Thread by @frmattfish

It’s been said that the problem of suffering is the greatest objection to Christianity. On the contrary, we should think of the Christian faith as the answer to the problem of suffering: this problem being not so much an objection to Christianity, as the human problem itself.

Why is there evil? Why do so many suffer in misery? Why does injustice continue, unchecked and unpunished? As we know, Scripture has an initial answer: God created all things good, but because of man's disobedience evil entered the world.

And as we see throughout the Old Testament, man’s response to evil is at first a practical one: to struggle against it, seeking the good he knows he should choose, but failing, again and again. Such is the history of both mankind in general and Israel in particular.

But later on in the Bible, we find man doing something else. He turns to his Creator and objects: “why is this happening!?” If God alone is the Lord, if he is all good and all powerful and all knowing, if he made this world and governs its course, then he must have an answer!

We hear God’s answer to that objection in the First Reading at Mass this Sunday, from the Book of Job, one of the greatest works of literature in the Bible, one of only two times in the whole three year cycle of Sunday readings that we read from it.

In order to test his faith, God permits Satan to afflict Job. He loses almost everything. And yet, in all this, Job does not curse God. Famously he says, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”

Three friends of Job come to challenge him: if the righteous are blessed, and the sinful punished, clearly then, you must have sinned! But Job protests: I have done nothing wrong! Finally, he makes a formal plea for God to hear his case and answer him. “Why is this happening!?”

At last, God responds to Job’s challenge. A storm suddenly appears, and God answers out of the storm (from which our First Reading is taken today):

“Who is this who darkens counsel with words of ignorance? Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers! Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its size? Surely you know!"

(As you may have noticed, this is perhaps the best example in Scripture of God himself using sarcasm to make a forceful point—which should encourage parents who occasionally have to do the same thing with their children.)

Who could possibly measure up to God, to his knowledge and his power? By what right then do we, who know nothing of these things, complain? Job then responds with one of the most beautiful witnesses of humble faith in all of Scripture:

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be hindered… I have spoken but did not understand, things too marvelous for me, which I did not know… By hearsay I had heard of you, but now my eye has seen you.”

In the end, the only solution we receive is the answer of faith. And yet there is something more in Job’s reply: He may not have an explanation, but he has seen the one who can answer. So too in Jesus: in him, what we receive is something far greater than an explanation.

This we see in the Gospel today: the Lord answers out of the storm. He does not explain but rather rebukes the wind and quiets the sea. He then asks his disciples: “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

This same Jesus will one day himself show them what the answer to the problem of evil is. In that most terrible of storms, on the darkness of Good Friday, in agony on the cross, Jesus gives voice to everyone who has ever cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

But having taken our place, Jesus does not curse God; he offers a perfect sacrifice of love to the Creator, not a complaint; he turns to almighty God and says, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Only in the perfect trust of a son, who never surrenders his confidence that the Father loves him and will save him, and only in the fidelity of a father who will never abandon his beloved son, is the question, “why is this happening!” answered. Not explained, but answered.

For on that Easter Sunday we all received the answer of the living God, his plan, not to explain evil but to conquer it, to make all things new. And at every Mass, as we gaze upon our risen Lord in his Body and Blood, not in explanation but in faith, we receive that answer again.

And so like Job, we too can say: By hearsay I had heard of you, but now my eye has seen you. For in faith, with eager hope in that final day of the Lord, we know that whoever is in Christ will be a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.