Why God Allow Suffering? (9)

Causes of misery

Nations and individuals suffer many miseries because of ignorance of and disobedience to the same spiritual laws of God that Israel disobeyed. God's commandments are living laws, with universal application, providing benefits for obedience and punishments for disobedience. His inspired Word tells us that those who love His law have "great peace" (Psalm:119:165), but the way of the lawless and unfaithful is difficult (Proverbs:13:15).

The Bible points to many agonizing human experiences that are direct results of sin. One such example is military aggression. The apostle James wrote of the origin of armed conflict: "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war" (James:4:1-2
).

These words apply to nations as well as individuals, since nations are simply groups of people looking out for their own interests. Aggressors go to war out of a desire to enhance their power, prestige and wealth. In so doing they thrust aside law, ethics, morality and peace. They kill and maim to further their ends, putting into practice the might-makes-right principle and the maxim that to the victor go the spoils.

Will and Ariel Durant understood this human tendency when they wrote in The Lessons of History : "The causes of war are the same as the causes of competition among individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride; the desire for food, land, materials, fuels, mastery" (1968, p. 81).

Ironically, nations that freely choose violence, including warfare, often inherit a fate similar to that of the countries they crush. Jesus understood this when He said: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew:26:52). History is a chronicle of the succession of empires conquering and being conquered. Mankind is doomed to repeat the cycle as long as disobeying God remains our chosen way.

Decisions have consequences

Many forms of suffering are simply the inevitable consequences of personal decisions. For example, in many advanced nations pockets of poverty persist in spite of billions of tax dollars spent to combat the problem.

Often that poverty can be traced to individual decisions. Students drop out of school, cutting short their education and consigning themselves to lifetimes of difficult jobs, low wages, financial hardship and frustrated ambitions.

Many teenagers become sexually active, with millions of girls giving birth out of wedlock to children who may never see their fathers. Studies have shown that children abandoned by their fathers are far more likely at an early age to turn to drugs, alcohol and tobacco, adopt criminal behavior and become sexually promiscuous in their own turn, bringing suffering on themselves and others.

Many young mothers—often unmar-ried because the fathers ran from responsibility—find themselves trapped in low-paying jobs with young mouths to feed and forced to rely on handouts, usually from the government or charities, to survive. The pattern repeats itself in a cycle of poverty spanning generations—usually because of shortsighted personal choices and actions.

TO BE CONT'D.

God bless you all.