

Many people think that man can free himself of all this – partly at least. Are we not  making  our days  increasingly worth living from year to year, with our freedom, computers and science? Have we not recently seen people in eastern European states shed the burdens imposed by dictators? The history of human development also shows clearly man’s capacity for “self-liberation”. Because of his  intellect and ideas,  he is able to lessen,  or even completely eliminate, all anxiety. But still, we have no reason for arrogance. Human egoism will always again take away freedom from others. How often have liberators turned into oppressors! With consumerism and prosperity, we are far from having found the purpose of life and happiness. And all our endeavors to gain freedom are thwarted by suffering and death.

It is Christian conviction that only if human effort is coupled with faith, can  we  have  liberation.  As long as man is tied to the will of God, he is protected from seeking power for himself. Dictators and other limiting circumstances  can  take  away external freedom.  But if we  maintain  a loving relationship  with  God and are at peace with ourselves,  our internal freedom cannot be touched.

Being united with God – the beginning of freedom

The reason for evil  is alienation  from God. We were created. And if our plans and actions  do not include our creator, everything goes wrong. God’s order maintains  everything.  Separation from God – sin – means alienation, loss of  identity and loss of freedom for the human being. It is easy to  experience how lies  destroy  contacts  with others and isolate us.  Truth, however, makes us free. (John 8,32).

Man’s greatness and misery

Reason for suffering?

In spite of this,  the  Scriptures  do make a  connection between  sin and suffering, without suffering having to be the  consequence of  personal sin. We already said  earlier that the world becomes worse with every sin, that sin punishes itself.  Not only is the human being affected by the tragedy of his NO to God,  but so are all things that surround him,  the whole world.  God is the origin of all things and so His  whole  creation is touched by our  NO  to  God. 

We usually  imagine creation without any connection and relation to man or even to God.  This is why it is difficult for us to see that the  NO of sin undermines all of creation, that the chain-reaction of sin and evil still continues in the material world.  Man’s  sin destroys  the  order  of  the  universe.  As  strange  as  such  a thought may appear at first glance, did not our generation,  in particular,  get  the feeling  that the whole of creation  was  given into our hands, for better or for worse?

In  spite  of  all this, we have to say that even the  Bible  does not say conclusively where suffering comes from and for what reason. However, the Bible makes  the  point  that  God  does not want suffering and evil,  but only good. Christ also does not explain suffering. He never said: “you suffer, because..”. In any case, nobody can be helped with an explanation for pain and suffering. But Jesus tried to help the suffering, and He entrusted them into the care of all men.  He fought against suffering with all His might. 

He  Himself  did not evade suffering, but accepted it. He asked God prior to His own suffering to take it away from Him, if possible. Like Job He rebelled against suffering and did  not consider it as something that has to be.  When He had to suffer on the cross, the high point of all His misery and pain,  He accused God: „My God, why have  You forsaken me?”  But like Job,  He finally accepted  His  suffering and showed  humanity that it is not suffering that has the last word, but God. Good Friday is followed by Easter, death by resurrection.  Suffering often makes God incomprehensible;  however,  without God, it is even more absurd. Although the Bible does not give an  explanation for suffering and pain,  it offers help for enduring it.

The faithfulness of God

The  greatness  and  dignity  given  the human being  by God brings us closer to Him.  But we have distanced ourselves from God  through sin and are  unable to restore the closeness to God by ourselves. Help, salvation, liberation – we Christians call it redemption – come to us when we overcome this distance from God.  God must help us in this and He does. He does not abandon humanity.  He is faithful.

In the Old Testament we always find that immediately  after  a  human  fall  (Paradise,  Cain,  the Tower of Babel, the Flood…) God promises never to forget mankind.  And finally, God has come very close to man in Jesus Christ.  Redemption,  liberation,  and renewal of man and the world began in Jesus Christ, in spite of contradictions and many setbacks. In  Jesus  lies  the  hope of mankind today and for the future.                                  

Man’s greatness and misery

Undeserved suffering

Christians  cannot  “explain”  suffering  either. However, they are able to trust God and know that suffering is not God’s declaration of bankruptcy and the end of His love. How is this possible?

We try to  reflect:   suffering can purify.  Without a  heavy  blow,  life may remain too superficial. Often, suffering permits us to look behind the facade of things. According to E. Bloch, “Misery teaches us to think”. And K. Jaspers said: “Suffering finally wakes up the human being.” Suffering can make man more mature. It also can break him. We take off our hats in admiration for some people who have gone through suffering. The French thinker Gide said: “I believe that there are certain gates that only illness can open.”

Suffering can have a warning function. Physical pain may indicate a dangerous disease and thus may help to advance life.  Suffering can teach us to pray … but also to swear! We must always try to give suffering a purpose. But the question remains: Could there not be another way? Does purification, maturity, and warning have to hurt so much? Reflecting this way, we do not find a real answer to the question whether suffering makes sense.

Does the Bible give an answer?

Many  people  spontaneously  connect suffering with a  penalty for sin. In fact,  this view is predominant in many parts of the Bible,  especially  in the Old  Testament:  Suffering  as  penalty,  for  guilt  which may be  hidden and unconscious.  But  this  is  not the only tenet of the  Old Testament. In Job -  one book of the Old Testament is named after him – a man is presented who revolts against incomprehensible suffering and argues with God. He is not the “enduring, tolerating Job” who is wrongly referred to time and again, but the Job who rebels and rises up against God.

Job shows that the suffering human being does not have to be silent, that God does not resent his accusation. Quarreling with God does not mean being an atheist. It is finally in the middle of his suffering that this complaining Job experiences his God. His friends,  who tried to give Job many explanations for his suffering and who scolded him for incessantly accusing God, are reproved by God in the end.

It is Jesus who does away with the one-sided declaration that suffering is a penalty for sin. When His disciples see a blind man and ask “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be manifest in him” (John 9,2). The connection between sin and suffering cannot have been so obvious after all.

Man’s greatness and misery

The devil

A  high  ranking  SS-officer  and  general of the “Waffen-SS”, Karl Wolff, wrote in a letter in August 1942: “I have noted with particular joy in your communication that now, for the last two weeks, a train with 15000 members of the Chosen People is going to Treblinka every day …” (a concentration camp in the Third Reich).

Is a human being really capable of such evil? By whom and through what is he driven to it? Thinking of the crimes committed in those concentration camps, do we not  have  the  impression  that  this type of malice is no longer human,   that  there  is a  stronger  spiritual  power behind it, something superhuman, diabolical?

The Holy Scriptures call this spiritual power which negates the will of God, the devil. They call him “liar from the beginning”, “diabolus”, meaning the “confuser”, who puts all values upside-down and makes sin appear desirable.  But still, this is no excuse for human beings, as only by their own consent does evil gain the upper hand, resulting in sin. How should we imagine the devil? The Scriptures say almost nothing about this. They only want to show the reality and power of this diabolic might. However, the many popular and often very naive ideas about the devil are not confirmed by the Scriptures.

…and all the suffering

Man’s freedom includes risk. But without this risk, man would be no more  than  a  tool,  a  puppet, in the hands of God, with no will of his own. The greatness  of man can also show itself in the ability to say NO to the will of God,  in  sin.  We can agree with the Bible, which finds the source of so much suffering  in the world  within man himself.  We also see deep human experience documented in the Scriptures when they report about demonic powers misleading man  to  do  evil  which  appears to be beyond human capability.

But is this sufficient  to  explain all the suffering in the world? What about suffering  which has no obvious connection with sin? Suffering which overwhelms man unexpectedly and through no fault of his own, senseless pain, catastrophes, earth tremors, accidents, suffering of the innocent, terminal illness, sudden death. Who is responsible for all this? Would no world at all not be better than this one? What is God’s opinion?

The question of suffering remains enigmatic and challenging for both, believers and atheists. Many say “Let us act, let us drive back suffering wherever we can. This is more profitable than thinking about it and looking for explanations”. This is certainly true. This corresponds with the will of God:  Anyone who alleviates suffering acts on His behalf. But has this answered the question? What does Christianity say about undeserved suffering?