The Why's of suffering keep us shrouded in a seemingly bottomless void of abstraction where God is reduced to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes measure on the same scale as ours.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.
Suffering is part of the divine idea.
The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?
We may not ever fully understand why God allows the suffering that devastates our lives. We may not ever find the right answers to how we'll dig ourselves out.
For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless.
We create our own unhappiness. The purpose of suffering is to help us understand we are the ones who cause it.
In the Christian faith, God really puts suffering front and center. He doesn't get squeamish about it.
Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.
Indeed, there is nothing like suffering to remind us how much we need God. What good news that His purpose and plan for our lives moves in a different direction from ours!
God wants to free us from ourselves, and there's nothing like suffering to show us that we need something bigger than our abilities and our strength and our explanations.