I remember a scene from a movie which I watched decades ago. The scene was filmed inside a church, and an actor was standing next to a sculpture of Jesus on the cross. The actor asked another actor, "Why does the God of this religion suffer so badly?"
Jesus was crucified on the cross. He suffered the most cruel and insulting death of his time as recorded in all four gospels in the Bible.
We have been looking into the Problem of Evil for a while. We looked into several suggestions to resolve the puzzle – a miserable world with an all-powerful and all-loving Creator – but none seems to be entirely satisfying. On the other hand, we see that even Jesus is not immune to suffering! What does that mean to the Problem of Evil?
I appreciate very much the perspective taken by a well-known apologist John Lennox. The cross on which Jesus was crucified tells us an important fact of life. Quoting from John Lennox, “the cross tells us that God has not remained distant from our human suffering but has become part of it”. In the midst of suffering, the cross tells us that God has not abandoned us. He understands our pain. He also walked through suffering, and He suffered until death.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus cried out aloud on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" While one may not agree or believe Jesus’ death is for giving a way for sinners to lift the punishment of sins to Jesus, here we just need to see the fact that Jesus was feeling the abandonment of God.
Actually, Jesus could not be the only one suffered on the cross. His mother Mary and his disciples were all heart-broken. Yet I believe there is more. If one believes that Jesus is really the Son of God and God loves Jesus as He declared on Jesus’ baptism, then God would be watching His innocent Son suffering and dying on the cross even though God could have saved Jesus. Can we imagine the pain?
John Lennox also raised another side of what we can see about suffering through Jesus’ death. What does a person need when he or she is going through suffering? It is none other than “Hope”. Jesus’ death promises us hope after suffering, because Jesus resurrects after his death. What more hope can we ask for other than coming back to life after death? As we discussed in some details the trustworthiness of Jesus’ resurrection, I think we do not need to repeat them here.
Does suffering drive a person away from God? It should not be. On the contrary, suffering should bring a person closer to God, as in God we can still have hope. Jesus’ disciples wept hopelessly when they saw their teacher died. How joyful were they when they saw the resurrected Jesus? In the same way, our suffering will turn into joy because God will wipe our tears in the end.
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