Rather than ask God why He allows suffering in our lives, I’m more curious about why we believe we’ll be exempt from it. Any rational mind must surely acknowledge the possibility that we’ll endure unimaginable suffering at some point if not several points in our lives. We should not only accept suffering as inevitable but anticipate suffering’s arrival by thanking God, with much joy, for each and every day He grants us to live without it. A day without emotional, mental or physical pain is like a lottery win. Few of us appreciate this fact until those days are behind us; until we are suffering and pray for even one of those suffering-free days back. Why not enjoy them now?

Step One:  Blame God

Christianity costs. In our modern tradition, our faith costs us very little. Maybe the occasional embarrassment when, pressed, we reluctantly confess our faith or attempt to share it. Most of us live a kind of don’t-ask-don’t-tell faith; a generalized, benign, unobtrusive Christianity that doesn’t challenge or disturb anyone. Many of us are simply embarrassed to speak of our faith publicly, even to our own families. We leave such proselytizing to the church, to the youth pastors or teen videos. Were I to simply say, “I’m a Christian,” and leave it at that, nobody would bother me. Saying, “I believe in Christ,” however, earns me the Skunk Eye. Simply pastoring this online ministry makes me part of the crazy fringe and has earned me a crackpot label within my professional community. So, most of us simply keep our mouths shut. It’s so much easier to do. We can better fit in. We can keep the peace at home. We maintain harmony on the job. All we have to do is keep our mouths shut, which, in our Christian modernity, is what 99% of us do.

In the bible days, however, keeping their mouths shut was really not an option. What we miss in our benign Sunday School cursory glance at scripture is most of the New Testament followers of Christ suffered immensely and died horrible deaths. Jesus did not come and save them. They were not healed, not rescued, not delivered from evil. Why? This is an awful, mixed message God is sending us. We are faithful. We follow His Son. We don’t just go along like the lemmings, we open our mouths. But we get cancer. We have heart attacks and diabetes and we suffer agonizing, unending pain for months or years before the sweet release of death. What’s that all about?

I spend most of my preaching time in an effort to separate actual scripture from Stuff We Done Heard Someplace. Most of us Church Folk know a selection of memorized scripture, but in terms of applied doctrine, we mostly practice a benign Christian Mythology of oral tradition handed down one generation to the next. Good People Go To Heaven, Bad People Go To Hell is an example of Christian Mythology. Christian Mythology has no truth in it. Heaven, for example, isn’t actually open for business, yet, but is a place being prepared for those who know and love the Lord. Heaven is not a place for “good” people but a place being built for sinners saved by God’s grace. God doesn’t send anyone to Hell so much as we choose to be either where God is or where God is Not. There is only one place in all of Eternity where God has withdrawn His presence. That place was not prepared for “bad” people but for angels corrupted in Lucifer’s rebellion.

Teaching Christian Theology is much more time consuming than simply passing on fairy tales. The biggest lie of all is this obscene distortion of God’s relationship with Mankind that suggests making Jesus Christ Lord of your life means an instant and eternal release from all stress or suffering. I don’t know where people get that idea, but virtually all of us, at one time or another, have felt abandoned by God if not betrayed by God because we or a loved one got sick. Because someone died. Because we lost everything. Because we suffered some great loss or heartache. Our knee jerk reaction is to blame God. “How could a loving God allow this?” Some of us lose our faith.

The root of most of this is simply bad pastoring. Too many pastors I know rely far too much on an assumption that Church Folk—especially long-time, seasoned Church Folk—know the bible and know sound doctrine. I’ve not found this to be so. To the contrary, I’ve discovered veterans—in church 20 and 40 years—who know virtually nothing about doctrine beyond whatever scriptures they are quoting, and are usually quoting them wrong. The notion of a misery-free existence is not modeled anywhere in scripture. What we see, instead, are Old Testament prophets being hunted, tortured and killed, and New Testament Apostles being imprisoned, stoned, burned and crucified.

When misery comes our way, many of us wonder, “Why me?” Well, why *not* you? Following Christ in a kindly Joel Osteen sense costs us nothing. If you are under enemy attack, there’s usually a reason for it. Sticking your neck out, on your job, in your school, in your social exchanges—choosing to not go along, to not fit in—costs us something. We are seen as weird. As nuts. Crackpots. We lose friends. We lose romantic interests. We’re no longer welcome in the cliques. We begin having serious problems on the job. Maybe we are bullied. Maybe we are fired. If the enemy is hot on your trail, it means you have something of value—a work, a gift—that God can use. It almost always means you are on the verge of some discovery or breakthrough.

We often use Job as the model for our theology on this issue of righteous suffering. I have a few problems with that, mainly the theological Heimlich Maneuver required to make a God who allows his faithful child to be heinously tortured just to win a bet with the devil seem consistent with the God in all other places of the bible. The author of the Book of Job is unknown and may not even have been Jewish. The book itself is not historical, though most of us assume it is and that there was a literal Job. The book of Job is actually considered wisdom poetry, an allegory intended to teach us something. The most obvious lesson is that even the righteous suffer, but, in the bible, the righteous suffer from Genesis to Revelation. I have no idea why we tend to miss that obvious and often-repeated biblical model: serving God can cost us our life. Even the laziest non-readers know of biblical characters who have suffered egregious loss, which tends to challenge the typically huckster prosperity doctrines our modern-day carnival barkers swindle the simple-minded with. Not that God won’t prosper us, but that prosperity in and of itself should not be our focus. We should be, more likely, preparing ourselves for tough times, even those which may never come.

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We often use Job as the model for our theology on this issue of righteous suffering. I have a few problems with that, mainly the theological Heimlich Maneuver required to make a God who allows his faithful children to be heinously tortured just to win a bet with the devil seem consistent with the God in all other places of the bible. The author of the Book of Job is unknown and may not even have been Jewish. The book itself is not historical, though most of us assume it is and that there was a literal Job. The book of Job is actually considered prophetic poetry, an allegory intended to teach us something. The most obvious lesson is that even the righteous suffer, but, in the bible, the righteous suffer from Genesis to Revelation. I have no idea why we tend to miss that obvious and often-repeated biblical model: serving God can cost us our life. Even the laziest non-readers know of biblical characters who have suffered egregious loss, which tends to challenge the typically huckster prosperity doctrines our modern-day carnival barkers swindle the simple-minded with. Not that God won’t prosper us, but that prosperity in and of itself should not be our focus. We should be, more likely, preparing ourselves for tough times, even those which may never come.

But we don’t prepare. So we are puzzled and stunned by adversity, by loss, betrayal. And we shake our fists and blame God. But, is any of this really God’s fault?