# The Purpose of Pain

The Purpose of Pain
Small Group/Devotional Guide
Discovering the many unexpected roles that pain

plays in God’s creation
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more
death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has
passed away.”
—Revelation 21:4
©2014 Bruce Heydt 1
“If God is wiser than we His judgment must differ

from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil.
What seems to us good may therefore not be good
in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.”
—C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Introduction
WHY DOES GOD ALLOW PAIN? This question usually comes not out of a dis-
passionate study of Christianity, but out of the despair brought on by the heart-
wrenching circumstances of life. There is nothing wrong with this. God can often
use such times to get us thinking about questions that would never come to mind if
we led a care-free life. At the same time, we need to be careful that bitterness does
not color our perceptions, and that when these thoughts come to mind we treat
them as questions for which we are seeking meaningful answers, not simply as an-
gry rants. A heart filled with bitterness bars the way to deeper understanding; in-
sights come from humbly seeking after God.
The existence of pain represents one of the biggest obstacles to faith for many who
just can’t reconcile the state of the universe and the course of everyday life with
the kind of supreme being they’ve always imagined. The pervasive presence of
pain in our lives and in the world around us has given rise to the classic conun-
drum commonly labeled “the Problem of Pain.” In general, the dilemma is stated
more or less like this: “An all-loving and all-powerful God would not want us to
feel pain and would be able to prevent it. But we do experience pain. Therefore
God must either be unloving, or powerless, or both.”
The atheist philosopher David Hume stated triumphantly that “Nothing can
shake the solidarity of this reasoning, so short, so clear, so decisive.” But is it? The
reasoning is, in fact, extremely shaky. Even in our limited human experience we
can think of times when pain, though unpleasant, is useful or even necessary. Par-
ents, athletic trainers, and dentists all inflict pain on a regular basis and, provided
that they are judicious and sensitive in its application, we are better off for it. Typ-
ically, it is well within their power to withhold the pain, but although there is
probably a part of them that regrets the need, they inflict the pain anyway. Does
this make them evil? In the moment that we feel the pain, we may think so! But in
the aftermath, when a cooler head hopefully prevails, we can understand the con-
text and acknowledge that the pain served a greater purpose and that it’s applica-
tion was, in some sense, “good.”
For this reason, the real problem with pain is not that we feel it from time to
time, but that there are many occasions when even in retrospect there isn’t any
immediately apparent reason for it. Try as we might, we can’t point to any good
that came from it. We can, perhaps, find it possible to believe that whatever
doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but then what about those people who “suffer
unto death”? What possible purpose can that serve? The seeming unreasonable-
ness and injustice of many of our pains demands an explanation, more so than the
simple existence of pain itself.
For this and other reasons as well, the problem of pain is one for which a
simple explanation won’t do. When hurting people ask, “Why does God allow
this?” they don’t generally want a lesson in theology. They want relief. But relief,
in part at least, lies in understanding the pain. Psychologists say that even severe
pain is endurable if the sufferer understands that there’s a need or purpose behind
it. The truth not only sets us free, it also reassures troubled minds. If we hope to be
comforted, we have to grapple with these big issues. Unfortunately, big questions
require big, difficult, answers. We might crave simplicity, but if the issues we
choose to struggle with are of cosmic proportions we must be prepared for diffi-
cult answers that challenge our understanding of God and even of ourselves, and
that may sometimes not be to our personal liking. When it comes to the Problem
of Pain, the answers themselves may sometimes be painful.
I don’t claim to have a definitive answer to all your questions about pain. In
fact, an underlying premise of this study is that there is no single answer, but ra-
ther that pain is a multifaceted phenomenon with many different causes, effects,
and purposes, any of which may be part of the reason for whatever discomforts
you may be feeling at any particular moment. What God may be actively doing in
your own life—or what he may merely be allowing to happen—is more than I can
say with any authority. It may be more than you can say too, but if anyone is likely
to be able to discern a purpose, it’s the sufferer. This study is an attempt to equip
you with just enough insight to enable you to struggle toward a (tentative) self-
diagnosis—and to suggest that the pain in our lives, like vegetables on the tongue
of a child, can be both unpleasant and good for us at the same time.
THE FOLLOWING LESSONS are intended primarily for use in small group set-
tings, but are also suitable for private devotions. The study is divided into daily
readings that should be completed individually by each group member. The study
can thus be completed in four weeks. Following each commentary there are one or
more questions or assignments under the heading “Challenge Yourself,” and room
to write down a few comments. Once each week the group should gather to review
the past week’s readings and the share thoughts about some of the Challenge
Yourself items. Leaders: Do not attempt to answer all the questions during your
time together (1½ to 2 hrs is recommended, including time for gathering, prayer,
and refreshments). Enough questions are provided to allow groups some flexibility
to focus on those few that are most pertinent or interesting to them.
Peace,
Bruce Heydt
Director of Adult Discipleship Ministries
Part One: The Origin of Pain

Day 1: Two Conceptions of the Universe
Scripture: John1:10
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the
world did not recognize him.
The Big Idea:

Pain is a powerful challenge to our preconceptions whether we are theists
or materialists.
Commentary:
“The Problem of Pain” is probably the biggest obstacle to faith for skep-
tics and believers alike. The question of why God tolerates pain is a valid
one that admittedly poses a serious challenge to our conception of God—
but not, I think, quite so big a one as most skeptics make out. In fact, the
problem of pain actually presents a more serious challenge to atheism
than to Christianity.
The problem is typically stated something like this: If God is good
he would not want us to suffer. If God is all-powerful he would be able to
prevent suffering. But we know from experience that pain exists. There-
fore God is either not good, not all-powerful, or neither. In fact, the im-
plication is that pain proves God does not exist at all.
This argument sounds convincing, but it only holds water if the ini-
tial suppositions are true. That is, that a good God would never want us
to feel pain and that an omnipotent God would always prevent it. These
two suppositions sound so self-evident that few people ever bother to
question them, but there are strong reasons to doubt the truth of both of
these assertions. And if they are faulty, the whole argument collapses.
Before putting the problem of pain to the test, though, let’s first con-
sider why it is even more problematic for naturalistic worldviews than it
is for Christianity.
The materialistic view of the universe holds that it doesn’t have a
creator or a purpose, it just is. It consists of nothing but atoms and mole-
cules obeying set physical laws—things like the inverse-square law and
gravity—that came about through random chance. In a materialistic uni-
verse there can be no free will. We might think we are making our own
choices, but what’s really happening is that chemicals in our brains inter-
act with neurons according to inflexible laws, resulting in certain inevita-
ble reactions that we call thoughts. Because the thoughts we have are the
result of chemical reactions determined by physical laws, we have no
way to either to encourage them or to suppress them. They happen just
because the mechanistic laws of the universe predetermine them. There’s

no “right” or “wrong” or “good” or “bad” about it, any more than there is
anything just or unjust about an unsupported object falling to the ground
under the force of gravity. That’s just how things work and that’s all
there is to it.
Now here’s the thing: If this is really how the universe is put to-
gether, then how do we explain the sense of moral revulsion we feel
when a dictator engages in genocide, or when I strike my wife over the
head with a sledge hammer? In short, why do we have an issue with pain
in the first place, if it’s the inevitable product of universal laws and
couldn’t be any different? Some might have trouble imagining an all-
powerful God who doesn’t intervene to prevent pain, but it’s less sensible
still to imagine a universe that absolutely forces pain upon us while at the
same time programs us to feel that pain is somehow unjust.
Moreover, the whole notion that anything can ever be “unjust” or
that it should be different or that our current state of affairs isn’t good or
fair makes no sense in a materialistic universe. Skeptics feel moral out-
rage over the ongoing presence of pain in our lives, but in labeling pain a
“problem” they are admitting that the universe is not just a collection of
mindless atoms and natural laws—they are in fact introducing a sense of
“good” and “evil,” “right” and “wrong,” “should” and “should not,” into
the universe. And that’s the kind of universe Christians believe in, not
materialists. So every time skeptics raise the problem of pain, they’re
conceding a major point of contention to Christians.
But it’s not our purpose to fling the problem of pain back in the face
of skeptics. It helps to demonstrate a flaw in their argument, but it
doesn’t help explain the suffering of those of us who believe in a “good”
God. So next let’s see if we can’t begin to grapple with understanding
why, if there is a God out there, he doesn’t banish pain from the universe.
Challenge Yourself:
The Problem of Pain presumes that the world is not as it should be and
that in a better world there would be no pain. Which worldview do
you think accords better with the idea that this world is “not as it
should be”—materialism or Christianity? Why?
Notes:
Day 2: The Nature of Good
Scripture: Isaiah 55:8

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways,” declares the LORD.
The Big Idea:

God’s definition of good is not necessarily the same as ours.
Commentary:
Before we can begin to unravel the Problem of Pain we need to define a
few terms, because a large part of the problem lies in misunderstanding
their meaning. The two most important terms to wrestle with are “good”
and “all-powerful” (or “omnipotent”).
Both of these words are found in the statement of the Problem of
Pain I shared earlier: If God is good, as Christians claim, he would not
want us to suffer. If God is all-powerful, as Christians claim, he would be
able to prevent it.
As I’ve said, these two conditions sound reasonable, but that’s partly
because most of us hold to faulty definitions of these two key words. So
let’s consider them.
Is it really true that a good God would not have any use for pain and
would abhor it? The problem here, it seems to me, is a confusion between
the concepts of good versus evil on the one hand, and pleasant versus un-
pleasant on the other. We tend to jump to the conclusion that “pleasant”
equals “good” while “unpleasant” equals “bad.” We imagine that a good
God would be one who showers us with pleasures morning, noon, and
night, while only an evil or uncaring God would allow any pain to get in
the way of our personal satisfaction with life.
But even a moment’s reflection by the most hardened skeptic should
be enough to dispel this notion. Many people find recreational drug use a
satisfying experience. Others take pleasure in extra-marital affairs. Some
find gambling to be an emotional rush. Still others take pleasure in being
cruel to defenseless victims. I don’t mean to say that pleasant things are
never beneficial, but if they are, it’s merely a fortuitous coincidence. The
two things are not the same.
On the other hand, it’s not hard to list some very unpleasant things
that are good for us. Brussels sprouts spring to mind. Most medicines and
surgical procedures fall into this category. (In two more years it will be
time for my next colonoscopy. It won’t be pleasant, but it will do me
some good.) Strenuous exercise, homework, disciplining an unruly
child—our lives are filled with countless unpleasant chores that we
would be worse off without.
So on what basis can we claim that a “good” God would eliminate

pain because it is “bad”? Isn’t it possible that he might have some pur-
pose that seems unpleasant to us but which is an important, even neces-
sary, part of his plan? Don’t you think it’s likely that he has bigger things
in mind for us than just protecting us from unpleasant experiences? If we
ourselves know that there’s “no gain without pain,” don’t you think
maybe God has figured that out, too, and applies the principle in count-
less seemingly inconvenient ways?
Or look at it the other way around. Suppose he did give us every-
thing we wanted and never let anything unpleasant come our way? What
do we call someone who’s raised that way by human parents? We call
him a spoiled brat. Even creatures of limited intelligence like ourselves
understand that too much comfort and indulgence is not a good thing in
the long run, and that discipline has its place. Certainly an omniscient
God would have reason to discipline us as well.
Now we have to be careful. I’m not suggesting that every time some-
thing bad happens it’s because God is disciplining us. That’s not the case.
There is no single reason for pain. There are lots of other things that
might be going on. To me, that’s the real problem of pain. I’m not sur-
prised that we experience pains. Frankly, to me nothing seems more natu-
ral. The issue is discerning what they mean, because sometimes they are
a wake-up call and we’re being enticed to do something in response. We
need to figure out what that is so we can react appropriately. At other
times, our pains may not be a result of anything we have any control over
and God may just be asking us to patiently endure them. Patience itself
might be the virtue he’s working into us.
Challenge Yourself:
Make yourself a list of things that are both unpleasant and “good.”
Next, name some things that feel good but are unhealthy, unwise, or un-
ethical.
Notes:
Day 3: More than Just Good
Scripture: Hebrews 12:10-11

Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God
disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No disci-
pline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it pro-
duces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been
trained by it.
The Big Idea:

God is good, but that’s not all he is.
Commentary:
The argument that a “good” God would not create and sustain a universe
filled with pain rests upon a logical fallacy. When they try to picture
what a good God would be like and what he would do, people tend to
imagine a God for whom goodness is not just an attribute, but his only at-
tribute. Sure enough, if God was only motivated by compassion, it’s easy
to imagine that eliminating pain would be his top priority, and hard to
understand why he would not yet have achieved this.
But that’s not the sort of God that any informed Christian has in
mind. The God of Christian theology is loving, to be sure, but he’s also
morally upright, or “holy.” That is, he insists upon certain standards of
behavior, regardless of how we might happen to feel about them. God’s
concern is not simply to ensure our happiness, but to shape our character.
What’s more, the Christian God is not only loving and moral; he’s also
righteous. That is, when his moral standards are transgressed, there are
consequences. Justice demands that God punish disobedience, just as it
demands that a human judge hold rapists and thieves accountable for
their crimes.
But we’ve only just begun to consider God’s multifaceted nature.
God is also a craftsman intent on molding and refining the work of his
hands. He’s a gardener who understands the necessity of pruning. He’s a
teacher who administers tests. He’s a shepherd who guides his flock onto
safe paths—sometimes with a gentle nudge but at other times with a firm
prod of his staff. He’s a surgeon intent on removing malignant tumors.
He’s a parent who disciplines his children for their own good. And so on.
All of these are essential parts of God’s character. He can’t neglect any
one of them for the sake of any other. He can’t ignore his sense of justice
in order to express love any more than he can punish a sinner unfairly.
Of course, we tend to find some of God’s attributes more to our lik-
ing than others, usually depending on how they affect ourselves. We like
mercy more than justice—at least until someone wrongs us, and then our
appreciation for justice soars while our tolerance for mercy withers. We
scornfully describe the God portrayed in the Old Testament as a God of
wrath, while admiring Jesus as a God of love—but then we snort when
we hear of a death-row prisoner having a conversion experience and we
self-righteously declare that the electric chair is too good for him.
In short, we define a “good” God as one who caters to our shifting
moods. But it’s not God’s job to submit to our likes and dislikes. If he did
he’d be a very inconsistent and unpredictable God. Happily, God is un-
changing; he acts in accordance with not only his love, but with all of his
myriad attributes and whether they happen to please us or not.
The need for God to uphold both his holiness and his mercy, by the
way, is just what makes his plan of salvation so unexpected and so in-
credibly costly from his own point of view. Because God is perfectly ho-
ly, he cannot by his nature tolerate sin. So when mankind sinned, God
found himself in a seemingly impossible situation. He was bound by his
sense of justice to punish us. To overlook our transgressions would vio-
late his holiness, but to punish us would violate his love and his mercy.
So what’s a multifaceted God to do?
What he did was to become a man himself, and to receive the re-
quired punishment on our behalf. In the person of Jesus the Christ, he ac-
cepted the punishment for every sin so that he could have mercy on us
without compromising his sense of justice. In doing so, he enabled us to
enjoy eternal life. You might think we’d be grateful. When we question
God’s goodness for not doing more, it’s like being cured of a terminal
disease, and then complaining that we still have the hiccups.
Challenge Yourself:
In addition to those qualities already mentioned, what other characteris-
tics of God can you add, based on what Scripture has to say about
him?
Notes:
Day 4: The Nature of Omnipotence
Scripture: Matthew 19:26

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with
God all things are possible.”
The Big Idea:

Even God can’t have his cake and eat it, too.
Commentary
Next, let’s consider the claim that if God is all-powerful he would simply
end pain with a wave of his magic wand. “Omnipotent” is the word we
most often use to describe God’s limitless power. But this word, too, is
the subject of a lot of misunderstanding. When most people imagine an
omnipotent Creator, they seem to think that means God can do anything
and everything they can name. But that’s not quite right. More precisely,
omnipotence means the ability to do anything that can be accomplished
by the application of unlimited power. It does not mean the ability to do
things that are self-contradictory, or contradictory to some other, inde-
pendent action.
An example of something that’s self-contradictory would be a four-
sided triangle. Even God can’t create that—not because he has limited
power, but because it’s a meaningless combination of words that has no
counterpart in reality.
That’s fairly straightforward, but let’s build on that. God also cannot
do two things that are mutually contradictory. For example, he can make
it rain tomorrow, or he can give us a bright sunny day. But he can’t make
it both rainy and sunny in the same place at the same time. By choosing
one outcome, he must necessarily discard the other option.
Now, if you have a choice between two mutually contradictory
things, what do you do? The sensible thing is to set priorities. If you can’t
have your cake and eat it too, you need to decide which is more essential
to your purpose—having or eating. If you want to impress your neigh-
bors, then having a nice cake might be the better option; but if you are
hungry, then eating it takes priority.
That’s how I believe it is with God. Even God must choose based on
his priorities. And from all we can tell about him, it seems as if granting
us free will is among his highest priorities, if not the very highest. So
that’s what he’s done. That’s what the book of Genesis means when it
says he created us in his image. That doesn’t mean we look like God
outwardly; it means that like him we have the ability to make choices.
We are what’s called “free moral agents.”
Now, consider what mutually contradictory things God had to dis-

card when he elected to give us this freedom. It’s easy to think of several.
First, he gave up the assurance of a sin-free world. Freedom of choice
means we have the ability to go against his will, which is all that sin
means. Sin has several consequences, and one of them is pain. God
seems to have thought free will is more desirable than painlessness. We
might be tempted to disagree, but disagreeing with God is kind of like a
kindergartner trying to tell a Nobel prize-winning nuclear physicist that
he made a mistake while balancing his checkbook. Who is more likely to
be mistaken?
A world without pain would necessitate that God eliminate some
other things, too, that are mutually incompatible with painlessness. These
aren’t so obvious to us, and that’s why we don’t see the sense in God’s
universe. A world without pain would mean a world without love, for ex-
ample, because to love someone is to risk being hurt by them. Few peo-
ple suffer like those whose love is not returned. Other virtues, too, would
be unknown in a pain-free world, because we would never know the sort
of challenges and crises that give rise to them—endurance, courage, loy-
alty, honesty.
Further, we would never get to experience the thrill of victory, be-
cause victory is only thrilling because there is an equal likelihood of de-
feat, and defeat is painful.
You get the idea. A pain-free world would, ironically, be a horren-
dous place to live—a place where we’d be nothing but mindless slaves
for all eternity (since death, too would not exist). Of course we look for-
ward to a wonderfully pain-free world in heaven, but that’s possible only
because it will be inhabited solely by those who freely chose to submit
their will to the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit. For all others,
God provides the alternative of hell.
Challenge Yourself:
Have you ever been torn between two mutually exclusive choices? What
were the positive and negative aspects of each choice? What was the
deciding factor in your choice?
There are, it seems, limits to our free will. To consider what choices may
lie outside our own ability to choose, read Martin Luther’s work, The
Bondage of the Will.
Notes:
Day 5: Free Will, part 1
Scripture: Genesis 1:26

God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them
rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock,
over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
The Big Idea:

Love has meaning and value only when we are free not to love.
Commentary:
In the previous lesson, we considered the idea that free will can only
come at the price of pain—or at the very least the possibility of pain. The
natural question to ask next is, “In that case, is free will worth the cost?”
In one sense, this question has been answered for us by the very fact
that we are here talking about it. The all-powerful, all-knowing Lord of
the universe created us “in the image of God,” meaning in part that we
are free moral agents with the ability to make decisions. The Holman Bi-
ble Dictionary notes, “Because humanity was created in the image of
God, freedom is an inherent part of human nature. Since this freedom is
like God’s freedom, it includes the power of choice. Mankind’s actions
thus derive from the voluntary actions of the human will.” Having cre-
ated us in his image, he then set us in the Garden fully knowing that we
would use our freedom to rebel and that pain would be the result. What-
ever his reasons—and we can be sure we’ll never fully grasp all the par-
ticulars—the simple fact that he did what he did with perfect foreknowl-
edge means that however we might feel about it at any particular mo-
ment, it was in some ultimate sense, “worth the cost.” Otherwise he
wouldn’t have done things this way.
But while this answer may be the best one, it’s not especially satisfy-
ing when we’re in the midst of tribulation and in need of some reassur-
ance. So next we’ll consider why such a dangerous quality as free will is
so important to God’s plans for mankind. To do so, we’ll need to begin
not with man’s nature, but God’s. Scripture provides insight into what
most pleases God (as well as what doesn’t).
Psalm147:11
The LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.
Proverbs 11:20
The LORD detests men of perverse heart
but he delights in those whose ways are blameless.
In other words, God’s pleasure comes from the fact that mankind’s re-
sponse to his authority is not compelled. To whatever extent we chose to
honor him with an appropriate lifestyle, we do so voluntarily out of love.
C.S. Lewis, considering this same question of free will, noted:
Why, then, did God give [us] free will? Because free will though it
makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any
love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of
creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creat-
ing. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the
happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each oth-
er in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most
rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere
milk and water. And for that they must be free.
In the 2004 remake of the movie The Stepford Wives, the men of a small
town think they’ve found the secret to a perfect marriage. They implant
electronic mind-control gizmos in their wives’ brains to manipulate their
behavior. Suddenly, the women become perfect lovers and housekeepers,
endlessly vacuuming and baking and telling their husbands how wonder-
ful they are. But when Walter Kresby, a newcomer in town, is brought
into this secret and encouraged to program his own wife, he declines.
When asked why, he replies: “Because she’s not a science project. Be-
cause I didn’t marry something from RadioShack.”
God would probably respond using similar words if we asked for an
explanation of why we have free will. Obedience that’s forced may well
be convenient, but it destroys the possibility of a relationship based on
genuine love and self-sacrifice. And such a relationship, it seems, is so
precious to God that even the inevitable consequence—a universe in
which pain is an unavoidable reality—is well worth the inconvenience.
Challenge Yourself:
An old adage says, “If you love someone, set them free. If they come
back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.” What do you
think this statement is trying to say?
Notes:
Scripture: Genesis 2:16-17

And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any
tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
The Big Idea:

Pain is a consequence of our choices, not of God’s.
Commentary:
When I was a child I had a terrible time keeping my room clean. Toys lit-
tered the floor, dirty clothes lay draped over the chairs, clean clothes
somehow never managed to get back into their assigned dresser drawers,
and empty glasses and dishes gathered in the corners. I blamed my moth-
er: “It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t bought me all those expensive toys
they wouldn’t be on the floor now. And if you didn’t keep me well-
clothed and well-fed, these piles of dirty clothes and dirty dishes would
not be here.” Of course I didn’t really think these things; this is just an
absurd illustration. But we place a similar guilt trip on God himself when
we blame him for the pain that characterizes our world.
Where in fact does the blame principally fall? Let’s review the case
commonly brought against God. First, scripture makes it clear that God
did not, in any meaningful sense, “invent” pain:
Genesis 1:31a
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
This verse has two possible interpretations. The most probable and natu-
ral is that if pain is inherently bad, then God did not create it, because
everything he made was “very good.” There is, though, another way of
understanding this passage, and that is to read it as saying if pain is an
inherent part of God’s creation, then it too is “very good.” We’ll deal
with this idea more fully in Part Two of this study. (I don’t believe this is
the best way of understanding pain, but it is not inconsistent with Genesis
1:31 and so ought to be considered.) For now, though, we’ll lay it aside
and focus on the less shocking interpretation.
Even the more straightforward interpretation has difficulties. If God
didn’t create a world that included pain, where did it come from? To an-
swer this question we need first to recognize that pain does not exist as
an independent object—it is not a part of the created order, as if you
could put some of it in a jar and then let curious friends and neighbors
stick a finger inside so they could feel it for themselves. Rather, pain is a
consequence of perverting or misusing the good things God has created.

It’s what results when we fail to respect and maintain the universe the
way God both intended and instructed us to manage it.
It’s true that the universe as God intended it has always had the po-
tential for producing pain, but that’s not the same as saying God created
pain itself. Had Henry Ford not mass produced automobiles there would
be no traffic fatalities, but that’s very different from saying Ford invented
vehicular homicide. We don’t blame Henry when we have a fender bend-
er. We may curse our own carelessness or get angry at the driver who
rear-ends us, but none of us would seriously accuse Henry Ford of being
evil or unloving whenever we run over a curb because we’re talking on
the phone and eating nachos while driving.
Cars are, on the whole, a good thing. But the mere fact that they ex-
ist means they can be misused, or used carelessly. But while we don’t
blame the car or the manufacturer for how we misuse it, we commonly
blame God for the way we’ve misused his invention.
It’s not like we weren’t warned. God knew that like cars, free will
was easily abused. And he let us know the consequences of its abuse in
advance:
Genesis 2:15-17
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to
work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man,
“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not
eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat
of it you will surely die.”
Despite this dire warning, the man and the woman did eat, and the fore-
told consequences followed. To this extent, pain is a human invention.
Challenge Yourself:
The warning label on a child’s Superman costume reads “Wearing this
garment will not enable you to fly.” We might laugh, but there’s a
reason for such labels. Parents sued the manufacturer after their chil-
dren put on the costume and jumped out a window! Why do you
think we tend to blame others for our own foolish choices?
What foolish choices do you need to take responsibility for?
Notes:
Scripture: Genesis 3:1-6

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD
God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must
not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the
garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in
the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God
knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be
like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and
pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some
and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he
ate it.
The Big Idea:

One reason God isn’t more proactive in preventing pain is that we’ve told
him we don’t want his help. We can’t have it both ways.
Commentary:
In the Garden, God gave humankind one fundamental choice. Outwardly,
it seemed very simple—trivial, in fact. But we’re missing something pro-
found if we assume that the incident in the Garden was just about the
pros and cons of eating an apple. The issue went much deeper than the
fruit. The choice for Adam and Eve was this: They could submit their
will to God’s, acknowledge his authority over them, and live in obedi-
ence to his revelation. Or they could set up on their own, adopt their own
standards and priorities, and take their best shot at running the show. We
can imagine which choice God preferred, but he gave mankind the op-
portunity to choose for ourselves and we chose poorly.
We chose self-rule over submission to God. But we try to have it
both ways. To our declaration of independence from God we add the
provision, “of course we still expect you to protect us from every un-
pleasant consequence of our rebellion. Our rejection of your morality and
everything else we don’t happen to like doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cater
to our selfish demands for instant gratification.”
We’re like children who run away from home because they don’t
like their parents’ rules, but who still expect mom and dad to feed them,
give them their allowance, and tuck them in at night. No parent would
consent to that, and God doesn’t either. When mankind chose self-rule
and showed God the door we lost the benefits of his restraining, protect-
ing hand. We also gave up the peace that results from his wise govern-
ance. We said in effect, “We’ll take it from here. We’re in charge now.
You’re not needed.” And God, true to the choice he had given us, replied.
“As you like it. From now on, your hand is on the wheel.”
Within a single generation, brother began preying upon brother and
they cry went up, “God, why are you allowing this?” Ever since, we’ve
been pointing a finger at the very God we banished from our lives, accus-
ing him of neglect, and asking why he doesn’t do something about it all.
Now this is obviously not the whole story. God has not withdrawn
entirely from the world he created. He’s at work even now bringing about
its redemption. But part of that process is the necessarily long and hard
lesson he needs to drum into our thick heads—the lesson that it’s only by
submitting to his authority and rule that pain is ever going to be banished.
Resistance to God’s authority remains a prevalent attitude in the world,
and stands as proof that we’ve not yet learned God’s lesson. Until we
have, pain will prevail—but it will be our fault and our choice, not his.
Challenge Yourself:
When you were a child did you ever run away from home because you
didn’t like some of your parents’ rules? How far did you get? How
long did you stay away? What did you learn from the experience
about living on your own?
How do you think an omniscient God might use mankind’s experience of
“running away from home” to teach a valuable lesson? What have
you learned about the pitfalls of declaring independence from God?
Notes:
Day 8: Greater Love
Scripture: John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his
friends.
The Big Idea:

God has taken a far more hands-on approach to pain than he’s typically
given credit for.
Commentary:
In the previous lesson we noted that although God honored mankind’s
declaration of independence and allowed us to experience the unpleasant
consequences of that decision, he has not been passive in the face of hu-
man suffering.
For those who continue to rebel against divine authority, pain can
serve as a practical demonstration that without God’s guiding and re-
straining hand, nature can be a harsh mistress. The peace and order that
prevailed in Eden is not as easily duplicated or maintained as Adam and
Eve imagined. Without God at the switch, things quickly went south.
But even if we reason that those who remain in active rebellion
against God hardly deserve special favor or supernatural protection
against pain, what about those of us who confess our sins, repent, and
sincerely ask God for his forgiveness? Why should we still suffer for the
sins of our fathers? Ought God not respond by restoring us to paradise,
with all the benefits due to members in good standing in God’s family?
Of course the Bible says that’s exactly what will happen in due course.
But in the meantime life is hard. So we grumble.
Perhaps the answer goes back to our earlier observation that even
omnipotence doesn’t give God the ability to do two mutually contradic-
tory things at the same time in the same place. Repentant believers oc-
cupy the same time and space as who those who are still in active rebel-
lion. Whatever sort of world God presents to us will be shared by both
his children and his enemies. God can’t reward our surrender to his will
without seeming at the same time to bless rebellion.
It’s a sticky problem, for sure, and there seems to be only two ways
out. The less popular way is the one that seems to be in play for now.
God could segregate those who submit to his will from those who do not.
Those who put their trust in God could then be rewarded, while those
who insist on self-rule could go on doing their impotent best to chart a
course independent of God and complaining when things don’t work out.
We call the segregation process “death.” Few see this as a happy so-
lution, because death itself causes pain—sometimes for the dearly de-
parted themselves and always for those loved ones they leave behind.
Happily, there’s a second alternative. In due time, the Bible tells us,
Christ will return to gather his faithful children to his side and together
they will enter paradise without passing through death. Perhaps some of
us will be fortunate enough to experience this happier alternative.
But even this alternative has a painful side. Once God returns in per-
son to assert his sovereignty over Creation and wipe every tear from our
eyes, the opportunity for the lost to repent will be over and they will face
judgment. So while we may long for Christ’s return and feel like God is
dragging his feet, his long-suffering patience is providing the maximum
opportunity for every rebel to lay down his arms and willingly accept
God’s authority. God’s delay is therefore a mercy to all who oppose him.
In the meantime, God has been busy setting the stage for his return.
He long ago began training a special people through whom he would re-
store communion with us on the basis of righteousness. Interestingly, and
I believe very significantly, the process of preparing this Chosen People
began with a strange test in which his hand-selected representative,
Abraham, demonstrated a willingness to make a painful sacrifice in obe-
dience to God’s will, rather than living by the time-honored tradition of
offering God little and yet demanding much in return.
God’s task of preparing a people through whom he would lift the
curse on Creation has not been an easy one, and we haven’t been the only
ones to endure pain in the process. The culminating act of God’s plan re-
quired God himself to suffer death by torture on our behalf, and then to
rise again. Would it not be true to say, “Only an all-loving God would
willingly endure painful death to rescue his children, and only an all-
powerful God could rise from the grave to open the doors of paradise.
Christ did both. Therefore, God is both all-loving and all-powerful”?
Challenge Yourself:
God promises that those who receive Christ’s forgiveness will in due
time experience paradise. Do you think the reward is worth the wait?
Can you imagine any benefits that might come to us by patiently
awaiting God’s reward?
Notes:
Part Two: The Uses of Pain

Day 9: Incidental Pain
Scripture: Luke 13:1-5

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Gali-
leans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus an-
swered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all
the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But un-
less you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when
the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty
than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you re-
pent, you too will all perish.”
The Big Idea:

Because pain is a consequence of human sinfulness and not part of God’s
original intent for this world, some of the pain we feel has no meaning in
the purposes of God.
Commentary:
Generally speaking, there are two ways of viewing pain from a spiritual
perspective. The first is the perspective embraced, for example, by the
Hindus. According to this outlook, our quality of life is the result of kar-
ma. Karma watches over everything we do. It gives us brownie points
when we play by the rules and penalizes us whenever we step out of
bounds. If you live a good life, karma sees to it that you receive rewards
in your next life, after you are reincarnated. If you do evil, karma makes
sure you suffer for it.
Karma is a mindless, relentless force. It’s a lot like the Terminator in
those science fiction movies. It’s impersonal; it has no pity, and it will
never stop hunting you down. There’s nothing warm and fuzzy about
karma. it leaves no room for compassion or mercy or forgiveness.
According to this view, if your life is characterized by suffering, you
must have done something terrible in a past life. You have no one to
blame but yourself, and no reason to expect any improvement. The best
you can do is meekly accept your fate, and thereby earn credits for your
next life.
The other spiritual outlook on suffering is that it has less to do with
punishment and reward. It’s simply the result of living in a broken world
where things are not how God intended them to be. Sin in general is the
problem, but pain is not an intentional punishment meted out for any spe-
cific sin we may have committed.
This is the worldview Christians ought to hold, because it’s the one
Jesus taught. Yet in the wake of natural disasters and human tragedies of
every sort, you typically hear Christian declaring that those who were af-
fected are being punished for their sins. Apparently, that was the com-
mon interpretation for the collapse of the Tower of Siloam in Jesus’ day,
and a similar opinion held sway after hurricane Katrina in our own time.
While the Bible does sometimes speak of God acting in judgment,
such occasions seem to be relatively rare, and when they occur God’s
judgments are explicitly declared to be such. His purpose is never left
open to human interpretation:
Genesis 7:4
“Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days
and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every liv-
ing creature I have made.”
and
Lamentations 1:5
[Zion’s] foes have become her masters;
her enemies are at ease.
The LORD has brought her grief
because of her many sins.
Her children have gone into exile,
captive before the foe.
In contrast to such calamities, Jesus holds up the collapse of the tower in

Siloam as an example of an event with no purpose, but simply a conse-
quence of living in a fallen world. Many people, in response to discus-
sions about the causes of pain, feel a strong reaction to any suggestion
that they are being punished or judged. Very likely they are right, just as
Job was. Job’s friends meant well when they told him his troubles were a
penalty for a sinful life, but Job knew better. Likewise, we shouldn’t as-
sume that anyone’s pain is directly linked to a particular sin.
Challenge Yourself:
Read the story of the man born blind in John 9. Why do you think the
disciples were puzzled about the cause of this man’s blindness? Who
else in the story assumed his blindness was a result of sin?
Notes:
Day 10: Cause and Effect
Scripture: Luke 4:9-12

The devil led [Jesus] to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest
point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself
down from here. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels con-
cerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so
that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
The Big Idea:

When we behave foolishly, we shouldn’t be surprised if God does not
bless our actions.
Commentary:
When considering the Problem of Pain we often tend to presume that
God is under some obligation to protect us from the consequences of ir-
responsible behavior. There are a number of difficulties with this. First,
saddling God with the burden of protecting us from our own bad choices
effectively demotes him from sovereign lord of the universe to abused
lackey, whose role is to come running whenever we paint ourselves into a
corner.
True enough, the Bible assures us we can place our trust in God:
Matthew 6:26-29
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away
in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much
more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single
hour to his life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the
field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even
Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
However, we shouldn’t take this assurance to mean there are (or should
be) no consequences for foolish behavior. Jesus is not saying, “Go, be as
irresponsible as you like and I’ll see that no harm ever comes to you.”
Rather he’s saying, “Go, live an industrious life and do good and I’ll
meet your essential needs.”
In the movie Groundhog Day, the character Phil discovers that at the
end of each day everything resets and he gets to live the past 24 hours
over again as if nothing had happened. He engages in all sorts of reckless
and illegal behavior, knowing that no matter how badly things turn out,
he’ll wake up back in his own bed, healthy and whole, the next morning.
We seem to think that’s how it should be with us. We want a world

without consequences so we can indulge ourselves to our heart’s content
without risk. We’re fooling ourselves. A world without unpleasant con-
sequences would itself lead to very unpleasant consequences—crime,
immorality, and brutality, for starters. The awareness of unpleasant con-
sequences, on the other hand, encourages responsible behavior.
We see this human tendency in our everyday moral choices. Most of
us, I hope, would never think of robbing a bank, or stealing a car. Yet
many people casually download bootleg copies of computer software or
MP3 files, or violate copyright laws by photocopying small group study
guides rather than paying for individual copies. Why? Surely not because
they sincerely believe that copyright laws are morally indefensible or that
authors don’t deserve to be compensated for their work. Rather, they
simply know they’ll never get caught and punished.
We’re fortunate to live in a world where such crimes are the excep-
tion to the general rule, and where most bad or immoral choices have un-
pleasant consequences. Otherwise this world would quickly and literally
become a living hell.
You might think, “Well sure, God shouldn’t allow people to get
away with immoral behavior, but why can’t he just prevent broken bones
when we trip and fall down the stairs?” But there’s a problem with asking
God to regularly intervene in our lives even to that extent; namely, where
do we expect him to draw the line? Should he also intervene to prevent
an alcoholic from pouring one more drink? Or to prevent us from leaving
the house when he knows we’ll pick up a germ at the office and spend
the next four days coughing or sneezing? Should he bind our tongues to
prevent us from saying something unkind and thus hurtful to a neighbor?
We’d likely find a life so meticulously monitored, and in which we have
so little voluntary control over our actions and choices, to be anything but
pleasant. Show me a teenager who enjoys having her parents set a cur-
few, and I’ll show you someone who wants God to make all their choices
for her.
Challenge Yourself:
A teenager gets pulled over for drunk driving and rather than paying a
fine his parents say, “You’ll spend the night in jail.” Why do you
think they might do that?
Notes:
Day 11: Good Pain
Scripture: Romans 5:3-5

We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering pro-
duces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And
hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into
our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
The Big Idea:

Pain has tangible health benefits.
Commentary:
In an earlier lesson I mentioned the idea that pain itself might be among
the things God called “good” when he created the physical universe. This
is not be as far-fetched as it initially sounds. Scripture suggests that it’s
short-sighted to consider pain to be evil. Rather than being the proof of a
loveless God, pain bears testimony to his loving care. In Healing Is a
Choice, author Stephen Arterburn writes:
Ashlyn Blocker cannot feel pain. Her parents knew there was some-
thing wrong when she placed her hand on a hot pressure washer and
felt nothing. Ashlyn stood there, staring at her red and blistered
hand, but did not cry, and her mother knew they had a problem.
When her baby teeth came in, Ashlyn would wake up with swol-
len and bloody lips from chewing on them in her sleep. While eating
she unknowingly bites through her tongue. Her food has to be cooled
because she cannot tell if it is too hot. They place ice cubes in hot
soup to prevent the scalding of her mouth.
Ashlyn’s mother said, “Some people would say that’s a good
thing. But no, it’s not. Pain’s there for a reason. It lets your body
know something’s wrong and needs to be fixed. I’d give anything
for her to feel pain.”
It’s natural to think we’d be better off in a painless world. Ashlyn’s ex-
ample ought to make us reconsider.
There are other ways that pain can contribute to our welfare, other
than protecting us from serious physical harm. It can also serve to shape
our character. In this role, God can use it to lovingly mold us into some-
thing better than we first were. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis
writes:
We may wish…that we were of so little account to God that He left

us alone to follow our natural impulses—that he would give over
trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but

once again, we are asking not for more love, but for less.
The writer of the biblical epistle to the Hebrews wrote in the same vein:
Hebrews 12:7-10
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For
what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined
(and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate chil-
dren and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers
who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more
should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers
disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disci-
plines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.
In the next several lessons we’ll consider some good outcomes that pain
can help lead us toward. As we do, ask yourself whether God might be
allowing pain in your own life in order to help you achieve one or more
of these outcomes.
Challenge Yourself:
The word “penitentiary,” meaning a prison, derives from the same root as
the word “penitence.” The idea was that during their confinement,
inmates would have time to reconsider their crimes and turn their
lives around. In this way their punishment was intended as a way to
bring good out of a painful situation. Most often these well-
intentioned efforts failed miserably. Why do you think this might
be? What can we learn from their failures?
Notes:
Day 12: Empathy
Scripture: Job 2:11

When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and
Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon
him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go
and sympathize with him and comfort him.
The Big Idea:

Unpleasant experiences train us in compassion and mercy.
Commentary:
Ashlyn Blocker is not the only person who cannot feel pain. Her condi-
tion is known as Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. It’s a rare condition,
and a serious one. Researchers Randolph Neese and George Williams re-
port that “People who cannot feel pain are nearly all dead by age thir-
ty.” So what might at first seem like a blessing is anything but. Pain is a
warning signal that guards us against dangers. When the system breaks
down, the results can be drastic.
But pain does more than warn us against personal, physical dangers.
It apparently also plays a critical role in shaping our sensitivity to the
needs of others. Adam Lanza is another young adult suffering from Con-
genital Insensitivity to Pain. Lanza is the shooter who opened fire on the
students and staff at the high school in Newtown, Connecticut. Accord-
ing to some experts, “Certain studies suggest that people who can't feel
pain may empathize with others differently than people with normal pain
thresholds.”
In other words, they cannot understand or appreciate the suffering
they inflict by their actions because they have no experience of discom-
fort. Pain, one article on the subject concludes, is the price of empathy—
the ability to put ourselves into another person’s shoes and treat them in
a civilized manner. It might very well be that the Golden Rule—“Do un-
to others as you would have them do unto you”—would be practically
meaningless if none of us had experiences of pain that have taught us the
consequences of irresponsible behavior. That old motherly scold, “How
would you like it if someone did the same to you?” simply wouldn’t im-
press anyone. We’d react with a shrug of the shoulders and truthfully an-
swer, “It wouldn’t bother me a bit.” It doesn’t take much imagination to
picture the sort of world we’d soon create for ourselves if none of us felt
the least bit of regret at injuring or even killing our neighbors.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, pain may be God’s insurance
against a world of rampant, selfish aggression. Multiply the events that
took place in Newtown by 7 billion inhabitants of the planet and you’ll

get some idea of what it might be like.
Readers familiar with the book of Job know that his three friends
who set out to provide comfort bungled the job, but their motivation was
pure. They felt compassion. The Bible doesn’t definitively state that
none of them suffered from Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. Some of its
victims, like Ashlyn Blocker, seem to avoid the callousness that charac-
terizes the lives of people like Adam Lanza. But more likely, Eliphaz,
Bildad, and Zophar had a deep appreciation for what Job was going
through because they’d experienced similar tragedies—probably not
quite as dramatic as Job’s or as sudden, but similar. Their own trials
equipped them to feel compassion for Job and respond to his need. Their
failure to be a comfort resulted not from a lack of empathy, but from
drawing the wrong lessons from their own life experiences. In the next
two lessons we’ll consider how our own pains can equip us to minister to
others—if we’re willing to learn what God is teaching us through them.
Challenge Yourself:
Have you ever struggled to understand why someone close to you was so
upset by their circumstances, because you had no personal experi-
ences to compare them to?
Do you think your attitudes towards the homeless might change if you
ever lost your own home? How might your perception of your re-
sponsibilities to starving populations around the world change if you
you were ever forced to go more than a few hours at a time without
food? Would you be willing to find out by participating in the next
“30-Hour Famine?”
Notes:
Day 13: Distressed for Comfort
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 2:3-7

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our trou-
bles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we
ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ
flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If
we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are com-
forted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of
the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we
know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our
comfort.
The Big Idea:

The experience of pain provides a perspective that equips us to help oth-
ers through hardships.
Commentary:
While doing my best to care for my mother during the last weeks of her
struggle against cancer, she used to repeat a phrase that drove me abso-
lutely nuts. “You have no idea what it’s like,” she’d say. And strictly
speaking, of course, she was right. I’ve never been dying. I can’t say
what it’s like. There’s almost no end to the list of life-threatening ill-
nesses I’ve never had.
And it doesn’t end there. I’ve never broken my leg. I’ve never been
through a divorce. I’ve never been shot at, raped, had a miscarriage, or
lost my home in a fire. As a result, I’m hampered in my ability to empa-
thize with and counsel others going through those same trials. Don’t get
me wrong. I’m perfectly content not to have acquired that knowledge. No
one in his right mind actively seeks out such experiences.
Yet I’m better off—and so are you—for the fact that other people,
willing or otherwise, have endured such things. No, I’ve never been dy-
ing of cancer. But I have been the primary home care-giver of someone
who was. And because I do know what that’s all about, I am able to offer
advice, comfort, and a sympathetic ear to others who are thrust into that
very difficult role.
And while I’ve never had cancer, others have battled it and survived.
Because they did, they are able to minister to others in a way I can’t.
None of them ever asked to be diagnosed with cancer. It wasn’t a choice.
But the experience has served them—and the people around them—well.
Some of them now serve as volunteers on the church’s Healing
Prayer Team. They’ve told me more than once that their personal histo-
ries equip them to meet patients where they are, come along side them,
understand the physical and emotional trials they are facing, and to offer
comfort or at least a sense of camaraderie. Whereas I can say to a cancer
patient, “I can only imagine what it’s like,” they can truthfully say, “I
remember just how that feels; I know exactly what you mean.” And also,
“Here’s how I coped. Look at me; I overcome this and you can too.”
It sounds trite to say that misery loves company, but company in
times such as these can be the greatest of comforts. When a surgeon’s
counsel seems cold and remote, and a healthy friend’s words of encour-
agement seem trite and off-target, the mere presence of someone who’s
actually walked in our shoes goes a long way.
But it’s not only our presence that brings comfort. Those who
emerge from life’s dark valleys are often uniquely motivated by their ex-
periences to change the world for the better in tangible ways. Charles
Colson, who served time in prison as a result of his role in the Watergate
conspiracy, had a life-changing response to his prison experience.
While serving out his sentence, Colson’s attention was drawn to
abuses and inefficiencies in the prison system; most especially, a lack of
interest in reforming, rather than simply confining, the prisoners. He be-
came convinced that he was being called by God to develop a ministry to
prisoners with an emphasis on promoting changes in the justice system.
After his release, Colson founded Prison Fellowship which has since
grown into the nation’s largest outreach to prisoners and their families.
As a result of Colson’s pain, countless others are being ministered to and
comforted. In Colson’s case (and many others), pain was not destructive,
but constructive.
Challenge Yourself:
What have you learned in the school of hard knocks that you might apply
in a ministry aimed at encouraging others? How might you go about
putting your vision into action?
Notes:
Day 14: Vaccination
Scripture: Deuteronomy 24:17-18

Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of
the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the
LORD your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to
do this.
The Big Idea:

Painful experiences soften hearts.
Commentary:
Most of you probably understand how vaccines work. They expose you
to a small, non-lethal dose of a disease. In response, your body begins
producing antibodies, which are our immune system’s defense against in-
fections. If later we’re exposed to potentially fatal levels of infection, our
bodies are already mobilized to fight off the disease.
In a sense, this is exactly what God did to the ancient Hebrews. He
vaccinated them against being infected by the natural human tendency
toward cruelty by exposing them to a dose of it.
Make no mistake, this was a mighty severe vaccination. I’m talking
about the 400 years of slavery the Hebrews endured in Egypt. No one
said vaccinations are any fun. But listen to how God repeatedly referred
to that period of their history when he reminded the Hebrews of it during
the Exodus:
Deuteronomy 24:17-18
Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak
of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt
and the LORD your God redeemed you from there. That is why I
command you to do this.
Four more times God used their bitter experience in Egypt to fortify their
own hearts against the temptation to mistreat others. He said:
• Don’t overwork your servants but observe a Sabbath rest. Remember
how you were overworked in Egypt.
• Don’t forget to set your servants free after a reasonable term of serv-
ice. Remember how you were oppressed in Egypt.
• Don’t neglect to thank God for your blessings. Remember how it was
when you had no blessings in Egypt.
• Don’t deprive the poor of food. Remember what it was like to be
hungry when you were in Egypt.
Most of us were never slaves in Egypt, so God’s words to the Hebrews

might seem disconnected from our personal experiences, to say the least.
But there are plenty of infectious agents in this fallen world that we need
to be vaccinated against, if not via a dose of slavery and oppression, then
by other means.
For the Hebrews, the chief danger God wanted to vaccinate them
against was cold-heartedness towards neighbors and strangers. That ten-
dency remains even today even if God has chosen other means of teach-
ing us about the need for charity and hospitality.
In today’s consumer culture, covetousness and greed may be an even
bigger danger than cold-heartedness. Might God allow or even conspire
to take your job away in order to teach you that the fast-paced lifestyle
you’ve been leading isn’t the best way to achieve lasting joy? Or to refo-
cus your perspective onto things that really matter? I believe he does. In
2004 I lost my job as the editor of a consumer magazine with an interna-
tional circulation and ended up as the Outreach Director of a modest lo-
cal church, serving others for less than half of what I’d once earned, and
no benefits. Why would God allow something like that to happen to a
faithful follower? Because nothing but good has come to me as a result.
Once again, our notions of “good” and “bad” are skewed.
There’s no end to the lessons a little bit of discomfort can teach us
about caring for others. Years ago I began to experience back pain. At
first I didn’t think much about it, but when it persisted without let-up for
several days, I began praying for relief. A week passed without any im-
provement. Then one morning I took a different approach to praying
about my pain. Rather than plead with God to take it away, I asked, “Are
you trying to teach me something through this episode? If so, I’m lost.
Tell me plain what you want me to understand.” Instantly God impressed
upon my mind, “This is the sort of discomfort some people endure every
day of their lives. You’ve been too callous toward their pain. Now you
know what it feels like.”
I replied, “I get it, Father. If that’s what you’ve been telling me, the
message has been received. The pain has done its purpose.” The next
morning my back felt fine.
Challenge Yourself:
The next time you find yourself in uncomfortable circumstances, try ask-
ing God not for relief, but for an understanding of his purposes.
Notes:
Day 15: Restraint
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great
revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Sa-
tan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away
from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power
is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly
about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
The Big Idea:

Pain keeps us humble by setting limits to our ambitions.
Commentary:
Commentators have offered several theories as to the nature of the “thorn
in the flesh” that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Corinthians. Most
speculate that it was some kind of physical ailment. I myself, when I read
the passage in context, can’t help thinking that Paul, ever the master of
sarcasm, was referring to the Corinthians themselves. His letters to them
were prompted by complaints and accusations against him, one of which
seems to have been that he was an arrogant braggart. It seems to me that
in response to these charges, Paul was saying, “I don’t have a chance to
think too highly of myself; you people are constantly bringing me down
with all your gripes. You can be a real pain in my side, to put it politely.”
Most of us, I’m sure, can think of people in our lives that seem to
sap our joy and leave us wondering, “What did I do wrong now?” It can
be a real challenge getting along with people who just refuse to be satis-
fied. But it can also be a blessing—if a well-disguised one.
In my own life I can sometimes tell when God himself is getting
ready to knock me down a few rungs on the ladder. It seems to happen
whenever I start thinking too highly of myself—when I get too pleased
over what a magnificent sermon I’ve prepared or how wonderful I am to
have gone out of my way to do some act of service. I begin thinking I’m
something special and God owes me a debt of gratitude.
Whenever I start thinking such thoughts, it’s not long before some-
one approaches me with a criticism or complaint. It’s never fun, but I’ve
come to think of these times as God’s way of saying, “You’re as flawed
as the next guy. Whatever successes you’ve encountered you owe to me.
Don’t forget it.”
The blessing in all this is that if God didn’t bring me down occasion-
ally, over time my swollen head would grow larger and my sense of hu-
mility more shriveled and before long, I’d be a modern day Pharisee
praying, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evil-
doers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.”
God’s intervention in the form of momentary embarrassment and
emotional pain comes while I am still able to see the error of my ways
and snap out of it. Left unchecked, I’m sure I’d become engrained in my
pride and unable to recognize it when it rears its head.
In lesson 13 when learned how a prison sentence helped shape Char-
les Colson’s ministry. Such revolutions of thought are hardly an inevita-
ble result of trials. When Colson’s Watergate co-conspirator George
Gordon Liddy was released from prison, he said: “I have found within
myself all I need and all I ever shall need. I am a man of great faith, but
my faith is in George Gordon Liddy. I have never failed me.” Apparently
he did not see his conviction and jail time as any sort of failure. Pain
sometimes cures us of pride, but not spiritual blindness.
In contrast, Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of this country’s greatest
national crisis, the Civil War, declared a Day of National Humiliation,
Fasting, and Prayer, and called people to remember the heights from
which they had fallen: “We have been the recipients of the choicest
bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace
and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no
other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have for-
gotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and
enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the de-
ceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some
superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken suc-
cess, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeem-
ing and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.” In
short, we’ve had it too good and have grown complacent and conceited.
Comfort encourages such attitudes.
Challenge Yourself:
The Bible says “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a
fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) Can you think of a time in your life when
overconfidence in your own greatness or abilities set you up for an
embarrassing failure? What did you learn from the experience?
Notes:
Day 16: A School of Virtue
Scripture: John 16:21-22

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but
when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a
child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I
will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your
joy.
The Big Idea:

Pain provides a context for the practice of virtue.
Commentary:
As we said in lesson 1, we are very often guilty of equating the concepts
of “good” and “bad” with those of “pleasant” and “unpleasant.” We as-
sume that there is no greater purpose to this life than achieving happiness
and contentment, and that therefore whatever makes us happy and con-
tent is “good,” and whatever thwarts our sense of self-satisfaction is
“bad.”
But scripture makes it abundantly clear that achieving contentment is
not the ultimate outcome of this life, and not what God is most trying to
accomplish. He’s got something much more profound in view:
James 1:19-21
My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to lis-
ten, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does
not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get
rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly ac-
cept the word planted in you, which can save you.
The reason we need to be quick to listen and slow to anger is that these
are characteristics of a heart attuned to God’s promptings. A rush to
speak, and the tendency toward anger when others don’t listen to us, re-
flect a desire to impose control over our environment—to manipulate
people and even God to conform to our personal likes and dislikes—all
so that we’ll find happiness and contentment on our own terms.
But James rightly points out that even if we were to be successful in
this effort—a highly unlikely outcome since few if any of our family,
friends and neighbors are going to readily give in to our desire to ma-
nipulate them—all that we would have accomplished is to fatally neglect
what’s really important and what God is intent upon achieving in us;
namely, planting a sense of righteousness in our hearts, and then watering
it so that it will thrive and in time overwhelm us.
We are being prepared for another world. All our efforts to master
this one and find satisfaction here will amount to nothing when we get
there, and thus they are ultimately a waste of time. What really matters is
the cultivation of virtue. We need, through constant refinement, to be-
come the sort of people our neighbors will enjoy spending eternity with.
Most of the virtues we need to cultivate grow best under the very
conditions we so glibly label “bad.” We master the virtue of patience on-
ly by practicing it in the midst of repeated disappointments. We learn the
virtue of forgiveness only by being repeatedly wronged and then extend-
ing unmerited grace. Our faith blossoms only after we have endured
seemingly hopeless situations and discovered that our despair is unwar-
ranted. We learn temperance only after experiencing the consequences of
over-indulgence. We acquire perseverance only after hitting rock bottom
and then climbing back out of the hole we’ve dug for ourselves.
The ultimate outcome of such experiences is to be shaped for eter-
nity. C.S. Lewis notes:
We might think that the “virtues” were necessary only for this pre-
sent life—that in the other world we could stop being just because
there is nothing to quarrel about and stop being brave because there
is no danger. Now it is quite true that there will probably be no occa-
sion for just or courageous acts in the next world, but there will be
every occasion for being the sort of people that we can become only
as the result of doing such acts here.”
Our present world is a school of hard knocks. We endure uncomfortable

challenges and setbacks. But these things, which last but a brief time,
equip us to enjoy an eternity of blessings.
Challenge Yourself:
In this lesson we listed just a few of the virtues that hardships strengthen.
What other virtues are best nurtured in difficult times? Make a list.
Recall a time in your life when you endured an unwelcome crisis. Now
think about the ways in which that episode affected your outlook or
shaped your character. Did you learn from it, or allow it to embitter
you? Which outcome seems to you to be “good?”
Notes:
Day 17: Boundaries & Warnings
Scripture: Jeremiah 25:30

“‘The LORD will roar from on high;
he will thunder from his holy dwelling
and roar mightily against his land.
He will shout like those who tread the grapes,
shout against all who live on the earth.”
The Big Idea:

Pain is God’s megaphone.
Commentary:
In If God Is Good, author Randy Alcorn writes:
Someone once asked Father Damien at his leper colony on Molokai

what gift he would pray for his patients to receive. Without pause, he
answered, “Pain.”
Leprosy prevents the body from feeling pain, with disastrous re-
sults. That’s why leprosy specialist Dr. Paul Brand, with co-author
Philip Yancey, describe pain as “an ingenious invention.”
Leprosy, also called Hansen’s disease, desensitizes nerve end-
ings. The lack of pain allows the sufferer to do himself serious dam-
age without realizing it, such as walking on a broken leg or not
withdrawing his hand from a fire. The warning system of pain
guards our health. Without it, we would either have to be made in-
vulnerable to our environment or would have to be made inhuman in
order to survive.
Of course, not everyone sees pain in this light. The Internet is brimming
with pages devoted, on the one hand, to how to ignore pain so you can
keep on going about your normal routines, and on the other hand, why
you should never ignore certain kinds of pain.
In Catch-22, the character Yossarian accuses God of overkill for
choosing pain as a warning mechanism:
“Why in the world did he ever create pain?”

“Pain….? Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of
bodily dangers.”
“And who created the dangers? Oh, he was really being chari-
table to us when he gave us pain. Why couldn’t he have used a door-
bell instead to notify us, or one of his celestial choirs, or a system of
red and blue neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s fore-
head? Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done
that!”
The answer should be obvious. If we can be trained to ignoring warnings

when they are delivered in the unwelcome form of pain, how likely do
you think we’d be to pay attention to a mere bell or flashing light? If any-
thing, the problem doesn’t seem to be that pain is too harsh a warning
system, but that it’s not harsh enough. C.S. Lewis, it seems to me, had a
far more realistic perspective on the suitability of this particular method
of getting our attention:
We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and every-
one who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite
foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that
we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to.
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but
shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
And we live in a profoundly deaf world, so God needs a prodigious

megaphone to get through to us. It’s not that he hasn’t tried other, less
disturbing, methods. It’s that we consistently ignore them when he does.
Take the case of ancient Israel. God certainly didn’t rush to judg-
ment, or employ pain indiscriminately. On the contrary, in response to
his Chosen People’s disobedience, he sent the prophet Elijah to deliver a
verbal message of warning. Elijah was ignored. Then God appointed El-
isha to take up the same task. Elisha was mocked. Then there was Isaiah.
Isaiah was dismissed. And Jeremiah. Jeremiah was hated.
So then God sent the Assyrians and the Babylonians, who carried the
Hebrews into captivity. And wonder of wonders, in their pain they began
to take notice. Why use pain as a signaling device rather than flashing
lights? Pain works. Flashing lights don’t.
Challenge Yourself:
Read the book of Jeremiah. Why do you think God’s people turned a
deaf ear to his message?
Notes:
Day 18: Appreciation
Scripture: 1 Peter :6-7

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have
had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your
faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by
fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor
when Jesus Christ is revealed.
The Big Idea:

We tend to undervalue and under-appreciate what comes to us too easily.
Success in the face of adversity, on the other hand, gives rise to heartfelt
joy.
Commentary:
For years I’ve supported a ministry that brings Bibles to Christians in re-
gions where God’s word is not readily available and where people can
seldom afford them even when they are on hand. It might seem strange,
then, that this ministry does not offer Bibles to these Christians for free,
but rather charges a modest fee for them.
The director of the ministry explained the rationale to me: When the
organization’s volunteers had once given the Bibles away at no cost, they
found that the recipients had no regard for them. In fact, most of the Bi-
bles they distributed free of charge ended their life as makeshift toilet pa-
per. Bibles, it seems, weren’t the only commodity in short supply and as
long as the people could get one for free, there was no reason not to use
them for other purposes than what was intended—even if the purposes
were destructive. But when the recipients had to pay for the Bible, they
respected it. It became a valuable commodity deserving to be cared for
and handed down.
We respect and appreciate the things we need to work and sacrifice
for. You don’t need to travel to distant lands or become an outreach vol-
unteer to witness this universal human tendency. When my kids were
young, their grandmother loved buying them gifts. They needed to do
nothing to deserve them. Every time grandma walked through the door,
the gifts automatically appeared. One day I was working outside the
house and noticed my son and one of his friends laughing uproariously as
they intentionally and repeatedly smashed one of his toys against the
concrete sidewalk. When I told him he’d break it and no longer have it to
play with he answered with no concern. “That’s all right. Grandma will
buy me another one.”
We don’t appreciate things that come to us too easily. Over time, we
begin to take the gift-giver for granted and start believing we deserve an
endless supply of gifts. We grow irresponsible, arrogant and self-

centered. Fortunately, there’s a very simple cure for this disease. The
simple cure is to place a cost on the things we desire. Cost determines
value. When the cost of something is high, we treasure it more.
Kind David knew this without being told. When he planned to build
an altar to worship God and needed someplace to erect it, he took the
value and cost of his sacrifice into consideration:
2 Samuel 21-24
Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”
“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build
an altar to the LORD….”
Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever
pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and
here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. O king, Arau-
nah gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the
LORD your God accept you.”
But the king replied…, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not
sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
When we willingly endure a life of discomfort for God’s sake, we are

telling him that our devotion to him is worth the price. We want him in
our lives not just when it feels good, but even when it costs us. Blessings
are fine and a joy when they come, but a diet of blessings alone can eas-
ily give rise to a sense of entitlement—the tendency not to worship God,
but only to demand more and more from him.
On the other hand, a state of uncertainty over what lies ahead, and
even an occasional painful setback, encourages both a dependence upon
God for our daily bread, and a sense of genuine gratitude when he gra-
ciously provides it.
Challenge Yourself:
What are some ways that you might show God that you are willing to pay
a cost for his presence in your life?
Notes:
Day 19: The End of Entitlement
Scripture: Acts 5:41-42

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted
worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple
courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and pro-
claiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.
The Big Idea:

Pain not only hurts; it helps. It is redemptive.
Commentary:
In God Forsaken, author Dinesh D’Souza make an interesting observa-
tion. He notes that the Problem of Pain is an issue raised primarily by
Western Christians. The question of why God allows pain, he says, never
occurs to most Christians in his native India, and they don’t see pain as
the least bit contradictory to God’s nature, or the least bit unexpected.
Any circumstance, they would say, can be either bad or good, depending
on how you respond to it. The Problem of Pain, then, may be merely a
misperception stemming from the Western materialist worldview.
Might it be that we’ve become so pampered, so bloated, so accus-
tomed to the good life and ease and luxury, that any inconvenience seems
morally indefensible—but that all the time it’s our own self-absorbed ex-
pectation of even greater pampering that’s outrageous?
When I look around me at the world I’ve been born into, I some-
times think we’ve become flabby. Things that people once took in stride
and considered no big deal now strike us as nearly insuperable burdens. It
used to be if you needed a home, you took an ax, chopped down a tree,
and built one. Now we wring our hands in anguish if the landlord hasn’t
resealed our drafty window by noontime, and ask how God could stand
for such an outrage. We feel like we’re entitled to happiness—that God
owes us a pain-free life as our birthright and any inconveniences must
therefore mean he’s not living up to his end of the bargain. God owes us
no such thing. Most of the world understands this. We have much to un-
learn.
A number of other writers on the subject of pain note yet another
very interesting and revealing phenomenon. A majority of the most criti-
cal objections to the existence of pain in the world come from people
who themselves are relatively comfortable—whose chief experience with
pain is as an observer looking on from a distance. This is admittedly a
generalization. We’ve all experienced some pains in our lives; no one is a
completely disinterested outsider when it comes to pain. But neverthe-
less, as D’Souza notes, few of the world’s most desperately hungry, sick,
and destitute people have a moral issue with pain. They want relief, not
an explanation. In contrast, the well-to-do look at such people and, rather
than offering aid, they write books about how God must be a delusion.
Time and again, researchers who take the time to talk with people
who have experienced very deep hurts in their lives more often than not
hear a story not of being physically broken or emotionally crushed by the
pain, but rather of being motivated and redeemed by it. Contrary to ex-
pectation, pain is often worse in the abstract that it is in actual experi-
ence.
Again, this ought to make us pause to consider whether it’s our per-
ception of pain, rather than pain itself, that’s the problem. The role of
pain in our world and our lives becomes easier to accept when we turn
away from hypothetical arguments and consider real lives.
As a teenager, Joni Earickson had been depressed about the
direction her life was going. It seemed shallow and meaningless, so
she prayed: “Lord, if you’re really there, do something with my life
that will change me and turn me around. You know how weak I
am. You know how possessive and jealous I am. I’m sick of the hy-
pocrisy! I want you to work in my life for real.”
Shortly thereafter a diving accident left her paralyzed from the
shoulders down. During two years of rehabilitation, she spent long
months learning how to paint with a brush between her teeth. Her
fine art paintings and prints are now sought after and collected.
She has authored more than 30 books covering topics ranging
from reaching out to the disabled to reaching out to God.
She has received the American Academy of Achievement's
Golden Plate Award; the Courage Award from the Courage Reha-
bilitation Center; the Golden Word Award from the International
Bible Society, and the William Ayer Award for excellence from the
National Religious Broadcasters’ Association. She is also a con-
tributor to Discipleship magazine, Christianity Today and serves
as a columnist for the United Kingdom’s Christian Herald, and
several European Christian magazines. All because God chose to
answer her heartfelt prayer by bringing pain, and with it, direction
into her life.
Challenge Yourself:
What obstacles has God placed in your path that can serve as your per-
sonal motivation to excel?
Notes:
Day 20: Devotion
Scripture: Job 1:9-11

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a
hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have
blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread
throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he
has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
The Big Idea:

Today’s pains may have their roots, and their rewards, in another world.
Commentary:
Any attempt to put the existence of pain into a proper Christian context
must take into account the Bible’s promise of another world that awaits
us after this life. This should be obvious, but most discussions of the na-
ture of God and of pain seem to center on the here and now. We have a
very provincial perspective. We grieve as those who have no hope.
While we shouldn’t casually dismiss pain with a shrug and a smug
assurance that “it will all turn out for the best in the end,” it would be as
great a mistake to discount the eternal point of view altogether. We slip
too easily into the mistake of assuming that justice and pleasure, as well
as all their causes and effects, must occur in this life. This fallacy, as
much as anything, is the lesson behind the book of Job. Neither Job nor
his friends were aware of the goings-on in the eternal realm that were be-
hind Job’s ordeal and assumed that his suffering must necessarily have its
roots in things they could see or touch. But that’s not where the answers
lay. Most likely, neither do many of the answers to our questions.
Of this we can be sure (those of us with adequate faith, at least):
There awaits for us just the sort of world we’ve always imagined a good
God would both create and maintain. There will come a time when there
will no longer be a Problem of Pain because pain will no longer be a
problem we have any experience of.
To my mind, this simplifies the issue tremendously. The question is
no longer, “Why does God permit pain?” but simply “Why does he per-
mit it for now?” The understanding that he allows it now, but will banish
it in heaven provides a glimpse into its nature. Can we imagine a useful
purpose for our present pains that will pass away once we reach heaven?
I believe we quite easily can.
It goes back to the understanding that God has greater purposes in
mind than just ensuring our happiness. He’s trying to mold each of us
into a particular sort of person who pursues a particular kind of relation-
ship with him. We tend not to think of life in those terms. For us, life
typically comes down to a desire to cram as much pleasure into our brief
earthly existence as possible, and pain is a distraction that gets in the way
of that mission.
But God is not interested in instant, fleeting gratification. He takes a
longer-term view of things. He loves us, and he wants us to love him, un-
conditionally. I can understand why. As a parent, I’d be pretty disap-
pointed in my own kids if they only talked to me when they needed
money, or wanted to borrow the car. One of my most endearing memo-
ries as a parent is of the time, many years ago, when my wife and I took
the family to an amusement park. The kids were brimming over with ex-
citement and ran from ride to ride in order to experience as many thrills
as possible in the time available to us. Before long, though, I developed a
painful blister on my foot from all the walking, and was moving very
slowly as a result, and falling ever farther behind the rest of the family.
When my daughter, just a few years old at the time, noticed me limping,
she waited for me to catch up, then gladly plodded along by my side,
keeping me company while the others raced on ahead. She preferred
spending time alongside her daddy to the chance of enjoying a few extra
rides. I imagine God delights when we do the same.
In the prelude to the book of Job, Satan tells God: “Of course Job
loves you; you’ve given him everything he could possibly ask for and
more. Big deal. You’ve bought his affection. But would he love you if
you hadn’t given him the world on a silver platter?”
Unfortunately, the Prince of Lies was giving a pretty honest assess-
ment of the human condition on this occasion. That’s exactly how many
of us relate to God. We’ll stick with him so long as he lavishes gifts on us
and doesn’t ask us to do anything inconvenient. But that’s not the sort of
devotion God craves. He wants people who’d rather walk alongside him
in hard times than enjoy thrills without him. And we can only demon-
strate such loyalty by sticking it out under pain—in effect, by accepting
Satan’s challenge and showing him that we love God for who he is, not
because he’s an insurance policy against discomfort.
Those who accept the challenge will get their reward, as did Job.
Our reward will be the sort of pain-free world we hope for, but which
we’ve proven is not a condition we’ve set on our love for God.
Challenge Yourself:
What conditions have you set on the love you are willing to offer to God?
Notes:
Part Three: Unanswered Questions

Day 21: Unjust Pain
Scripture: 1 Peter 2:18-20

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to
those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.
For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffer-
ing because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you
receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for
doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.
The Big Idea:

Justice delayed is not always justice denied.
Commentary:
I suspect that most readers will have little trouble accepting the idea that
God can use pain to inspire, to correct, or to refine us, but any thorough
exploration of the nature of pain also has to address the reality that at
least some of the pain that we see or experience in the world just doesn’t
seem redemptive by any stretch of the imagination. Can a rape be pro-
ductive of any good? Possibly, but it seems far too easy to propose that it
always has that effect. Such explanations seem insensitive at best and
diabolical at worst—more likely to add to someone’s pain than to amelio-
rate it.
So what then can we say about pains that we neither deserve nor de-
rive any long-term benefit from? It’s a question that’s been asked before:
Malachi 3:14-4:2
You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carry-
ing out his requirements and going about like mourners before the
LORD Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly
the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape.’”
Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the
LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in
his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored
his name.
“They will be mine,” says the LORD Almighty, “in the day when I
make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in com-
passion a man spares his son who serves him.
And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and
the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the ar-
rogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is com-
ing will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a
branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun
of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go
out and leap like calves released from the stall.
Malachi is addressing injustice in general, but his words offer reassur-

ance to everyone struggling with God’s seeming indifference to their suf-
fering. Just as we often wonder today, God-fearers in Malachi’s day were
asking, “Where’s God in the face of this injustice? It seems like the
swindlers, the liars, and the corrupt get rich while those of us who take
God’s word seriously and do our best to live a God-honoring life con-
stantly seem to suffer. Why isn’t God acting on our behalf? Could it be
that he doesn’t care or isn’t watching over us?”
And God, through Malachi’s words, answers and puts things into
perspective. Our outlook is too shortsighted, God reveals. We need to see
the big picture. And then God gives us just a glimpse of what the big pic-
ture looks like.
Notably, God doesn’t say anything that would indicate that the He-
brews’ suffering was doing them any long-term good, per se. He simply
assures them that it is being accounted for. They will be compensated.
Every injustice is being recorded and when the time comes, they will all
be made right. That time isn’t today, and most likely it won’t be tomor-
row either, but it’s coming. If, in the meantime, we endure every pain and
injustice, the compensation will be so much the greater when the Day of
Reckoning comes.
Until then, our job is simply to carry on faithfully and lead godly
lives. The compensation God has in mind for us is intended solely for
those who suffer unjustly, not for those who angrily lash out and thus in-
flict pain on others.
Challenge Yourself:
Learn more about the Day of Reckoning by reading Revelation 21.
Notes:
Day 22: Natural Disasters
Scripture: Mark 13:8

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will
be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning
of birth pains.
The Big Idea:

We can’t always see the sense in some of the violent aspects of nature,
but that doesn’t mean they aren’t sensible.
Commentary:
We’ve already noted (lesson 9) that it is too simplistic to assume that
pains are God’s direct judgment on a sinful world. But a reasonable next
question is: “All right, so God doesn’t shoot lightning bolts at us every
time we mess up, but can’t he also actively prevent them from striking
randomly with devastating consequences?
In the aftermath of nearly any hurricane, flood, or earthquake, con-
fused believers ask “Where was God? How could he allow this to hap-
pen?” Dinesh D’Souza asks, “Why are there earthquakes? By extension
we can also ask why there are volcanoes and tsunamis and hurricanes.
For many centuries, the only answer to this question was that the gods
were angry.” We, though, know this to be false. Jesus assured us of as
much.
Remarkably enough, it turns out that the presumption that earth-
quakes (to settle on just a single example) are unequivocally bad is now
known to be false. Sure, they can result in lots of damage and even loss
of life, and that’s tragic, but they also support life.
Scientists are just now beginning to appreciate how many unexpect-
edly crucial physical conditions are necessary for life in general, and es-
pecially for advanced species capable of intelligence and civilization. For
example, if the earth did not have a moon of roughly the size and dis-
tance from us as our moon, the earth would probably not be able to sup-
port life. If the earth did not have a liquid metallic core, it would proba-
bly be uninhabitable. And if it did not have active tectonic plates, it
would also be lifeless. But shifting tectonic plates are what cause earth-
quakes. D’Souza writes:
Quite possibly without tectonics there would be no life at all. Life,

after all, is highly dependent on having carbon dioxide in the atmos-
phere….It is the tectonic system that recirculates carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere, keeping the level of greenhouse gases (and hence
the earth’s temperature) stable…. Plate tectonics also helps the for-
mation of minerals on earth and their recirculation to the surface

through tectonic activity. Without our vast, rich storehouse of avail-
able minerals, it’s hard to envision complex life and even harder to
envision the development of any sort of complex civilization.
In fact, to date there is only one planet known to harbor life, and only
one planet known to have active plate tectonics. It’s likely not coinciden-
tal that they are the same planet. Earthquakes may be a stiff price to pay
for an inhabitable planet, but they they may well be an unavoidable one.
Without earthquakes, there would be no one here to enjoy our freedom
from earthquakes.
We could, and D’Souza does, go on at length speculating whether
God could have found an alternate plan for earth that would have pro-
duced life without also bringing earthquakes and volcanoes into the pic-
ture. Speculation, though, can take us anywhere and everywhere without
providing any assurances that we’ve gotten any closer to truth. It is en-
lightening to note, however, that intellectual progress has led us from the
confident presumption that seismic activity is an unqualified disaster, to
the understanding that life would be difficult or impossible without it.
There’s a lesson to be learned from this. Here we have one example
of how one particular sort of pain that was once used to refute the exis-
tence of God is now known to be a prerequisite for life. It’s reasonable to
assume that other puzzling circumstances that at first seem inconsistent
with the notion of a loving, powerful God are also better attributed to our
own ignorance. Might it not be that as time goes on and our understand-
ing of the incredibly complex nature of the physical universe expends,
we’ll see that it conforms ever more closely with what we’d expect of a
creative and wise God?
Challenge Yourself:
Read The Privileged Planet, by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Wesley
Richards.
Notes:
Day 23: Animal Pain
Scripture: Isaiah 11:6-9a

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy….
The Big Idea:

For many, the fact that innocent animals suffer is incompatible with a
loving God; but do they suffer? And if so, why?
Commentary:
In several of our lessons this far, we’ve considered some ways in which
the experience of pain can achieve some greater purpose in our lives by
helping to mold our character or impelling us to draw nearer to God or by
equipping us to offer comfort to others in similar circumstances. But all
of these outcomes are possible only because we are rational creatures ca-
pable of taking our experiences, learning a lesson from them, and then
finding ways to generalize those specific experiences and apply them in
creative, constructive ways.
Such insights as we might gain from pain, one must assume, would
be lost on most animals. How much can you really refine a gnat’s charac-
ter through even the most judicious application of pain? And if you can’t,
then training in virtue is an inadequate explanation for why God created a
natural world in which predators feast on their prey and survival comes,
by and large, at the cost of a rival’s demise.
Interestingly, it seems—from our perspective at least—that those an-
imals closest to man in terms of intelligence are also those closest to us in
the way they experience pain. Most dog lovers, I’m sure, would argue
vociferously that their pets most certainly experience sadness when their
owner leaves the house for the day, and joy when they return, very much
as we would when a spouse comes or goes. Cat lovers might possibly
sense the same thing. But in comparison, goldfish or gerbil owners would
probably feel a bit slighted by their pets’ relative indifference. Emotional
longings, it seems, are most keenly felt and expressed by the more ad-
vanced species.
It’s impossible to say, but very likely physical hurts work the same
way. After all, sensations of physical pain require a highly developed
nervous system, which many species lack. Is it even possible for a worm
to experience pain? Probably not. So in general, it seem likely that the
more advanced a species is, the more pain it experiences—both physical
and emotional. The very same capabilities that make higher conscious-
ness possible also make us more sensible to pain. Perhaps if God had
chosen to make us all slugs we’d have a world untarnished by pain. But
would that really be a better way to live?
Just as free will is a gift that also carries within its very nature the
possibility for sin, it may be that intelligence and highly refined senses
are blessings that necessarily come at the price of possible pains. After
all, the biological apparatus that allows us to sense pain is the same one
that enables us to feel pleasure. We can’t have one without the other.
Many animals feel neither the pleasures nor the pains we are accus-
tomed to. When we learn that a female praying mantis ends its mating
ritual by eating the male, we imagine what it would feel like for us to be
eaten alive. But that’s not what Mr. Mantis feels. Probably he feels noth-
ing. It probably seems sensible to him, if he’s able to reflect upon it at all.
But there is a simpler answer to the question of why God created na-
ture “red in tooth and claw.” In a word, he didn’t. Today’s passage from
Isaiah’s prophecy depicts conditions as God originally intended. We can
assume that for as long as God’s hand was on the controls of nature,
things would have remained like this, and we are assured that when God
resumes his complete control over his Creation, this is how things will
again be. The current state of the natural world is just one more conse-
quence of mankind’s choice to declare independence from God. Once
again, he has said, in effect, “You think you can manage nature as well as
I can? All right, have a go at it.” Then he accommodated us by removing
his guiding and restraining hand. And when predation resulted, we threw
up a stink and blamed God for being cruel.
Challenge Yourself:
Insects and other simple forms of life lack nervous systems with pain re-
ceptors. Would you say that an advanced nervous system is a bless-
ing or a curse? Why?
Notes:
Day 24: Suffering unto Death
Scripture: Philippians 1: 20-21

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have
sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my
body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is
gain.
The Big Idea:

We often refer to death as “the ultimate sacrifice.” For believers, it’s not.
It’s the ultimate blessing.
Commentary:
Little Olivia died when she was only ten years old, in spite of many
heartfelt prayers for her recovery. When things like that happen, we’re
left with more questions than answers.
Of the many answers Christians might come up with, let me offer
just two. I’ll call them the honest answer and the comforting answer, but
that’s not to suggest that the honest answer contains no comfort, nor that
the comforting answer lacks truth.
The honest answer to the question of why God allows such things to
happen in spite of our prayers is this: We don’t know. In one sense, it’s
as simple as that, and if we don’t admit our ignorance we’re not being
honest. I just don’t know, in any detail, why God decided that Olivia’s
life should end. That shouldn’t surprise you. I can’t even figure out why
my wife does the things she does; how can I be expected to understand
God’s intentions? If God always behaved in ways I like, I’d suspect that
he’s just a product of my imagination. The fact that he sometimes does
things I don’t like shows that he’s not subject to my own presuppositions.
This is why faith lies at the heart of a Christian’s life. Faith is not
certain knowledge about God and his plan. If we had perfect understand-
ing faith would be unnecessary. Faith is what keeps us afloat when we
have no visible means of support. It rises to the surface during times of
doubt. Some people will tell you that faith is what you are left with once
you overcome all doubts, but I disagree. Rather, faith is what you have
when you are up to your neck in doubts, but you stay the course nonethe-
less. Faith is trusting in God even when he seems to have abandoned you,
because you know from past experience—from scripture, your own life,
and the testimony of others—that God is good and he’s in control even
when it doesn’t feel like it.
The comforting answer, I’m bound to admit, is just speculation.
Even if it’s right, I’m sure it’s only a small glimpse into a much bigger
picture.
C.S. Lewis, in his book Till We Have Faces, tells the story of two
sisters. One is taken away one day to a mysterious, invisible land on the
far side of a river to live with a prince. The remaining sister is devastated.
She misses her sister terribly. She goes to the banks of the river and calls
out, hoping somehow to be reunited. Eventually the lost sister appears
and says she’s never been happier. She’s living with a wonderful man in
an indescribably beautiful place. She’s exactly where she wants to be,
and she begs her grieving sister to let go.
The remaining sister, though, gets angry. She doesn’t care about her
sister’s happiness; she wants her back. She gets angry with the prince
who took her away and schemes to get her own way. Her love for her sis-
ter turns into destructive selfishness.
It’s natural for us to dearly miss our own lost ones. But we need to
be on guard against selfish grief. In Christ, we are told that we have a
loving prince who has taken our dear ones to a wonderful place that they
would not want to leave. If we truly love them, we should be joyful.
Sure, it’s hard to let them go, but if we truly love them, we must.
As for ourselves, we can, if we choose, take comfort in the friends
we still have. Rather than sink into grief, we can dedicate ourselves to
sharing this good news with them, so that they too may one day be taken
to that same mysterious land beyond the river and join us all in paradise.
Revelation 22:12-14
“Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to
everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the
Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the
right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.
Challenge Yourself:
What do you think Paul meant when he declared, “To live is Christ and
to die is gain”?
Notes:
Day 25: The Wrath of God, part 1
Scripture: Exodus 32:25-28

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let
them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies.
So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the
LORD, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.
Then he said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel,
says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the
camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and
neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about
three thousand of the people died.
The Big Idea:

God’s judgments sometimes appear overly harsh, but are they really?
Commentary:
It’s one thing to talk about pain that just happens, or that God merely al-
lows, but quite another thing when we come across those shocking pas-
sages of scripture that depict God actively doling out death and punish-
ment. If today’s theme verse strikes you as depicting too harsh and inap-
propriate a punishment to attribute to a loving God, reconsider the nature
of the Hebrews’ actions in light of what the Bible teaches about the con-
sequences of sin. This episode is really perfectly consistent with the gos-
pel message, and a powerful object lesson on the urgent necessity of ac-
cepting God’s gift of redemption.
Death is a hard topic to address dispassionately, but I tend to think
our perspective on it is flawed. We generally think of it as a tragedy. But
if the Christian worldview is correct, then it is anything but. The Chris-
tian conception of death is that it delivers us to whatever eternal state we
most desire. If we wish to accept God’s gift of salvation and be united
with him forever, death accomplishes that for us. If, on the other hand,
we want nothing to do with God, death delivers us to a place where he’ll
never meddle in our lives again. Thus, death is a source of dread only for
those who don’t believe in eternity. For Christians, it should not be a
cause for terror or revulsion. Nor should the fact that God might some-
times hasten its arrival be an obstacle to belief. We wouldn’t call a boss
unjust for telling us to leave for our Florida vacation one day early. So
the dread we feel for death is not a sign of God’s injustice, but only of
our own lack of understanding of what it entails.
But in the case of today’s theme passage, something more profound
is happening. We can be sure that the loss of life involved in this judg-
ment amounted to more than simply a punishment leveled against the
Hebrews for worshiping the golden calf. That sin, though grievous, was
not so big that God would not extend forgiveness. And in fact most of the
Hebrews received God’s forgiveness and lived.
The act that precipitated the unequivocal divine response that so
shocks us was the conscious and deliberate decision on the part of some
of the Hebrews to refuse God’s offer of redemption. Moses, in effect, had
invited the entire wayward nation back into God’s good graces, at no cost
to themselves. When 3,000 of them declined, what other outcome could
there have been? If man truly cannot live apart from God, then those who
refuse to be joined to him cannot live.
Some would argue that because God wishes for none to perish, all
will ultimately be saved. But there’s a serious problem with this ration-
ale. We postulate it thinking that everyone wants to be saved. Strange as
it may seem to you and I, this simply isn’t the case, as we see in this pas-
sage from Exodus. In our own day as well, there are a good many people
who have no interest in God’s offer of forgiveness, no sense of needing
it, and no desire to ask for it. There are those, in fact, who take great de-
light in spitting in God’s face. Is God to bring them into His kingdom
against their will? If, in order to avoid confronting a God who casts peo-
ple into hell, we postulate that everyone without exception will be saved,
then we then have to imagine a God who drags people into heaven
against their will. We haven’t solved anything.
The truth is that God doesn’t force either destination upon anyone.
The choice is entirely ours. He still calls out, “All who are for the Lord,
come home.” All are welcome, but not all will accept the invitation.
Along with Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, they’ll select hell as (in their
own minds at least) the preferable alternative. God is accommodating.
He’ll grant them their heart’s deepest desire.
Challenge Yourself:
Have you accepted God’s invitation to come back to him? Have you cho-
sen heaven? If not, consider pausing while you pray. Turn your life
over to God, thank him for sending Jesus to make heaven accessible,
and tell him that you accept his gift. Then ask him to begin molding
your heart and mind to conform to his.
Notes:
Day 26: The Wrath of God, part 2
Scripture: Numbers 31:1-16a

The LORD said to Moses, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Is-
raelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”
So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your men to go to war
against the Midianites and to carry out the LORD’s vengeance on them….
.
They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed
every man….They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and
animals, and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses….
Moses was angry with the officers of the army….
“Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They
were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of
turning the Israelites away from the LORD….
The Big Idea:

Our conception of justice is clearly not always in accord with God’s.
Commentary:
One of the most common responses you’ll hear from a child upon being
sent to his room without supper, or upon receiving just about any form of
discipline for improper behavior, is: “It’s not fair!”
Most often, of course, the discipline is perfectly fair. The real objec-
tion is not that the sentence is unjust, only that we don’t like it.
I confess that today’s passage and several others like it scattered
throughout the pages of the Bible represent the biggest challenge to my
own understanding and acceptance of God’s methods. I don’t like it. I’m
not alone. Many skeptics cite such passages as evidence that God is not
loving, but brutally cruel. Who else but a tyrant would order the death of
thousands—and not only soldiers, but their wives as well?
Well, how about the proprietor of the universe; the one who created
them and gave them life in the first place and who has the rights of own-
ership over them?
Part of the issue, I think, is that when talking about God’s judg-
ments, we too easily forget that we’re not just talking about some fellow
down the street, or even a world leader. None of those people has any
claim of ownership over the people they govern or advise. On the con-
trary, they have a God-given obligation to care for them. No human has
the right to oppress us. By extension, we presume that we have rights that
God too is bound to respect. But we misunderstand the nature of our rela-
tionship. Yes, if we existed independently of God, he’d have some ex-
plaining to do when he casually ordered the killing of thousands, but we
are his creations. We are his to deal with as he chooses.
You couldn’t blame a baker for creating a cake and then eating it.
That was the cake’s purpose. Each of us, too, has a purpose. Some of us
might not appreciate the purposes for which we were created, but a cake
doesn’t get to decide its purpose before the baker creates it. It can only be
glad the baker decided to make it in the first place.
We don’t even need to consider episodes as dramatic as this one
from Numbers to see this principle in action. Consider the man born
blind in John’s gospel. God chose him for a very particular purpose—one
that required tremendous patience and sacrifice. His purpose was to play
the central role in a very crucial lesson God wanted to teach his people
about the relationship between pain and sin. Can you imagine being se-
lected for such a purpose and as a result being born blind? No one would
gladly chose such a mission, but it was essential to God’s purpose. And
on the Day of Reckoning, I am sure that man will be richly rewarded for
submitting to his assigned role.
Some of us have been given relatively easy roles. Others have been
assigned more challenging parts. Some have been chosen to die for
God’s purposes. Call it cruel if you like—but if not for the unmerited gift
of that very same God, they’d have had no life to sacrifice. Surely it
doesn’t follow that a brief earthly life is worse than no life at all.
God presumably knew in advance that the Midianites would pose a
very real threat to his chosen people—and thus to his entire plan of salva-
tion—and would eventually need to be eliminated. He could have simply
declined to give them life in the first place. Instead, he allowed them the
blessing of life for at least a short span of years—thus allowing them the
opportunity to repent and graduate from their brief earthly existence into
eternal life. Is that really so unkind or unjust? Or is it just that we don’t
like the fact that God has sovereignty over us?
Challenge Yourself:
It’s only natural that we sometimes don’t like God’s actions and wish
he’d behave in ways better calculated to please us. Can you imagine
any pitfalls that might result if he did?
Notes:
Day 27: Hell
Scripture: Mark 9:47

And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter
the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown in-
to hell,…
The Big Idea:

We are in control of our ultimate destination.
Commentary:
If the Problem of Pain in general is a great obstacle to faith for many,
then the specific question of how a loving God can consign people to hell
is surely one of the most often-cited aspects of that general problem.
Part of the difficulty many people have with the concept of hell is
that their understanding of hell is so heavily influenced by non-biblical
sources. The Bible, in fact, has very little to say about this corner of
God’s creation, so through the centuries imaginative writers have tried to
flesh out the details—mostly with unfortunate results. Thus we get most
of our ridiculous images of hell—like the idea the Satan is its ruler and
that he struts around wearing red tights. A proper understanding of hell
requires us to leave these images behind.
Likewise with the idea that a wrathful God delightedly—or at least
carelessly—drags sinners to the brink of hell kicking and screaming and
then pushes them over the brink. C.S. Lewis provides a much better start-
ing point for understanding the nature of God’s judgments:
In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of
hell, is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do? To wipe
out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smooth-
ing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has
done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To
leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.
To help you better envision the consequences of sin and the nature of
hell, let me share the Parable of the Hospital. On one floor of this hospi-
tal is the Critical Care Unit. One day, the patients here decided it would
be fun to break the rules and sneak down into the toxicology lab and re-
lease all the germs and bacteria the researchers store down there. They
had a good time breaking flasks and opening valves, but not surprisingly
they all came down with a variety of terminal illnesses.
On the next floor of the hospital was the maternity ward. Here, there
was joy and new life. Here the staff sterilized everything that came in
contact with the newborns and infections were unheard-of.
When the infected patients in the Critical Care Unit learned how
wonderful things were in the maternity ward and how happy everyone
was there, they demanded to be allowed in. But the staff replied, “No
way; you’re contagious. If we let you in, you’d infect the whole floor and
destroy the very conditions you find so attractive. So for the sake of those
who are well, you’ll have to stay on your own floor.
But then the staff said, “The good news is there’s a cure for the in-
fections you’ve got. All you need to do is take this medication and in no
time you’ll be healthy enough to join us. We’ll even throw you a party
because once you’re rid of all those bugs, we’d love to welcome you.”
The infected patients replied, “To heck with your rules and condi-
tions. If we can’t come in under our own terms, we don’t want anything
to do with you.” And over the pleas of the maternity ward staff, they
turned their backs and walked away.
Such, as I see it, is the consequence of sin and the nature of heaven
and hell. God doesn’t consign people to hell because he’s a vengeful un-
loving God, but because heaven can’t exist under any other terms. We
think everyone should be admitted to heaven so everyone can enjoy
heaven’s rewards, but we’re not thinking clearly. That wouldn’t be the
result of such a policy.
What makes heaven desirable is that rebellion, bitterness, greed,
selfishness, and envy have no place there. If God admitted those who
harbor these things in their hearts, we wouldn’t have a bigger, happier
heaven, we’d have another hell. Or at best we’d have another earth, be-
cause those are the things that characterize this world.
The only reason there can be a heaven at all is that God has a place
where he keeps these undesirable attitudes quarantined. And that’s why
some will spend eternity in hell. Not because God is angry with them, but
because they won’t leave those things behind and chose instead the cure
that God has provided at great personal expense—the blood of Jesus.
Challenge Yourself:
Lewis wrote, “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy
will be done,’ and those to whom God says, “Have it your way.’”
What do you think he meant?
Notes:
Day 28: Trust
Scripture: Job 38:4-5a

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
The Big Idea:

Perfect understanding is elusive, but faith takes up the slack.
Commentary:
In his book Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman describes the factors that led
him to renounce his faith: “I could no longer explain how there can be a
good and all-powerful God actively involved with this world, given the
state of things.” I have to wonder just how hard he struggled to find an-
swers, but even if we assume that he engaged in a quest of epic propor-
tions and still came up dry, his conclusion is unjustified, if all too famil-
iar sounding.
The presumption is, “If I can’t conceive of an explanation that satis-
fies me, then there must not be one.” If we applied this logic to some of
the other questions we encounter in life, we’d reach some really bizarre
conclusions. For example, I simply cannot comprehend why my wife
needs to own 20 pairs of shoes. I manage quite well with just two: a pair
of dress shoes and a pair of sneakers. It is beyond my understanding why
anyone would need 20 pairs. So ought I therefore conclude that all those
shoes in the closet and under the bed and behind the door don’t really ex-
ist; that they are a figment of my imagination? Should I devote my time
to writing books about why those shoes are merely a delusion?
The same principle applies to questions of truly cosmic proportions.
Cosmologists are in virtually unanimous agreement that the universe be-
gan in an explosion of light and matter called the Big Bang, before which
nothing existed. But how is it possible for nothing to explode? Natural
laws can’t account for it, because the natural laws themselves didn’t exist
until after the Bang. No one has provided a convincing explanation. Am I
therefore justified in concluding that I don’t really exist?
For the modern, 21st-century Western mind, explaining, measuring,
and quantifying has become an obsession. We have an insatiable desire
to label things, pigeonhole them, and master them. I had to laugh years
ago when the Disney movie Pocahontas came out and I heard the song
Colors of the Wind. The message, and a good one, is that we’re so con-
cerned with mastering nature that we forget to appreciate it. But the
songwriter inadvertently slips into the same mindset that he’s criticizing
when he writes:
How high does the sycamore grow?

If you cut it down then you’ll never know.
My question is, why should we consider measuring sycamores and de-

termining their height to be the least bit necessary? Why aren’t we com-
fortable living with the question of its height unanswered? Would our ig-
norance in that regard really be so troubling as to keep us up at night? I
suspect our obsession for explaining things stems from the mistaken no-
tion that if we can understand something, we can control it.
Admittedly, the question of why God allows pain is of a more trou-
bling and serious nature than the size of sycamores, but the same princi-
ple holds. And it’s a principle we see repeatedly in the pages of the Bible.
Jesus didn’t deny Thomas physical proofs of the resurrection, but he also
noted that there would be many who would not have the same privilege
but who would still believe. When we reach the limits of understanding,
faith remains, and it will sustain us if we allow it. We might not under-
stand how our body utilizes oxygen to fuel our cells, or proteins to fuel
our muscles, but only a fool would stop eating and breathing until they’d
worked out all the details. Faith in God works the same way.
Commentators have long noted the somewhat ironic fact that the
single most powerful commentary on the nature of pain in the entire Bi-
ble—the book of Job—ends without ever answering the question. Its
message is simply that we don’t and can’t fully measure, quantify, and
label God’s intentions, but that we don’t need to understand everything
intellectually in order to find comfort. And really, even if we could
somehow fully understand God, I doubt it would allow us to control him,
which is what most of us desire, if only subconsciously. I wonder, might
our obsession with the Problem of Pain be a symptom of the very same
mindset that led to the Fall in the first place?
Challenge Yourself:
Name some things you’ve learned to trust in without fully understanding
them.
Notes:

# The Purpose of Pain

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# The Purpose of Pain

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The Purpose of Pain

Small Group/Devotional Guide

Discovering the many unexpected roles that pain

“If God is wiser than we His judgment must differ

—C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Part One: The Origin of Pain

The Big Idea:

because the mechanistic laws of the universe predetermine them. There’s

Day 2: The Nature of Good

Scripture: Isaiah 55:8

The Big Idea:

So on what basis can we claim that a “good” God would eliminate

Day 3: More than Just Good

Scripture: Hebrews 12:10-11

The Big Idea:

Day 4: The Nature of Omnipotence

Scripture: Matthew 19:26

The Big Idea:

Now, consider what mutually contradictory things God had to dis-

Day 5: Free Will, part 1

Scripture: Genesis 1:26

The Big Idea:

Day 6: Free Will, part 2

Scripture: Genesis 2:16-17

The Big Idea:

consequence of perverting or misusing the good things God has created.

Day 7: Free Will, part 3

Scripture: Genesis 3:1-6

The Big Idea:

Day 8: Greater Love

Scripture: John 15:13

The Big Idea:

Part Two: The Uses of Pain

Scripture: Luke 13:1-5

The Big Idea:

In contrast to such calamities, Jesus holds up the collapse of the tower in

Day 10: Cause and Effect

Scripture: Luke 4:9-12

The Big Idea:

We seem to think that’s how it should be with us. We want a world

Day 11: Good Pain

Scripture: Romans 5:3-5

The Big Idea:

We may wish…that we were of so little account to God that He left

trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but

Day 12: Empathy

Scripture: Job 2:11

The Big Idea:

took place in Newtown by 7 billion inhabitants of the planet and you’ll

Day 13: Distressed for Comfort

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 2:3-7

The Big Idea:

Day 14: Vaccination

Scripture: Deuteronomy 24:17-18

The Big Idea:

Most of us were never slaves in Egypt, so God’s words to the Hebrews

Day 15: Restraint

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

The Big Idea:

Day 16: A School of Virtue

Scripture: John 16:21-22

The Big Idea:

Our present world is a school of hard knocks. We endure uncomfortable

Day 17: Boundaries & Warnings