But why does God…?

We want answers to numerous questions which begin with these words, because we question God’s apparent way of doing things. Why he allows suffering, for example, why he permits evil, and wars, and genocides, and torture… Why does God let little children suffer from the breakdown of their family security? And on and on.

Vast questions! In reply, notice first of all, two things. First, the accusing tone in the question. It’s as if we want to find fault with God, rather than really wanting to listen to the answer. We have already pre-judged him. To our way of thinking, he is a bad God; he’s not doing a good job – as if we would do better!

Secondly, the question seeks a rational explanation. Now let’s just think a moment why that is so. It’s because we are reasonable, thinking persons who require answers that satisfy the demands of our rational minds. And we expect there should be some reason why God does what he does. That expectation comes from the fact that we are endowed with intelligence that thinks logically. That, in turn, is actually the case because we are created in the likeness of a wise, super-intelligent, rational God. 

The brilliance of God’s understanding can be seen in the amazing fine-tuning of the physical constants in the universe which are indispensable for life on our planet. Who but God could have put those extremely accurate unchangeable factors and measurements in place from the very moment when his big explosive power set off the start of all creation – so that one day his human creatures could live, think, develop agriculture, and study science?  

You wouldn’t be asking the “But why does God…” question if you were merely complicated matter thrown up by abstract fate in a chance universe!

So the very fact that we ask such questions and want authentic answers is tacit testimony to God’s necessary existence! And so it is also perfectly legitimate to ask these questions, and to wonder about God’s way of doing things.

The problem is that you may well find that God’s answers are not to your taste. Why might that be? Because you think you know better than God! So as you ask your questions, please maintain an openness to hear answers which have a wisdom above your own.

Questions about human suffering are perplexing, and are not easily answered in a short blog. To get onto God’s wavelength as it were, is no simple matter. His ways, the Bible indicates, “are inscrutable… For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?” (Romans 11.33-34). God tells us through his prophet Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways… For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55.8-9).

If befits us to have some humility. If God had written back in Isaiah’s day what he knew about the creating and upholding of the universe and human life, no-one would have understood it for millennia! He knew all about cells and DNA and fossil fuels and the ozone layer and so on; he wanted us to use our intelligence to discover such things progressively. He saw that our need was for moral and spiritual realities to be understood, so that’s what he decided to reveal, for without such revelation, our human reason would never know such truths. 

We are so ignorant! Yet we dare question God’s ways!

Clive Every-Clayton