One of the marks of the Christian life is suffering, but is it not true that the problem of suffering is as much considered outside of the Christian world as it is amongst Christians? Prior to conversion I am sure the question “What have I done to deserve this?” has rolled out of your lips at least once in your time. We set ourselves in labor to demand fairness and justice from our fellow man, just as we do from God.

And herein we see the arrogance of man, the raising up of man to the pinnacle of importance, the center of creation. The apostle, stands against us to our faces saying, “Who are you O man, to answer back to God? What have you done that the Creator God is bound to repay you? What virtue, what good do you posses have you given to God’s benefit that He should do the things you ask?”

The question instead is not “What ever have I done to deserve such suffering?”, but rather, “Knowing what I thought, said and did just last night, why didn’t the thrice Holy God immediately pour out the fierceness of His wrath upon me?”

A Case Study in Suffering

The vice president of operations of a large corporation became intensely jealous of a district manager in the company. The district manager enjoyed a close personal relationship with the chairman of the board. Moved by his jealousy, the vice president lodged a complaint with the chairman.

“I think we ought to get rid of Hawkins,” he suggested. The chairman replied, “Why? He’s one of the most productive managers we have. I think he’s doing an outstanding job. And besides, he is the most loyal employee we have.”

“Loyal? You think he’s loyal? No wonder he’s loyal,” the vice president said with dripping cynicism. “He’s always buttering you up. He’s only loyal because you pay him such a high salary. You give him benefits that no one else receives. Besides, you’ve built a wall of protection around him. Everybody knows that he’s your fair-haired boy. I wonder how loyal he’d be if you put the heat on him. Cut his salary and see how loyal he would be.”

The chairman was irritated by this suggestion, but he responded to the challenge. “All right. Let’s see about it. Go ahead and cut his salary. Put some heat on. I think you will see that Hawkins will maintain his loyalty.”

The vice president gave a sarcastic laugh. “You just let me at him and he’ll betray you and the company in a minute.”

The vice president left the board room and put together a scheme to bring Hawkins crashing down. First, he cut his salary in half. Then he approached some of Hawkins’s coworkers and enlisted them in his scheme. They were eager to join in. They gleefully contrived plans of industrial sabotage to destroy Hawkins’s productivity record. They falsified reports and covertly disrupted some of the machinery in the plant. Suddenly Hawkins’s plant was besieged with customer complaints about poor quality control.

The heat was on. The vice president and his henchmen referred to the district manager as “Stainless Steel” Hawkins. “Hawkins is a holy Joe. He thinks he’s better than anybody else. It’s time he got what he really deserves.”

Hawkins took it in stride. He worked even harder to solve the mysterious rash of problems that had arisen. This merely fueled the antagonism of his enemies. They began to put more pressure on. “Accidents” began to happen in the plant. The conspirators started to harass Hawkins’s family. To make matters worse, Hawkins suddenly became ill. Even his illness was of a suspicious origin. The vice president went so far as to bribe a corrupt physician to introduce a virile strand of bacteria into Hawkins’s diet. Joe Hawkins’s world began to fall apart. His sickness was taking its toll. Coupled with the plunging production of his plant, Hawkins’s star began to fade. Some of his closest friends came to him with sharp criticism. “What’s wrong with you, Hawkins? You’ve lost something. Your performance is down. No wonder they cut your salary.”

Hawkins’s friends began to think that their former opinion of him was wrong. They assumed that somehow Hawkins must have done something really bad for his life to have taken such a sudden and drastic turn for the worse. One of his friends even came to him with “spiritual” counsel. “Joe,” he said, “I need to tell you something in love. The troubles you’ve been having must come from God. I think it is a kind of punishment for unconfessed sin in your life. Maybe if you repent things will start to go better for you.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Joe Hawkins replied, “but I’m not aware of anything I’ve done to deserve this, but I will certainly search my soul about it.”

“But even the chairman cut your salary in half. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“Well, the chairman has a right to do that. He’s always been fair with me. I’m sure he knows what he is doing. He must have a good reason for his action,” Joe answered.

Then Joe’s wife got into the act. “Honey,” she said one evening, “I think it’s time for you to resign. Your health is failing and the company is treating you like dirt. After all your years of faithful service, this is the thanks you get. Let’s get out and start over somewhere else. You’re crazy to keep working for a company like this.”

“No, Hon,” Joe answered. “I can’t leave.”

“Why not?” his wife demanded.

“I owe it to the chairman of the board to stay on.”

“Are you crazy? You don’t owe him anything. You’ve given him the best years of your life, and now this. He owes you! You don’t owe him a thing. Why don’t you face it, Joe, the chairman’s as rotten as the deal he’s given you.”

“No!” Joe snapped in anger. “I just can’t believe that he would treat me unfairly on purpose.”

“Then you’d better talk to him face to face. I’d love to hear what he says when you confront him.”

“OK, OK, I’ll talk to him,” Joe promised.

The next day Joe made an appointment to see the chairman. When he was ushered into the teak-paneled office the chairman greeted him in a friendly manner. “Hi, Joe. What can I do for you?”

Joe got straight to the point. He gushed out his grievances in a torrent of rage. “What’s going on here?” he demanded. “You’ve cut my salary in half. You stand by and let a bunch of thieves sabotage my plant. You don’t give me any health benefits. What did I do to deserve this kind of treatment? I’ve been loyal to you and to the company for years and now you treat me like this. Who do you think you are, anyway?”

The chairman listened patiently to Joe’s diatribe.

Then he responded. “Let me ask you some questions, Joe. Do you own this company?”

“No, sir,” Joe replied.

“Did you build this place from scratch? Did you risk your own capital in this operation? Do you pay all the bills? Are you the chairman of the board?”

To all these questions Joe sat shaking his head, “No.”

“Tell me, Joe, who are you to tell me how to run my company? I’ve given you everything I ever promised you and more. Look at your contract. Does your contract specify that you should receive all the bonuses I’ve given you over the years?”

Again Joe had to give an honest answer. “No, sir, you really have been more than kind to me.”

“Have I, Joe? Do you think I’ve changed? Do you think I’m not aware of what’s going on here? I know you have been treated unfairly. I know exactly what’s going on in that plant. I’ve been studying the matter carefully. Nothing has escaped my notice. Joe, I’m going to ask you to do something for me. You’ve trusted me in the past. Trust me now. It may take some time but I guarantee you that I will straighten things out. But you have to be patient. I have a plan. Those who have plotted against you will get everything they deserve. Do you really think I would let them get away with this?”

Joe felt awful. He began to stammer an apology. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no right to come in there and lay all these accusations on you. I’ve complained once. But no more. You’ll never hear another word of protest out of my mouth. Do whatever you will. I trust you.”

The chairman smiled. He spoke into the intercom to his secretary. “Mrs. Franklin, have the vice president of operations report to my office immediately. I’m giving him his walking papers.”

“Don’t leave yet, Joe. I have a few words for you. First, I want you to know that beginning tomorrow morning you will be elevated to a vice presidency in the company. You will receive double the salary you had before your pay was cut. Even at this hour a physician is on his way from Atlanta with a special vaccine that will cure your disease. You have been loyal to me, Joe, more loyal than any other employee. You’ve endured a lot without cursing me behind my back. Now it is time for you to be vindicated.”

“I knew it,” exclaimed Joe. “I must admit I had my moments of doubt, but deep down inside I knew you would fix everything. Now I really feel embarrassed for all those accusations I made to you. How can you ever forgive me?”

“Joe, don’t worry about it. That’s one thing I know how to do. Forgive. I major in forgiveness.”

Is There a Connection of Sin with Suffering?

Surely by now the reader has recognized that this is the story of the biblical character Job, thinly disguised in modern garb. The story of Job is a case study in human suffering. It chronicles the drama of a righteous man who underwent extreme misery in this world. His misery was compounded by his friends’ insensitivity toward him. They made an assumption that the Bible forbids. They assumed that Job’s degree of suffering was in direct proportion to his sin. They assumed that there is a ratio in this world between suffering and guilt. Since Job’s suffering was great, it must have been a sign that his sin was equally great.

God does not allow this equation. We remember the question put to Jesus about the man who was born blind:

Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” John 9:1-3

In the science of logic there is an informal fallacy called the fallacy of the false dilemma. Sometimes it is called the either/or fallacy. This error of reasoning occurs when a problem is presented as if it allowed only two possible explanations when in reality there are three or more options.

Some issues are indeed of an either/or character. For example, either there is a God or there is not. There is no third option. But because some questions may be reduced to only two alternatives does not mean that all questions may be so reduced. This is the error the disciples made concerning the man born blind.

When the disciples considered the plight of the blind man they assumed there were only two possible explanations for it. Either the blindness was a direct result of the man’s own sin or it was the result of his parents’ sin.

Their thinking was wrong, but it was not utterly groundless. They were correct in one assumption. They knew enough about Scripture to realize that there is a connection between suffering and sin. They understood that suffering and death entered the world because of sin. Before sin entered the world there was no suffering or death.

Death is unnatural. It may be natural to fallen man, but it was not natural to man as he was created. Man was not created to die. He was created with the possibility of death but not with the necessity of death. Death was introduced as a consequence of sin. If there is no sin, there is no death. But when sin entered, the curse of the Fall was added. All death and suffering flow out of the complex of sin.

The disciples were partially correct at another point. They were aware that sometimes there is a direct link between a person’s sin and his suffering. God afflicted Miriam with leprosy as a judgment upon her for her sin against Moses (Numbers 12:9-10).

The error of the disciples was in assuming that there is always a direct correlation, a fixed ratio between a person’s suffering and a person’s sin. In this world there are times when a person suffers far less than what is merited for one’s sins, while others endure a greater proportion of suffering. This disparity is seen in David’s cry, “Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph?” (Psalm 94:3).

There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands. When that occurs we are victims of injustice. But that injustice is at a horizontal level. No one suffers injustice on a vertical level. That is, no one ever suffers unjustly in terms of our relationship with God. As long as we bear the guilt of sin we cannot protest that God is unjust in allowing us to suffer.

If someone wrongfully causes me to suffer, I have every right to plead with God for vindication even as Job did. Yet at the same time I must not complain to God that He is at fault in allowing this suffering to befall me. In terms of my relationship to other people I may be innocent, but in terms of my relationship to God I am not an innocent victim.

It is one thing for me to ask God for justice in my dealings with men. It is another thing for me to demand justice in my relationship with God. No more perilous demand could be uttered than for a sinner to demand justice from God. The worst thing that could possibly befall me is to receive pure justice from God.

“God Meant It for Good”

All of these considerations aside, the fact remains that the disciples still committed the fallacy of the false dilemma. They limited the reason for the man’s blindness to two possible explanations (the man’s own sin or his parents’) when there was at least one other explanation for the blindness that they failed to consider.

Jesus punctured the false dilemma by saying, “Neither!” The reason why the man was born blind was not because of his sin. Nor was it because of his parents’ sin. Jesus declared that the man was born blind so “that the works of God should be revealed in him.”

The man born blind was afflicted with blindness for the glory of God. This is the startling conclusion our Lord revealed. This is a crucial teaching for us. It serves as a warning for us not to jump to conclusions about the “why” of our suffering.

God used the man’s blindness for His greater glory. Here the “evil” of disease and suffering is made serviceable to God. He triumphs over it and brings His glorious plan to pass through it. We remember the dreadful suffering of Joseph at the hands of his brothers. Yet because of their treachery the plan of God for all of history was brought to pass.

At the moment of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers, he exclaimed, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Genesis 50:20).

Here we see God working through evil to effect salvation. It does not make the evil of Joseph’s brothers any less evil. Judas’s betrayal was a wicked act. It brought unjust suffering upon Jesus even as Joseph was a victim of his brothers’ injustice.

But over all injustice,

all pain,

all suffering

…stands a sovereign God who works His plan of salvation over, against, and even through evil.

—R.C. Sproul, (1996, c1988). Surprised by Suffering. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.

Purchase the book “Surprised by Suffering” here, or read more here.