WHY CHRISTIANS SUFFER
By Dr. Billy Graham
(from “The Hour of Decision” Radio Program)
“Why does God allow fear to continue to grip the hearts of men in this enlightened age? Where is God’s power? Why doesn’t He stop all this misery and cruelty with which our age has been cursed? If God is good and merciful, why are men and women crushed by agonies almost beyond endurance?” Questions like these are asked not only by atheists and enemies of religion, but also by bewildered Christians, who, staggering under the burden of anguish, cry out, “Why must I bear this misery? How can God lay all this suffering on me?”
The book of Job, probably the oldest book in the Bible, deals with this difficulty. Some of you have known hardship, but I doubt if any of you have sustained losses as large as Job did when treacherous enemies captured his men and all his herds and flocks. Perhaps you have received notice that a loved one has been killed in an accident. Job lost seven sons and three daughters in a single day. Others among you are stricken by sickness; perhaps you are groaning in pain. Job suffered from a form of leprosy that made his body a mass of boils and sores.
When Job could find no human explanation for his agonies, he cried to God, “Show me wherefore thou contendest with me” (10:2).
This question, “Why must the righteous suffer?” is as old as time. There is only one place that we can find an answer, and that is in the Bible. Yet in their blindness some men have rejected divine guidance and insist that everything in life comes from chance. Fate, they declare, has smiled on the people who have an easy, rich, untroubled existence, and Fate has frowned on those who are beset with unnumbered difficulties. They say that it is a matter of luck, “since we are only creatures of accident,” they conclude, “why not press every drop out of pleasure while we can, and have our full fling before tomorrow comes and death with it?”
I talked to a schoolteacher in one of our cities the other day and she said that the same attitude prevails among some students. They say, “We are going to have to go to war anyway; and the atomic bomb is going to blow the whole world to smithereens—why not have a good time now? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
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Others have gone to the opposite extreme and declare that men suffer because they are weak. “Learn to be hard, cruel, ruthless,” they urge us. “Smash all opposition. Away with sympathy, kindness and mercy. Down with love. Might makes right. Don’t be a weakling; be a Superman.” That was the delusion of Stalin and Hitler, and the result was immeasurable misery for hundreds of thousands.
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE
The Bible says, “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.” This implies a difference in the suffering that comes to Christians and to those who have not received Christ. You do not need to study the Scriptures long to learn why sinners meet reverses and anguish. They are apart from God. Their sorrow is the result of their sins.
The Bible says, “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galations 6:7). The Bible also says, “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). Millions of persons are suffering today because of their sins, iniquities and wickedness. They will not only suffer in this life, but they will suffer throughout eternity unless they repent and turn to Christ as Savior.
But—why do Christians suffer?
The Bible teaches that afflictions are God’s APPOINTMENTS for His children. Christians are called to suffer. God does not promise Christians an easy pathway to heaven, nor does He promise flowery beds of ease. We will have thorns, trials, tears, temptations, tribulations and troubles. But this is part of our calling, for we have been called to suffer and to follow the footsteps of the Man of Sorrows. This world is not a place of bliss for the Christian, for Jesus reminded us that in this world we would have tribulation; is part of our earthly inheritance (John 1:33).
Again, Scripture teaches that many Christians suffer so that they may fellowship with others who are in affliction. In Romans we read, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:15). The
