Think for a minute of one or two of the greatest lives you’ve ever known. Maybe someone you’ve known personally or a historical figure you’ve studied.
Consider these lives in detail. Think of their character and how it was formed through their choices. Think of
their moral convictions and the principles that they lived by. Think of the various cultures and subcultures that
framed what they valued and what they experienced. Think of their relationships. Think of the great triumphs, the sacrifices, the steadfastness for what is good and true. Take a bit of time to reflect on these things . . .
Now try to subtract all suffering from the life of the person(s) you’ve chosen—the suffering that shaped the culture and family they were born into, the suffering that formed their character and convictions, the suffering of their loved ones, the suffering they fought against.
What happened?
All of a sudden those lives don’t look anything like the great lives that we were initially so inclined to celebrate. Could we even sensibly speak of them as the same people? We say we want a world that will never include the possibility of suffering, but do we understand what we’re asking for?
The Bible gives us an overall context to consider this question. When God first created the world, it was very good. And when Jesus returns to establish a new heaven and new earth, bringing an end to suffering, the world will be better than anything we can possibly imagine. But in this time between the times, in a fallen creation marred by sin, God often uses suffering in ways that work for good.
Without the possibility of significant suffering, practically every great true story that played out in the context of our broken world would likely be false. No one would ever have made a significant sacrifice for anyone else. No great moments of forgiveness and reconciliation. No opportunities to stand for justice against injustice. No compassion (because there would be no occasion for compassion), no courage (because an absence of danger would render courage unnecessary), no heroes. No such thing as “lay[ing] down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
In the current human context, how would we have love without the possibility of suffering? If no matter how you spoke to me it sounded good, if no matter how you touched me it felt good, then your words and your touch couldn’t be expressions of love. There would be no way for me to tell that they were expressions of love rather than of hate.
Many of the greatest actions and affections—some of the things most worth celebrating—occur in response to the possibility of deeply regrettable outcomes. Wouldn’t a God of justice value a world that could seek justice? Would a God of love value a world that could love? Wouldn’t a good God value a world in which the person(s) you chose to celebrate (above) could have lived a perfectly praiseworthy life?
It is far easier to wish vaguely for a world that didn’t include the possibility of disobedience to God. But criticism without alternative is empty. And so the question arises, “If not this world, what sort of world should God have created?” I find that the longer you think about that question, the harder it is to give a compelling answer. Often we wish we could just remove the possibility of suffering from this world without changing anything else. But we fail to recognize how much good would be lost in losing the possibility of the bad.
We look forward to the fact that one day God will bring the suffering of this world to an end. But on that day the celebration will not be that there was never the possibility of the bad. It will be far greater than that. It will be that the possibility of evil has been overcome, triumphed over, forever defeated by the necessity of the good—God Himself.
But all that I’ve said thus far is fairly abstract, whereas suffering is concrete and demands a concrete response. Personally, never have I wished away the possibility of suffering more intensely than when my wife and I experienced a miscarriage—the deafening silence at the doctor’s office as we waited to hear a heartbeat that never came and then the crushing reality that we would have to bury a child.
We walked out of the office in a mental and emotional fog and sat in our car crying. In that moment we felt prompted to name our baby, and there in the car we chose the name Luca. Before we started driving, Jo asked if we could pick up a pizza for dinner so that we wouldn’t have to go home and cook. So she searched for pizza places in the area and just clicked on the closest one without even looking at the name.
We followed the directions about five minutes down the road, and when we pulled in, we saw a large sign with the name of the restaurant—LUCCA. Even when our understanding and our emotions failed us, God in his lovingkindness declared that He was with us and that He understood. He understood because He is the only God who knows the “deafening silence” of hearing His Son’s heart stop beating, and He is the only God who knows the pain of burying a child.
Therefore He could give us hope—hope that because His Son’s heart now beats again, so too can Luca’s, and one day I will get to run to her and put my head on her chest and hear her thumping heart. Adding present grace to future hope, today I have a son named JJ who was conceived at a time when Jo would still have been carrying Luca. Earlier I spoke about how the possibility of suffering can influence the lives that are lived.
That idea can seem pretty abstract, but for Jo and me, it became incredibly concrete when the death of Luca literally gave life to our son JJ, whose middle name is “Lucian,” in honor of his sister. Suffering did not merely shape our lives for the better; God redeemed our suffering to bring forth life itself. And this is not only our story; the resurrection story of life from death is the concrete hope that is available to all who put their trust in Jesus.
Speaker and AuthorVince Vitale was educated at Princeton University and the University of Oxford. He taught philosophy and theology as a faculty member briefly at Princeton and then for several years at Oxford. During his undergraduate studies at Princeton that Vince was challenged to read the Bible by two soccer teammates and took an unexpected journey from skeptic to evangelist. He then completed master’s and PhD studies at Oxford, during which he developed a new response to the problem of evil— “Non-Identity Theodicy.” Alongside his wife Dr. Jo Vitale, Vince now serves as Co-Executive Director of Kardia and hosts the Ask Away podcast. He is also Faculty Scholar at CEO Forum and a host of the Unbelievable? podcast.
COPYRIGHT: This publication is published by C.S. Lewis Institute; 8001 Braddock Road, Suite 301; Springfield, VA 22151. Portions of the publication may be reproduced for noncommercial, local church or ministry use without prior permission. Electronic copies of the PDF files may be duplicated and transmitted via e-mail for personal and church use. Articles may not be modified without prior written permission of the Institute. For questions, contact the Institute: 703.914.5602 or email us.
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Speaker and AuthorVince Vitale was educated at Princeton University and the University of Oxford. He taught philosophy and theology as a faculty member briefly at Princeton and then for several years at Oxford. During his undergraduate studies at Princeton that Vince was challenged to read the Bible by two soccer teammates and took an unexpected journey from skeptic to evangelist. He then completed master’s and PhD studies at Oxford, during which he developed a new response to the problem of evil— “Non-Identity Theodicy.” Alongside his wife Dr. Jo Vitale, Vince now serves as Co-Executive Director of Kardia and hosts the Ask Away podcast. He is also Faculty Scholar at CEO Forum and a host of the Unbelievable? podcast.
COPYRIGHT: This publication is published by C.S. Lewis Institute; 8001 Braddock Road, Suite 301; Springfield, VA 22151. Portions of the publication may be reproduced for noncommercial, local church or ministry use without prior permission. Electronic copies of the PDF files may be duplicated and transmitted via e-mail for personal and church use. Articles may not be modified without prior written permission of the Institute. For questions, contact the Institute: 703.914.5602 or email us.
