Does God Allow Suffering? - Part II

Temptation is all around us, Satan is not prejudice, he is an equal opportunity tempter. He doesn’t care what color your skin is, or what nationality you are, his only concern is that you have your share of temptation. Even Jesus had His share, Hebrews 4:15, tells us, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Do you think Jesus needed temptation to build character or to perfect Him? When we read Scripture we can see clearly that Satan was no match for Jesus. Yet, He had to endure temptation. Is there a benefit to temptation in our lives? Sure! But, there’s also benefit to putting your hand on a hot stove grill—and that is, learning not to do that again. But, does that mean that that was a good way to learn that? Certainly not! Would your mother or father tell you as a child to put your hand on the hot grill so you will learn the hard way? I would certainly hope not! The best way to learn Godly truths is to study your Bible and training yourself to live according to the Holy Spirit within you, not by suffering with cancer.

If your parents wouldn’t want to teach you the hard way, why would and all loving God put suffering in your life for you to learn the hard way? It doesn’t make sense. And for these religious leaders to tell this to those who look up to them, is disconcerting to say the least. Jeremiah 29:11, says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (NIV). Then why would He use evil to try and promote character in us, because all suffering is a product of evil— a product of a fallen world, resulting from sin.

Now some will say, what about sickness and disease, not all people who become sick or diseased have sinned to promote it. Certainly, the new born, who has been born with a severe deformity hasn’t sinned to deserve that suffering? I agree with that one hundred percent! But, does that mean it is of God? No! We live in a fallen world and some problems are inherited, like genetic deformities. Of course, the new born did not deserve it, but look at the Arab, Israeli conflict. Many innocent people of those nations today are dieing because of one man’s poor decision in not waiting on God, who live thousands of years ago, Abraham.

That conflict stems from Abraham’s sinful union with Hagar. God promised Abraham a child in his old age, but Abraham was impatient, as well as his wife Sarah, who was old in years and was for some time unable to conceive. Fearing that she would not produce this child for Abraham, she offered him her maidservant Hagar, who wound up bearing Abraham’s first son Ishmael, the father of the Arab nations.

After some time, finally, Sarah did become pregnant and bored Abraham a son named Isaac. Shortly there-after, out of jealousy, Sarah wanted Hagar and Ishmael gone. So, the next day Abraham packed some food and water and sent them away— yet God promised Hagar that Ishmael would become a great nation. This was the start of the Arab, Israeli conflict. You can read the whole story in Genesis chapters 15 through 21.

There will also be others, in an attempt to justify suffering, that point to verses such as, Exodus 15:26, which reads, “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.” Here God is telling us that He controls these things. And it’s true He can, but this is an Old Covenant situation. God did punish under the Old Covenant for sin, but under the blood of Christ in the New Covenant God is no longer angry with mankind and no longer punishes for sin, because we (those who accepted Jesus) have been redeemed once and for all from sin, a product of the curse of the law. We have become righteous in the eyes of God.

If God were to punish us for our sin, then, why did the Christ have to suffer? It would mean that Christ suffered and died in vain. That is why the suffering that is inflicted by natural disasters or terrorist attacks are not sent by God as many suspect. They are the result or consequence of sin, of living in a fallen world. Many who die in those natural disasters are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, it is not effecting them as a result of their own sin, but as a result of collective sin of all man kind and that sins ill effects on our physical existence. Those who may have died because of these kinds of disasters, did not deserve it anymore than you or me.

Let’s take a look at Genesis 3:14-19; these verses follow the account where God finds out that Adam and Eve have already sinned. Verse 14 reads, “So the LORD God said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field;’” Verse 17 God says, “Cursed is the ground for your sake” Notice God does not say, “I cursed you,” he says, “that you are cursed.” The curse is a direct result of the sin, not a direct result of an order from God. Don’t confuse this with direct punishment of God upon the people under the Old Covenant, it was a punishment as a direct result of God’s anger because of their sins, but the curse referred to in Genesis 3 are for all generations for the remainder of time as we know it, because of the fall of man.

When the prophets spoke of natural disasters becoming more numerous as the end times approach, they were saying that a world without God at the helm, is a corrupted world and those natural disasters they speak of are inevitable in a corrupted world. Does God know when they are going to happen? Yes, I believe He does (Acts 1:7), but that doesn’t mean He is the cause of it or it is His wrath beginning. God’s wrath will not begin until all His chosen people are taken up to meet Jesus in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, Revelation 7:14).

The corruption that is talked about here is not just the people who are corrupted, but every physical thing is corrupted including our environment and no longer is in the perfection that God originally created it. So, just as living in a fallen world makes us susceptible to sickness and disease, so too, is our environment susceptible to these types of natural disasters.

Jesus spoke of the “signs of the end times” or “of the end of the age,” well, God knows exactly what consequences sin will produce and how it will develop and that is what Jesus is referring to here. The signs Jesus discusses, is not yet God’s punishment beginning, but the natural progression of a corrupted world getting worse. What happens to a snowball that you roll down the side of a snowy mountain? It collects more snow as it rolls down and gets bigger and bigger, and picks more speed as it gets heavier— so too with a corrupted world. Just as the snowball, the cycle of natural disasters will progress as time moves on and their severity will also increase.

I mentioned earlier the law that God instituted the gives us the freedom of choice. Well, I would like to elaborate on that and clear up any confusion there may be in reference to that being a good thing or a bad thing. First, let’s take a look at the alternative— which would be, that God makes us obey Him— there would be no choice involved. That would solve all the problems of mankind, even if sin existed, it would have no effect on man because he would be like a computer. A computer is created by man, and programmed by a man, by can a computer make its own decisions? Of course not!

But, if you were alone with a computer, you cannot possible have an intimate relationship with a computer. You can’t converse with it, nor can a computer do anything without you telling it what to do. Can a computer laugh at your jokes? Well, maybe, but you would have to write a line of code to make it laugh and execute the code when you want it to laugh. I would think if it were just me and a computer on a deserted island that would get boring very fast. It wouldn’t be long before you craved an intimate relationship with one of your own kind.

So, when God instituted the law regarding freedom of choice— it may have had a flaw for the potential for corruption to take place, but God also had a plan to counter the flaw— and that plan was Jesus. Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” Well, that is what Jesus did for you and for me.

I tell you this, out of all the Christian’s that are in the world right this moment, there are only a small fraction who really and truly know in their hearts, what this really means. If you, when you really think about this, do not get choked up at the thought of the magnificence of what Jesus did for us, and I am not just talking about dieing. I am talking about leaving a life of absolute perfection and total prosperity, not in the monetary sense, but in the sense of having it all right at your finger-tips.

Putting all that aside and taking up a physical body, being born in the poorest of conditions, and Jesus telling us Himself in Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” And to submit yourself to the torture and the total humility of people watching you be beaten and slaughtered like an animal, yet on the Cross He still remained sinless and prayed to the Father for the forgiveness of those (everyone! Including you and me) who had done this to Him, is absolutely unfathomable to me.

So, when you ask the question whether or not God is choosing to allow suffering in our lives today, or a religious leader is telling you that He is allowing this to perfect you, you must consider all the facts before believing this distortion of the truth. Yes, God can make good in your life out of the bad, but He would much prefer not to do it this way, but rather, for you to walk in the truth and abide by the Holy Spirit, and along the way, training your body and soul to agree with the Spirit so you can begin experiencing God’s best for you.

That my friend, is the perfection of God!
May God Bless!

For more information on this and other topics of the Bible, click here!

Does God Allow Suffering? - Part I

As I was searching the internet today on a study I am working on. I came across a book entitled, "God's Problem:How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer", by (get this) a religious studies professor, from the University of North Carolina, Bart D. Ehrman. Now, I can understand the average person not understanding why we suffer, but a religious studies professor????

Here's a guy who must have studied the Bible for, Oh, I don't know, maybe a couple of thousand hours? If he is a professor, I'm sure it's much more than that. Anyway, I think he should do a study on hardness of heart in the Bible. Maybe then he'll get a clue of why he just wrote a book that he couldn't pay me to read.

The title alone scares me, because of how many people he is going to turn away from God. People that may be in a fragile state due to suffering themselves. If this is you; If you find yourself in doubt about God and His ability or willingness to ease your pain and heal your spirit, soul and body, you've come to the right place.

In the next few days, I am going to share a study on this topic, that I have on my website Plain Bible Truth.org, the study is entitled, simply, "Does God Allow Suffering." Just click on the titled link if you would like to view the whole article now. If not, installment #1 of the article is below; I think it will help you understand why we suffer, even when we may not deserve it.

Please feel free at the end, to send any questions to me, via the comments feature here, or just go to my website with the provided link above and I will gladly answer any questions you may have. With all that said, Bart, if your out there, grab yourself some unbuttered, healthy popcorn, relax and hopefully we can do something about that hardness of heart problem you have.

I would be remiss to say, I do love you Bart, and I want you to come back to Jesus, this time leaving your credentials at the office, lossen your tie, and having an open mind to the truth that you've missed with all your studying.

The question - Does God Allow Suffering?

Let me answer that question in one word— No! But, I say that not to discourage you or make you feel bad about yourself. On the contrary it's a great encouragement to know that it's not from God and that you can change your circumstances! Praise God!

God does not choose to allow suffering— not from disasters, sickness, birth defects, or whatever type of suffering you may point to, including death, I assure you God did not choose to allow it— Adam and Eve did and every human being who ever lived after them (with the exception of one, Jesus Christ! Praise God!), chose to follow Adam and Eve and allow sin in their lives. Again, that's not to condemn you or myself, who are both born into a sinful nature and no matter how hard we try we WILL fall short of God and open the door to pain and suffering.

Some pain and suffering can have nothing to do with us or something that we may have done. Some bad things happen even if we are fully in God's will, because we live in a fallen world.

Many religious leaders when asked, will say they don’t know why God allows suffering, but then go on to tell you that suffering is good for us and they will point to Scriptures such as James 1:2-4, which reads, “2) My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3) knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4) But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (NKJV– New King James Version), and further confuse the situation by saying God puts suffering on you to build character— to make you a stronger person, or to perfect you.

Notice what the apostle James says here in verse 2 of the above Scripture, “when you fall into various trials”— it is important when reading a Scripture that the context is taken correctly. The original Greek word for “fall,” is “peripipto”— according to Strong’s Concordance, the definition is, “to fall into something that is all around.” The NIV (New International Version) translates the word as “face”, although you can “face” things that are all around you, the original Greek word means “to fall.” By using the correct definition, it helps to see the point that I am making here.

What James is referring to here, is that we live in a fallen world, due to sin. And the consequence of living in a fallen world are trials and suffering. These trials are not created by God, but they are a result of breaking God’s law. Many trials are a direct result of personal sin— sin that causes consequences to ourselves. But, as I mentioned above, many times we fall into trials that are not necessary a result of our own doing, it is a result of this fallen world. Sometimes good people reap the consequences of someone else’s actions.

God does not bring on, or put these situations into our lives. Can God avert these situations in our lives? Certainly He can! But, if He did, He would violate His own law that He put into effect at the start of creation— that is “freedom of choice.” But, once into that trial, God will utilize it in our lives to develop patience. What kind of patience? Patience to wait on God to answer your prayer and know that He is God. This is the test of faith that James describes. And this is where much of the misconception comes from that God puts those things on you.

James 1:2, says, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials." How do you count it all joy? Well, many people misinterpret that as well. James certainly doesn’t expect you to celebrate your misfortunes. What he does mean, is that you should look at those situations as character building situations and to determine yourself to allowing God’s perfect work to come to fruition. It is a good feeling knowing after a trial is done that you have passed the test of faith and clearly saw God’s hand in helping you through that trial. Faith is trusting God in all situations and not having to feel as though you are on your own, and take matters into your own hands. It’s then, when you take things into your own hands, that you get into trouble and mess things up. Just wait on God, He will never let you down.

There is no indication by the apostle James that God purposely allows trials of any kind that leads to suffering—on the contrary, James clears that notion up in verses 13-14, “13) Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14) But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.” How do you get drawn away? Through the choices that you make! In Deuteronomy 30:19, God says, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;”

God promises in Psalm 91:1-2, that He will protect those who seek Him as their refuge and fortress. How do we seek God? By studying His Word, the Bible. 2 Corinthians 10:5, tells us, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

By studying God’s Word, we gain the knowledge of God and we then can use that knowledge to deflect Satan’s attempt to corrupt our minds. We do this by taking every thought captive and filtering it through the knowledge of God that we gained through studying His Word. We then can determine if that thought passes the test of God or if it is a thought that is conjured up by the prince of the power of the air— a thought that is self-serving. Do not fool yourself, Satan is cunning— his temptations can be very subtle, and if you do not prepare yourself daily with God’s knowledge, I assure you Satan will win many battles with you.

Tomorrow, I will continue with the next installment of this study, but if you would like to read the whole article now or you have any questions, just click here. If not, until tomorrow, God Bless!

Discussing Two Scriptural Misunderstandings

“For Many Are Called, But Few Chosen”—(Matthew 20:16). There are many Christians who read this Bible verse at face value and interpret it as meaning that it is not our choice, but God’s choice, whether we accept the calling of God in our lives. They will point to verses which say that God hardens peoples hearts.

People who speak more than one language will tell you that translation is not a perfect science, because no one language can be perfectly translated into another without some word meaning being incorrect or at least not accurate.

There are some words in every language that just cannot be translated properly into another language. In cases like this, the translator must translate the word with a word to its closest meaning. This sometimes creates a situation, as we have here, of a phrase that does not translate well.

There are some who translate Matthew 20:16b (“b” is just a reference to the latter portion of this verse, you will not find a Scripture reference with a letter behind it in the Bible) as meaning, that it is not necessarily your choice whether you accept this calling or not.

If the meaning were to be taken as this example describes, than this Scripture verse is hypocritical. Why would God call many, but only chose a few. It really doesn’t make sense unless you take the context that surrounds the word into the meaning, and it also would not be in agreement with Scripture that calls God a loving Father if it were taken at face value. It is almost as though He would be teasing some, by calling them to the truth, but then saying, “No, I don’t want you.”

Now, I preface all this by saying, I am not a translator; I only know the English language. With that said I do know someone whose profession is in translation. He has explained to me that there are many words in every language that are difficult to translate. Because a word may not have a direct translation in the language to be translated, you need to find a word that closely resembles, in meaning, the word to be translated.

This word replacement is not a perfect science. Many times you just cannot come up with an appropriate word to give a perfect translation. Sometimes this can change a word meaning or sometimes it can change the meaning of a complete sentence or thought.

Although I am not a proponent of paraphrasing the entire Bible, which some translations do. There are times when paraphrasing is a necessity because of what I just explained. With this particular verse even the paraphrase translates it virtually the same way.

Of course I’ve come up with my own paraphrased, very unofficial, translation. I believe the best way to read this verse is, “For many are called, but few accept the calling.” Even though when you do a word for word translation, this particular translation would not be correct, but I believe this is what the writer, Matthew, really said in its original context, and how it would have been perceived in the original written language.

I would like to touch on something I mentioned earlier; that would be the hardness of heart issue. This is another misconstrued phrase that we find throughout the Bible. When I come across verses that have conflicting meanings, the first thing I do is compare different translations for more understanding.

I know I mentioned I am not a proponent of paraphrased translations, but what I meant was as my main study source. Paraphrased translations can be a big help in getting context, although one translation I stay far away from is “The Message”, by Eugene Peterson. The Message, is more a self interpretation, rather than a paraphrase (Click here for more information on Translations).

Most paraphrased translations are done by groups of individuals who put their thoughts together to come up with context. It doesn’t mean they always come up with proper context, but once a single individual does his or her own paraphrase, problems are bound to occur. In the case of The Message, there are many questions that come up as to whether it is contextually correct, or is it just Peterson’s interpretation.

In regards to my Bible commentaries on this site, I make it clear when it is something that I may have come into personal revelation, I point that out and call it “speculation on my part”. If I don’t specify that, I will backup my explanation with either other Scripture references or with common understanding via other credible sources. Although, revelation knowledge is knowledge from God that you can be confident in.

A very good Bible translation that I am finding more and more useful in my studies is the Amplified Bible. This translation is a word for word translation, which I believe are the best all around Bibles, but it also adds the context that the word is used in. For example; some of our English words can be used in two or more different contexts. Depending upon which context the word is used in, can alter the definition of the word.

When translating a writing from one language to another in a word for word translation, you run into the problem of how a word is used in context, which needs to be considered when translating it. Some words need to be translated word to phrase, but this type of translation borders on paraphrasing.

The Amplified Version of the Bible accomplishes both tasks, for it translates the Bible as word for word, but where context needs to be mentioned to give full understanding of what the writer is saying, the Amplified translation puts the context into brackets. When you see a bracket, you know that the translators are giving you addition context of what is being said.

I don’t like to read the Amplified as my main study tool because with all the brackets, at least for me, it gets a little confusing. I use it more for comparison.

There are many different circumstances that surround where this context comes from. It is not just a guess the translator makes, it may revolve around the way the word they are translating was used elsewhere in Scripture. For example; the English word “wickedly” was translated from five different Hebrew words in the Old Testament. Each one of these Hebrew words may give the definition of “wickedly” a different context to how it was used.

With that said, we find a lot of good information in regards to word translation and also context of the word where it needs clarification. When I did a search of the Amplified Bible for the issue of “hardness of heart”, I found some interesting information that supports my view of this topic here.

Many conclude that God hardens hearts of people so He can pick and choose who He wants to know His will for their lives. They conclude this because of Scripture verses, such as, Isaiah 63:17, it reads:

“O LORD, why have You made us stray from Your ways, And hardened our heart from Your fear? Return for Your servants’ sake, The tribes of Your inheritance” (from the New King James Version).

When you read this translated verse at face value, it appears to imply that God hardened their hearts so they would stray from Him. Now let’s see this same verse in the Amplified Version, that adds the context of the translated words and see the difference:

“O Lord, why have You made us [able] to err from Your ways and hardened our hearts to [reverential] fear of You? Return [to bless us] for Your servants’ sake, the tribes of Your heritage.”

Notice the first bracketed word “able”. This changes the whole context of what is being said here. God didn’t make us “stray”, He made us “able to stray”. How did He make us able to stray? By instituting the law of freedom of choice. In other words, God will never force you to accept Him; it’s your choice. But, He does give us very good reasons to choose Him.

If we don’t choose Him our hearts must be hardened to what He has told us. For those of you who are parents, you should know exactly what I mean. When you teach your teenage child life’s experiences that you learned through the trials and errors of your own life, and they do not heed your advice and wind up making the same mistakes you made, you can say their heart has been hardened to your advice.

Does that mean you hardened their heart? Of course not, would a parent not want their child to understand these life principles that you try to teach them? So, why would God not want His children to know Him? By believing that God hardens peoples hearts, means that God, as being a parent to all mankind, purposely hardens some of their hearts.

This just doesn’t make sense. The only one who can harden your heart is yourself. Most peoples hearts are hardened because of the influence of society. The lure of society keeps man from seeking God. Satan has done a great job at creating a society that man is enamored by. Generation after generation of man will not learn the lessons of the previous generations.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, king Solomon learned this lesson. He learned that all that life has to offer is like chasing after the wind. He was the riches man in the world at the time, yet it did not satisfy him. His book of Ecclesiastes is like a letter from him to each one of us, but most of mankind does not heed his advice.

We read in first Corinthians 10:13a, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.” Man does not learn lessons easily, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. God does not have to harden our hearts, we do a good enough job ourselves by listening to society, which is a product of this satanic fallen world.

There is nothing good; nothing profitable in our societies today that doesn’t come from God. The treasure trove of life’s principles that are within the pages of the Bible, is where man should be looking for the answers to life, instead of making the same mistakes over and over again.

When you do study your Bible, it’s a good habit, when studying, to see the differing translations to get a better view of the contextual makeup of Scripture. Especially Scriptures that do not read clearly, as the ones I used as examples here. Another translation, even a paraphrase translation, can help you understand context.

My personal preference is to used the New King James Version as my main study Bible and the Amplified Version, New International Version, New American Standard, in that order, to aid me with understanding context. I don’t stop there, but those are my main choices, with my least choices being, “The Message” and the TNIV, which stands for Today’s New International Version. What you choose is your prerogative, just as long as you are reading God’s Word.