{"id":15936,"date":"2026-03-10T12:26:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T12:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/why-me-god-the-mystery-of-suffering\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:00:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:00:32","slug":"why-me-god-the-mystery-of-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/angels-and-miracles\/miracles\/gods-grace\/why-me-god-the-mystery-of-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Me, God? The Mystery of Suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why, God, why? Why me?<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s a mystery I’ve been wrestling with since I was 14 years old. I had just undergone brain surgery to remove a benign cyst sitting on my optic nerve. I woke up sick every morning for nearly a year from taking the medications I would now be on for life. My hair wouldn\u2019t grow back the same. I felt like an outsider at school. I turned to my parents and to my twin sisters for support. Still, it took a long time for me to recover.<\/p>\n

Then, at age 24, when life finally seemed to be getting back to normal, another blow. Multiple sclerosis. Just like that, my life became a series of MRIs, daily injections that left painful welts and even more unan\u00adswered questions. Would I lose my ability to walk one day? Would I be able to endure a life of pain and the loneliness that comes with it? Pain is like a prison. It isolates us, cutting us off from others. After all, only we can feel our pain.<\/p>\n

BROWSE OUR SELECTION OF BOOKS ABOUT MIRACLES<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read many things on the mys\u00adtery of suffering. I\u2019ve considered all the explanations. How we live in a fallen world where suffering is the price of sin. How some suffer more because they\u2019re being tested, as if it\u2019s some sort of gift. None of those reasons answered that question in my mind. If God exists and God is good, why do we suffer? Where is God when we do?<\/p>\n

I decided to seek answers by talk\u00ading with those who confront these questions every day: religious lead\u00aders and writers who possess intimate knowledge of suffering\u2014mental and spiritual suffering as well as physical.<\/p>\n

My journey started with Rabbi Avraham Lapine, codirector of Chabad at the University of Missouri. Lapine was only five years old when he came home from school one after\u00adnoon to find groceries abandoned on his doorstep. The front door was locked. No one answered the door\u00adbell. Later he would learn the horrify\u00ading truth: His mother had been murdered by an intruder. It was a tragedy that led Lapine to become a rabbi, his way of honoring his late mother\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you ever ask God, \u2018Why?\u2019\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no real answer for that because no one really knows the mysteries and se\u00adcrets of what\u2019s in God\u2019s mind. What\u00adever you come up with is not going to be good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are some hints, though, in the Bible, Lapine said, specifically in the story of Moses and the burning bush. According to one Jewish com\u00admentary, Moses approached the thornbush and asked God why the Jewish people were suffering. \u201cGod didn\u2019t answer the question,\u201d Lapine said. \u201cGod said, \u2018I am who I am,\u2019 which translated in the Jewish com\u00admentary means, \u2018I am with them in their sorrow.\u2019 We don\u2019t understand why <\/em>God allows suffering, but he\u2019s with <\/em>each individual going through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another way of interpreting the story. God tells Moses to take off his shoes because he\u2019s on holy ground. \u201cThat could be God\u2019s an\u00adswer to Moses\u2019 question about suf\u00adfering,\u201d Lapine said. \u201cGod is saying that when it comes to tragedy, that\u2019s very holy ground.\u201d I came away from our conversation wondering if suffer\u00ading could be sacred, an opportunity to get closer to God.<\/p>\n

Still contemplating Rabbi Lapine\u2019s words, I called Philip Yancey, the best-selling Christian author of Where Is God When It Hurts? <\/em>His father died of polio when Yancey was just a baby. He grew up wondering why God didn\u2019t answer the many prayers people had made to heal his dad. We may never know why we suffer, Yancey told me, but we do know how God feels about it.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: PHILIP YANCEY\u2014THE TRIUMPH OVER SUFFERING<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAll you have to do is follow Jesus around to see how he handles people going through suffering\u2014a widow who lost her only son, a person with leprosy, a woman with a very shame\u00adful condition, a blind person,\u201d Yancey said. \u201cHe was always on the side of the one who suffers, and he respond\u00aded with compassion and healing. That is the brightest clue we have as to how God feels about us when we go through pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a practical purpose of pain that\u2019s important to remember\u2014it highlights areas in our lives that need attention. Yancey pointed out how the inability of lepro\u00adsy patients to feel pain can actually put them in grave danger. Because of their disease, they can\u2019t tell when they\u2019ve had a serious burn or injury. Similarly, suffering helps us focus on what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say pain is like a hearing aid,\u201d Yancey said. \u201cWhen it happens, it\u2019s up to us to tune in and use our suffering as an opportunity for growth, for helping others, for any way to redeem it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why do some seem to suffer more than others? To answer that ques\u00adtion, I visited with Reverend Katharine Flexer, rector at St. Michael\u2019s Church in Manhattan. She knows the pain of watching someone you love suffer, both professionally as a pastor and personally. Flexer\u2019s older sister battled leukemia as a child. As a three-year-old, Flexer donated the bone marrow that would save her sister\u2019s life. More than 35 years later, though, Flexer\u2019s sister lost her battle with breast cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are four kids in our family\u2014how come my sister ended up with every health problem?\u201d Flexer said. \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d She theorized that God doesn\u2019t have an answer we would be able to understand. Maybe the meaning of suffering can\u2019t be ex\u00adplained by the logic of this world. I asked Flexer if she\u2019d ever noticed something else seemingly illogical by earthly standards\u2014an inexplicable closeness to God while in the depths of despair. Something I\u2019ve experi\u00adenced intensely.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know something of that,\u201d Flexer told me. \u201cIn that dark \u2018I can\u2019t cry any more tears\u2019 time, you get this sense that you\u2019re actually being held….\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what it is!\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

Flexer recalled it happening the night her sister died. She compared it to the way she comforts her 7-year-old son when he\u2019s upset. \u201cI hold him in a particular way, and I can tell he feels enveloped,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m hurt\u00ading for him, but I also have the bigger picture. That\u2019s what God is doing with us. He\u2019s aching with our pain, but he also knows what we can\u2019t see around and ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s what Rabbi Lapine would call the holy ground of suffer\u00ading. It\u2019s when our defenses are down and we get a clear glimpse of how close God truly is, even if he appears to be silent.<\/p>\n

Jesus knew something of that too. \u201cHe went through that very long night in Gethsemane before he ever got to the place of being able to say, \u2018Thy will be done,\u2019\u201d Flexer said. \u201cHe also had to go through that total abandonment to realize God\u2019s pres\u00adence with him.\u201d Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any agony worse than Christ\u2019s. It is one of the great lessons of the cross, a symbol of both suffer\u00ading and salvation.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another \u201ccrack of light\u201d that breaks through the darkness of suffering, according to Sharon Salz\u00adberg, a leading meditation teacher and author of Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience. <\/em>Salzberg was nine when her mother died and eleven when her father overdosed on sleeping pills. Years later, in college, Salzberg discovered Buddhism, which says suffering is inevitable. That belief opened her eyes to suffering as being a normal part of life. One that doesn\u2019t have to break you.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuffering itself doesn\u2019t make you noble,\u201d Salzberg told me. \u201cThere are plenty of people who suffer and grow really bitter and angry. Then there are other people who use suffering as the springboard to greater compas\u00adsion for others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can suffering really deepen our humanity? I talked to Roberta Mess\u00adner, a retired nurse and longtime contributor to Guideposts<\/em> and Myste\u00adrious Ways. <\/em>She has suffered to the point of contemplating suicide, due to a neurological disorder called neu\u00adrofibromatosis, which causes large, noncancerous tumors to grow all over her body. Roberta has had the condition since adolescence and, despite the near-constant pain she endures, is one of the kindest souls you\u2019ll ever meet.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though it has been a life of suffering, I wouldn\u2019t trade it,\u201d she told me. \u201cThat sounds so crazy. But I just feel so at one with people. I feel their suffering intensely. And I\u2019m so vulnerable when I suffer that it makes me more open to the mysterious.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recalled how she was divinely healed from cancer seven years ago. Despite that miracle, the stories Roberta writes about her incurable illness are the ones that most reso\u00adnate with readers. Like her first surgery to remove a brain tumor at 15, and the physical and emotional scars it left behind. How she felt like an outsider. How she often turns to her twin sisters and loved ones for support and to writing to heal. The more we talked, the less alone I felt. I was connected to something greater.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I ask God,\u201d Roberta said, \u201cis how I can use my suffering to help others.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought of Rabbi Lapine, Phillip Yancey, Reverend Flexer and Sharon Salzberg. Like Roberta, they had ex\u00adperienced suffering at a young age, for reasons maybe too mysterious to ever comprehend. It led each of them on different paths, but they all follow paths of compassion. They made something of their pain. Could I do the same?<\/p>\n

Why, God, why? <\/em>Maybe I\u2019ve been asking the wrong question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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