by Dr Genesis Dawuda

Created on: September 06, 2010   Last Updated: September 07, 2010

The issue of understanding why there is suffering in the world can best be understood through what the patriarch Job went through in the Bible days of the Old Testament.

There is no amount of philosophy that can be used to explain the pains, the anguish and the trauma people go through outside understanding the sovereignty of God.

While Jobs friends where accusing him on the grounds that bad things happen to people because they must have sinned in one way or the other. They thought they were helping him to solve a problem meanwhile they added to Jobs anguish. 

This issue has to be looked into within the context of the fact that God is sovereign. He does whatever He wishes and allows bad things to happen so that even when the good comes around too. People will see the sovereignty of God. No wonder Job said that even if God slays him, he will still trust God.

Psychology and philosophy goes as far as human reasoning can take us but Faith in the unseen God, in the Sovereign God takes us further from where Philosophy and Psychology takes us.

No wonder Job later became the subject of argument that no human being can go through what Job went through and still be alive. But our God is sovereign, and by that He will do what ever He feels like because He is God. When He chose to restore the fortunes of Job. He restored the prosperity of Job.

He raised the status of Job to a higher one. This to so many people did not meet their ideologies pleasantly, because they also claim that no man in this life can suffer that much and still receive his fortunes of equal worth and quantity in his lifetime. As such they tag the story of Job in the Bible a myth and a legendary story that is only good for the ears as a long old tale of history.

Jobs testimony only reminds us of a God who is with us going through the situations of life with us and bragging with mankind that man can make it.

It is equally true that man gets to position of utter confusion when he cannot explain why what happened in Haiti occurred, why will God allow Hurricane Catrina, Esther, Gustave, the Tsunami, and the recent updates in the Asian continent among the Pakistanis and the Chinese.

The Holy Bible assures us that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and to those who are called according to His purpose.

A story was told of a farmer and his son. They went to farm and while clearing the land the father's cutlass mistakenly chopped one of his (the father's) finger; the son encouraged the father that there is a purpose for this. The father not satisfied with that transfered aggression by asking his son to get them some water from the Well in the farm since the water-level had gone down. Upon entering the father pull-out the rope and told his son that he too will remain inside the well for a purpose. As the father headed home, he met ill-luck with ritual killers who picked him up for ritual sacrifice. Upon reaching the camp of the ritualists the priest, seeing that one of the fingers of the man was chopped off shouted them to get rid of the unwholesome sacrifice and go look for a better one.

That was how God saved the life of the man. Instead of heading home he went back to his farm and threw the ropes to his son in the Well telling him that it's true there was a purpose for everything that happened to them.

Nobody wants to suffer, not even 'yours sincerely.' But God has ordained pain to be part of the human system of understanding His sovereignty. 

Just like Jesus Christ of whom the Bible testifies he suffered with shoutings and cries. Yet today He is the Lord and savior of mankind.

Suffering in all religions has its root in the Sovereign God because, In Him we live, we move and have our being.

Learn more about this author, Dr Genesis Dawuda.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.