Does God Care About Our Sufferings?

 

Where is God in our adversities? If God is a good God, where is he in the storms of life? Why does God allow bad things to happen, even to his children? Habakkuk notes that everywhere there is oppression, murder, bribery, and injustice. He asks God what exactly he is doing about this. Jeremiah is equally perplexed. He asks God: “Why do the wicked prosper?” “Why are those who are treacherous so happy?” The obvious conclusion is that God does not care.

What does God know?

The LORD said to Moses: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.” (Exodus 3:7). But can God, being God, really know what we are going through? Job says: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” (Job 14:1). Can God in heaven know what we are going through on earth? Can President Goodluck Jonathan really know the true condition of the man in the street?

When Queen Mary Antoinette of France was told the people were rioting because they were hungry and had no bread to eat, she replied glibly: “Let them eat cake.” Similarly, is God not too distant and too aloof to know or care about the ordeal of men on Earth? If he really cares, why does he not do something about it, after all he is God?

The Bible provides an enigmatic answer. On the cross of Calvary: “Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matthew 27:46). This plaintive cry still reverberates around the world today. Nowhere is it more poignant than in crime and corruption-ridden Nigeria. It is the cry of agony of millions upon millions; overwhelmed by a country where truth has fallen in the streets and evil reigns supreme.

Does God forsake?

How are we to understand Jesus’ cry to God on the cross? It is easily understood in Psalm 22, where it came from David. But how come Jesus makes the exact same complaint against God? Does God forsake his sons? Does God even forsake man? Should Jesus, of all people, not know any better? Surely Jesus knows God does not forsake his people. Why then does he make such an outrageous accusation against God?

Jesus’ cry contradicts the promise of God. God says in Isaiah: “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.” (Isaiah 41:17-18).

Indeed, when Jesus himself was asleep in a boat during a storm, his disciples woke him up asking: “Don’t you even care that we are going to perish?” Jesus asked them why they were so fearful. He chastised them for being of little faith. Then he rebuked the storm and the sea became calm. But then on the cross, Jesus himself asked God more or less the same nagging question: “Don’t you even care that I am suffering here?” “Why are you allowing me to go through this ordeal?” What are we to make of this seeming contradiction?

Fellowship of man’s sufferings

Jesus repetition of the cry of David on the cross is the greatest identification of God with man in the history of humanity. By this cry, God in Christ entered totally into the mainstream of the human experience. God himself cried out on man’s behalf for salvation and redemption. Man in Christ cried out to God in desperation, in confusion, and in disillusionment: “Why, if you are God; why, since you are God, are you allowing this calamity to happen to us?”
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