As she lies helpless and totally dependent upon others for her care, it would be easy for me to cry out, “Oh God, why her?”

My wife has lived a life of service to others, and been nothing but a blessing to everyone with whom she came in contact.

Yet Lewy body dementia struck her down cruelly, suddenly, and without explanation. No more “golden years,” no chance of traveling, visiting her grandchildren, enjoying the fruits of her labors.

Just silent suffering and enduring the indignities of being “handled” like a child by others.

Looking for an Explanation

It would be tempting to shake a trembling fist at God and demand an explanation.

Or more darkly, to give up believing in the existence of God at all. After all, if He’s all powerful and all good as Christians claim, then He could have created a universe without suffering and evil in the first place.

Why did He apparently “wind up” a universe, including the seeds of its own destruction, and then just walk away?

Yes, I’ve heard the argument that, for true love to exist, there must be choice (free will), and for legitimate choices to be made, alternatives must include genuine good and genuine evil.

Otherwise, God could have made us robots and settled for programmed machines “expressing” love to Him because they have no other choice.

God Is Part of It

But then during my frenzied machinations, I see in the distance a lonely hill, and a singular incarnate Man-God dying alone on a savage Roman cross, and then the soul-scraping madness in my brain slowly subsides.

Then, I see an empty tomb and an unexpected note of unalloyed joyous hope. He is risen! Suffering and death need not have the last word after all!

God did NOT create a world full of suffering and then walk away. He became part of it. He plumbed the depths of it. He ran evil to ground and then removed its spiritual sting.

In Isaiah 53:4-6, the prophet Isaiah spoke of these things many centuries before Jesus was born:

“However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore,
And our pains that He carried;
Yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted,
Struck down by God, and humiliated.
But He was pierced for our offenses,
He was crushed for our wrongdoings;
The punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him,
And by His wounds we are healed.
All of us, like sheep, have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all
To fall on Him.”

God knew before He created the first molecule of our universe that things could easily go terribly wrong once man was given free will and placed under the associated moral responsibility that naturally goes with it.

And it did go wrong, horribly so.

But God knew what it would cost HIM to put things right between Himself and His beloved human children — and He went ahead with it all anyway. This is love.

God’s Great Rescue

How did God pull off His great rescue operation of mankind from his own folly? As I wrote in a previous column:

“(by disobeying God in the Garden) Humanity had become trapped under an invisible
‘ozone layer of sin,’ surrounding the earth. Scripture describes it this way in Romans 8:20-22:

“‘For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.’

“Creation trapped under a global blanket of sin. When Jesus emerged from the tomb alive, He had effectively punched a hole in the ‘ozone layer of sin’ and formed a spiritual ‘stairway of life’ connecting heaven and earth.

“Thereafter, any person willing to believe in Christ and follow Him could spiritually climb aboard Christ’s own resurrection, escape the gravitational pull of Satanic opposition, and ascend to Heavenly glory unhindered.

“That was what Jesus meant when He made the astounding declaration in John 14:6, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.’”

How About You?

Human evil and suffering did not surprise God. He had the costly solution in hand before calling creation into being by His Word.

Have you placed your faith and trust in Jesus, your Redeemer-Substitute, abandoning all self-effort, religious devotion, or your “doings” to please Him?

Have you come empty-handed and in childlike faith, “bet” your eternal destiny on Him and His finished work on the cross FOR YOU?

There is no other way.