The Question That Never Goes Away
Philip Yancey explores the profound question of why suffering exists and how faith can be reconciled with human pain and tragedy. Through personal reflection and theological inquiry, he examines this enduring spiritual dilemma that challenges believers across traditions.
“Hinduism and Buddhism explain everything, and leave everything as before,” whereas the Christian view explains little and changes everything. “God wills to heal all diseases,” he concluded: some through surgery and medical treatment, some through healthy practices, some through miracle, as well as others that must await a final cure in the resurrection. In every case, however, God can make good use of suffering itself: “There is no pain, no suffering, no frustration, no disappointment that cannot be cured or taken up and used for higher ends.” Despite what some prosperity-gospel teachers claim, the Bible offers no guarantee that suffering will be removed, only that it will be redeemed—or, to use a more modern word, recycled.
Followers of Jesus get no exemption from the tragedies of evil and death, just as Jesus himself did not.
“The only effective antidote to the wickedness around us is to live differently from this moment forward.”
The wealth of lament and protest in the Old Testament makes clear that we cannot count on God to intercede directly in human history, no matter how monstrous the injustice.