Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

by Timothy J. Keller

Historian Ronald Rittgers writes that Christians asserted a single Creator who sustained the world in personal wisdom and love, “in direct opposition to pagan polytheism and pagan notions of fate.”89 He summarizes it like this: “This God had created humankind for fellowship with himself” and imposed death and suffering only when the human race broke away from this fellowship to be their own masters—“mortality and hardship were not simply part of the original nature of things.” After the Fall of the human race and the coming of pain and evil, God began a process of salvation to restore human fellowship through Christ. During this time, “trials, tribulations, and adversities” were used by God “for the proving of human souls,” and along with them, he provided “hope of deliverance from them. . . . It was he who removed the sting of death.”90 In short, while God’s ways are often just as opaque to us as a parent’s are to an infant, still we trust that our heavenly Father is caring for us and present with us to guide and protect in all the circumstances of life.