What in the World is God Doing?

before I went to bed - THERE WAS AN INFECTED, CORRUPTED ORGAN INSIDE ME THAT WAS CAUSING THE PROBLEM! The thing had to be cut out of me. And, boy, am I glad that when I went to the doctor he recognised what it was. He didn’t just give me some medicine to relieve the problem: HE GOT RID OF THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM.

Now, the Bible is clear on the point that we live in a fallen world - a world that has been corrupted and retarded by sin. We read a moment ago of what happened when man rebelled against God by his disobedience in the Garden of Eden; that is the God-authorized account of how sin and evil entered into the world. And all of the suffering and pain which are all about us in this world are the tragic symptoms of this much greater problem - SIN!

The Bible begins, way back in Genesis, with God creating the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1-2). Repeatedly, God’s verdict is that all of His handiwork is “VERY GOOD”. There is no sin and no suffering. The Garden of Eden brings forth food without the sweat of toil being mixed into the earth. BUT the first human rebellion (Genesis 3) marks the onset of suffering, toil, pain, and death (as God had warned). A mere two chapters later (chapter 5) we read the endlessly repeated and hauntingly pitiful refrain, “then he died . . . then he died . . . then he died”.

Sin has overthrown the balances of God’s creation; it has brought a distortion to the very creation itself. (Romans 8:22 tells us that the whole creation is actually “GROANING” under the weight of the fall.) And what you and I must understand is that every child born into this world is filthied by this same corruption, and as such we are naturally an offence to God. An affront to His holy nature. [QUOTE: Romans 3:23.]

So, here then, is the real problem! We impudently ask: “Why doesn’t God do something about suffering?” But we fail to understand the real issue in the balance! EVEN IF GOD WERE TO INTERVENE AND ERADICATE SUFFERING FROM THE WHOLE WORLD TODAY (by some miracle), IT WOULD BE RAMPANT AGAIN BY TOMORROW, BECAUSE IT’S ONLY A SYMPTOM OF A GREATER EVIL. The two are inseparably linked.

[ILLUS.] Let me give you just one very practical example of how sin is the cause of suffering. Many people are under the misapprehension that the world hunger problem is cause by over-population. That there simply is not enough food to go around - the planet cannot support 5 1/2 BILLION people. But that is simply NOT TRUE. The World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) and the World Food Bank (W.F.B.) confirm that the world presently produces enough food to feed in excess of what is required. In fact we could feed around 10 billion people - without increasing production significantly. POPULATION is not the problem - the problem is DISTRIBUTION. Most of the food available is in the west, and not available to the Third World. And the underlying root cause of the distribution problem is MAN’S GREED. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tons of surplus grains are tipped into the ocean, rather than going to where they are needed. Why? To protect the price of the grain, and to avoid transport costs. The bottom line is that we in the west care more about profit margin than about starving people. Greed!

AND over-consumption in the west. (We are A SOCIETY OF GLUTTONS) - Australia (18 million people) presently