‘When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/2ch.7.13-14.NIVUK
The answer is obvious: sin. Or, in the terms we used earlier, a breach in the contract between the Jews and God. They had breached the terms they had agreed, so God activated the penalty clause. But we don't relate to God in this way. Is it possible for us to experience suffering as a result of our sin too?
The answer, I would hope, is yes. We still experience the pain of consequential sin. If we have a dispute with someone, we experience the pain of a broken relationship. If we behave in a self-destructive manner, we bear the consequences of it. Sin is a clear and obvious source of pain.
But it is not always at the root of it. At least, not at a personal level. Although in general the sin at Eden has cost us all, as we saw earlier, not all pain at a personal level can be blamed on sinful behaviour.
This is where the cause of part, although not all, of our suffering lies elsewhere. You see, although right now our situations are not great, how we react to it can actually make it worse. Suffering is like an x-ray for our soul. X-rays are harmful. Anyone who's had one recently will know that. If they were not harmful, then why would radiographers need to work behind a screen? Why would there be a limit on how many we can safely have per year? But the thing is, x-rays are really useful because they are a non-invasive method to diagnose physical issues with our bones.
Suffering is like an x-ray. It shows what is inside our hearts and souls. In fact, God deliberately sent the Israelites back into the desert for this purpose (Deuteronomy 8:2). He exposed them to suffering again so that their wrong attitudes would be exposed. Often this is exactly what he does with us.
In 2001, I had to leave Romania in a hurry because my dad was dying, as I alluded to earlier. When I came back home it took me a long time to settle. I was definitely not fun to be around. You see, I'd become rather attached to being a missionary. It had given me dignity and a sense of self-respect. Preaching in churches on a regular basis had fed my ego, giving me a wrong sense of self-importance and pride.
Reality back home soon put paid to that. I endured my third stress-related illness in three years. I needed counselling for the sudden loss of my father, along with other issues. I used to think people who needed counselling were weak-minded basket cases. I eventually re-entered the labour market. I went from being someone who regularly preached in front of hundreds of people to someone in the back room of an outsourced processing centre for a bank, writing the number '1' on index cards if they contained the details of someone in the armed forces and '0' if they were civilian.
It was humiliating.
It was as if God needed to break me and re-make me. But I had been a missionary. Missionaries are perfect people with no issues, who had everything together, right?
Evidently God did not agree.
During those painful early years back home, when I got engaged, married, brought my wife to the UK and we had a child, God taught me more lessons about character, work ethic, self-motivation and humility than I'd learned in three years in Romania. It was very hard, but it needed to happen. God needed to expose me to hardship and suffering, removing from me a position I really loved, before I would listen.
Christians all throughout history have needed to be exposed to suffering before they realise their sins and shortcomings. Even the Early Church got it wrong. They were sent to the ends of the earth, but barely made it past the city limits of Jerusalem before God sent persecution.
In fact, the letter to the Hebrews contains this curious text about Jesus:
During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him
Hebrews 5:7-9 NIVUK
https://bible.com/bible/113/heb.5.7-9.NIVUK
This cannot mean that Jesus was a sinner and was straightened out by suffering as we are. Later on in the same letter, it says that He was without sin. No, I believe this means that suffering taught Jesus the full meaning and implications and cost of obedience, perfecting His experience.
What God is saying to Solomon is something Solomon already knew, and that is that their sin was the root cause of their suffering. That was the cause for the Jews because of the nature of their relationship with God. In our case it's fundamentally different. Although sin can be the cause of our suffering, there are times when it isn't, but instead affects the level of pain we experience by making it worse.
In both of these situations, the remedy described by both Solomon and God is exactly what we need.
So we understand that the problem in these verses is suffering and that the cause is sin - in the general sense, the sense that sin could be the root cause of our suffering and that it could also be exposed by our suffering or could be making it worse. Thirdly, we see THE CURE in these verses.
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