Roberta Grimes

God and Suffering

Posted by Roberta Grimes • August 10, 2024 • 6 Comments
Jesus, The Source, The Teachings of Jesus

God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through.
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

God hath not promised we shall not know
Toil and temptation, trouble and woe.
He hath not told us we shall not bear
Many a burden, Many a care.

 But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way.
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.
– Annie Johnson Flint (1866-1932), from “What God Hath Promised” (1919)

I have on occasion heard from people who have emailed and told me that God should have prevented some tragedy or other in their own lives, or in the life of the world. So I will tell these folks why we plan such difficult lessons into our lives even before we are born, and how stressful or painful problems actually help us to grow spiritually, and why the fact that this life on earth is not our real life, and no one ever actually dies, means that everyone truly will be fine in the end, so please don’t take all of this so seriously! I have sometimes called things which might look like tragedies, or like evidence that God doesn’t care, what they actually are, which is divine gifts from which powerful learning and growth can arise. But for most of those who were complaining to me that God simply does not love us enough, I don’t think that my answers ever were of much help. The thought that God would allow this or that especially painful and upsetting thing to happen meant to the person who was complaining to me that God was not on the side of the angels after all.

I have gradually come to accept the fact that indeed God is only Love, despite the fact that bad things very often happen to good people. And bad things can happen even with what we might call the active participation of a perfectly loving God. Consider these facts:

• This material reality is not our real life. Until you can get yourself grounded in two facts, you really don’t know anything. Study first the basic truth that this reality is consciousness-based. And then of course understand the fact that human life is eternal, and you will be eons ahead in grasping what really is going on! You will especially feel as if you almost can see the Mind of God working. In fact, everything that ever happens acttually is happening inside God’s Mind. So all is safe and limited, and it ends in God’s arms. How bad can things ever get?
• The difficulties in our lives are geneerally of our own choosing. Before we are born, we plan these lives. And since we know that we are coming into each lifetime with the hope of gaining from it as much spiritual growth as possible, together with our spirit guides and others, we will often plan difficult and stressful experiences from which we can gain great spiritual lessons. People have insisted to me that they never would have planned their awful brain cancer diagnosis or the death of their child! And they have bitterly sworn these things to me, even as I could see them deepening and growing as they never could have otherwise done, had nothing bad ever happened to them.
• Pain helps us to learn and grow. You can see this happening all around you if you look for it, and at all levels. If the baby doesn’t fall down a few times, he never can learn how to walk, now, can he? When some experiment of Thomas Edison’s failed for the umpteenth time, and a friend commiserated with him about the frustration of having that happen yet again, Edison told his friend cheerfully that the failure was not a problem for him at all. He said, “We are just one failure closer to figuring out what will work!”
• The suffering in each of us calls out to other people. On an individual scale, we learn to feel compassion, and then to feel and give love, by seeing other people who are damaged and who need and are grateful for our help. On a greater, and even on an epic scale, we can see that the result of bullying is damage and pain in unthinkable numbers; so ultimately, we are coming to learn that such bullying must never be allowed to happen again. Humankind as an entire species slowly but inevitably advances in part through the ghastly learning of great wars and profound calamities.
• Physical pain cannot be remembered. It is an oddity of physical pain that, while it is useful for training purposes, and the fact of having had a pain can be remembered, the sensation of pain itself cannot be recalled to mind. It is one of the very few things which mercifully cannot be re-experienced, which is of course yet one more beautiful sign of God’s great mercy.

Our beloved friend, the great afterlife expert Dr. R. Craig Hogan, calls this brief and often painful material life “earth school,” which indeed is what it is. And that is all that it is! Inevitably, each of us comes here to learn, to get our shins bruised and our knuckles rapped because that is how we best can learn spiritually. But then, yes, we finally do get to go home from school to milk and cookies, and to Mom’s and Dad’s hugs. And then there will be another school day tomorrow. And perhaps another school day after that. Some lifetimes on earth we will enjoy, but many of them – true! – will be pretty awful. Eventually, though, if we work hard and learn well, we know that we can look forward to growing up spiritually. We know that the last of all our lifetimes on earth will come eventually, after which we will forever enjoy basking in the ultimate light of God’s perfect Love.

What does Jesus have to say about all this? Jesus first tells us what we need to be learning and devoutly practicing in order to help to make this life on earth our last necessary earth-lifetime. All of this is basic stuff! Most of us can now recite it by heart: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment.  The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (MT 22:37-40).

There are many other places in the Gospels, too, where we can turn when we want to feel closer to Jesus as He helps us to feel closer to, and helps us to somewhat better understand the God of all. And one of those wonderful Gospel chapters that I enjoy reading, and then I think for awhile about the words of my beloved Friend, mostly because there is so much there to wonder about, is the Thirteenth Chapter of the Book of Luke:

13 There were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had shed along with their sacrifices. ² And Jesus said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? ³ I tell you, no, but unless you reform your own minds, you will all likewise perish. ⁴ Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? ⁵ I tell you, no, but unless you purify your own minds, you all likewise will perish.”

⁶ And He began telling this parable: “A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and did not find any. ⁷ And he said to the vineyard-keeper, ‘Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?’ ⁸ And he answered and said to him, ‘Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; ⁹ and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, then cut it down.’”

¹⁰ And He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. ¹¹ And there was a woman who for eighteen years had had a sickness caused by a spirit; and she was bent double, and could not straighten up at all. ¹² When Jesus saw her, He called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your sickness.” ¹³ And He laid His hands on her; and immediately she was made erect again and began glorifying God. ¹⁴ But the synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the crowd in response, “There are six days in which work should be done; so come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” ¹⁵ But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him? ¹⁶ And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?” ¹⁷ As He said this, all His opponents were being humiliated; and the entire crowd was rejoicing over all the glorious things being done by Him.

¹⁸ So He was saying, “What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? ¹⁹ It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.”

²⁰ And again He said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? ²¹ It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”

²² And He was passing through from one city and village to another, teaching, and proceeding on His way to Jerusalem. ²³ And someone said to Him, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?” And He said to them, ²⁴ “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. ²⁵ Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ ²⁶ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’; ²⁷ and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; depart from Me, all you evildoers.’ ²⁸ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out. ²⁹ And they will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God. ³⁰ And behold, some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last.”

³¹ Just at that time some Pharisees approached, saying to Him, “Go away, leave here, for Herod wants to kill You.” ³² And He said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I reach My goal.’ ³³ Nevertheless I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day; for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem. ³⁴ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it! ³⁵ Behold, your house is left to you desolate; and I say to you, you will not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (LK 13:1-35)

Oh my dear ones, every time I read that Gospel chapter, there is something different in it that catches on my mind! But to end this investigation of these complex, and perhaps difficult mysteries on a note of pure praise to God, here is the 46^th Psalm. This lovely Psalm of the Sons of Korah was being sung in praise to the Love of God as far back in human history as the days of Moses, nearly half a millennium before those beautiful Psalms that were first sung to God’s Love by King David. Even as much as thirty-five hundred years ago, no matter how much suffering was then being visited upon humankind, we still in response sang to God songs of gratitude and jubilation! Oh, what perfect peace comes to us, even today, from these simple words sung in golden comfort: “Be still, and know that I am God.” 

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in times of trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
³ Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy dwelling places of the Most High.
⁵ God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶ The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered;
He raised His voice, the earth melted.
⁷ The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

⁸ Come, behold the works of the Lord,
Who has wrought desolations in the earth.
⁹ He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;
He burns the chariots with fire.
¹⁰ “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in all the earth.”
¹¹ The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold.