Does God Love Us?
By: Joshua Bennett
Tags: Spirituality, Theology, Love, God, Catholic

Does God Love Us?

Recently, I had a chat with a friend of mine about my journey up to this point and at the end of our conversation, he seemed bewildered and asked, “If God loves you, then why did he put you through all that?”

For years, I found myself wondering why God would allow me to suffer horrendous trauma if he truly loved me. I could not understand why such an event would unfold if God bestowed life into me and blessed me with all the opportunities I have received thus far. This is a question I have come back to time and time again in search of an answer.

Such an inability to have a direct answer about why we suffer leaves most people overwhelmed at the apparent hypocrisy of a merciful loving God being cruel. I was in the same boat, but my desire for truth led me to a path less traveled on and an understanding of how God has loved me this entire time.

Why Does God Allow Man to Suffer?

The Book of Job attempts to answer this question. I say attempt because another article points out that the direct question of why bad things happen to good people is never clearly answered. This is because of our limited understanding of how God’s mercy works in governing the cosmos. However, we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

We are familiar with the story of Job being tested by God and despairing at not knowing why he is suffering, which resonates with us as there are moments when we question why things happen and become resentful towards God since we think he has failed us in our moment of need.

The Book of Job is an investigation of the problem of divine justice. It begs the question of why the righteous suffer as the conventional answer is that God rewards virtue and punishes sin. The investigation is rooted in the belief that God had set about creation as a means of communal well-being. All who were righteous were considered to be invested in the community, showing concern to the poor and the needy. Their antithesis is the wicked, only concerned about their greed. Satan asked God that if he made men righteous with prosperity, would that not make them act righteously from selfish motives?

What better way to find out than to test Job, the most righteous of all God’s servants, and remove his prosperity? So Satan is allowed to take his wealth and kill Job’s entire family. Job’s friends see this and naturally conclude that Job must have sinned and should beg for forgiveness. Job, however, knows that he has done nothing by maintaining his righteous piety and refuses. We all have had moments when we felt like Job 9:21,

“I am blameless; I regard not myself. I loathe my life.”

Job had no ulterior motives in his devotion to God. Yet, he berates God for the unfairness dumped upon him but then changes his fury toward the wicked taking advantage of the helpless. We become Job when we tell God our suffering is his purpose and believe he will not acquit us because “When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked” (Job 9:23–24).

Job (c. 1516) by Fra Bartolomeo

Like us, Job ponders man’s relationship with God. He wonders why God judges people by their actions if He can easily alter and forgive their behavior. It is unclear to Job how a human can appease God’s justice, arguing in 9:28–29, “I become afraid of all my suffering, for I know you will not hold me innocent. I shall be condemned; why then do I labor in vain?” God is unseen and his ways are inscrutable and beyond human understanding.

It reminds us of Judges 6:13 when Gideon asks, “If the Lord is with us, then why has this happened to us?” No wonder Job questions God’s intentions, but it is wrong to accuse God of injustice as he is greater than all of us. We can use injustice to become more acceptable to divine revelation. While we may not know what causes our suffering or why it befalls us, we can bring our problems to God and trust that he knows how to resolve them.

Eventually, the suffering comes to an end. God sees Job’s devotion and restores everything he had before. Job admits,

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted… Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand.” (42:2–3)

This understanding comes from Elihu, one of Job’s three friends, who explains that God communicates with us in two forms: visions and physical pain. He says physical pain provides the sufferer with an opportunity to realize God’s love and forgiveness when all is well again, realizing God has “ransomed” him from impending death (33:24). This occurs with mental pain as well. I remember God communicating to me this way at my lowest point before an overabundant warmth came over me. I knew right then he was speaking to me from the mist of my pain.

We may not understand why we suffer or why it befalls good people we know, but through God’s love, we come out stronger. If we trust him, then he will reveal all things to us in due time. This is what I argued to my friend, but he replied it did not prove God loved me enough to justify the suffering I went through.

Job Restored to Prosperity (1648) by Laurent de La Hyde

How does God Love Us?

When we look for an understanding of our suffering, we should not use it as a measuring stick for our guilt. Christianity is not like Buddhism, where our present circumstances are the result of past actions nor a result of bad karma but from our selfishness and rejection of God. It is the result of us rebelling against our creator, not our sins. The amount of suffering we go through is not proportional to our sin. Christ reinforces this point in John 9:2–3 when he tells his Apostles that man does not sin, but rather “this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

It can be easy to admit people are too ashamed of admitting their rejection of God, masking it under the pretense of their suffering is a result of their sins. When we reach the lowest point of our suffering, we sob into the night, mentally screaming and wondering why God would abandon us and allow this to happen in the first place. It is easy to conclude that he does not care for us, which makes Satan jump with glee for it allows him to turn truth into doubt. He tempts us with the belief God is not there for us in our time of need.

Such deception blinds us from the truth. Although it may feel like our prayers go unanswered, God is always with us. Satan wants us to mistrust and question everything God promises, even though it is outside our understanding. In Matthew 28:20, Christ tells his followers,

“Behold, I am with you always, to the end of an age.”

We must reject the idea that if God loves us, he does not intend for us to suffer. Do we not see this in that God sent his only son to die for us so that we could physically grasp the suffering he felt for his creation? We do not know if God anguished as his son breathed his last and said, “It is finished.” Christ was a perfect man who did not deserve God’s punishment, but he gladly undertook the burden, as his son, so that we might be forgiven.

God does not love suffering. No, he has suffered in trying to eliminate it from the world because it hurts his creation. He strives to bring us forth from a suffering world through these trials, which is breathtaking, but we are not yet ready to comprehend this until we turn inward and see it from a new perspective.

Rather than question his love, we should accept our lives as a result of his divine love. Everything that befalls us, good or bad, is filled with a divine purpose. Every trial endured was passed through God’s loving hands. When it feels like he is abandoning us, he shows us his love. It is hard to accept this sometimes, but, eventually, we come to terms with it. We are capable of using it to not only deepen our faith and be drawn closer to him but refine our character as well.

Those who suffer are the closest to God’s heart. It may be hard to believe when we see our suffering through a narrow lens, but when we stop limiting our view, we see suffering is not a sign of hatred. It is unavoidable in life, but if we trust in God, He will guide us past it. We should always pray for a stronger faith and allow ourselves to see the solution from his eyes.

Instead of asking where God is in the midst of our pain, we should ask ourselves where we were. Are we trusting our Creator, even though we cannot understand our circumstances? If we find the answer, we understand how he loves us.