Christianity: Suffering and the God of the Old Testament

What does the Old Testament tells us about God and Suffering. In his book Creation Untamed, Terence E Frotheim comes up with these points:

Generally, God’s relationship with the world is such that God is present on every occasion and is in the centre of every event, no matter how heroic or Hitlerian, and in every such moment, God is at work on behalf of the best possible future for all creation.

Prayer, is God’s gift to human beings precisely for the sake of communication within relationship not least in time of suffering.

Suffering needs to be seen in the different ways: it is the part of God’s good creation. God’s world is not a suffering or pain free world and He created it that way.

Suffering is a universal human reality, it goes with life as God created it (apart from sin) and can serve God’s purposes for the fullest life possible.

A pain free life world be a lifeless life while pain makes us who we are.

Accidents can happen in a world that God created, we are not exempt from accidents.

Suffering has no necessary relationship to sin.

God does not micro manage the work of his agents on earth (us) but uses constraint and restraint in allowing them to exercise freedom.

Presumably God could have created a world in which sin never had suffering consequences.  But without those consequences to our words and deeds there would be no genuine moral choice and human beings world not be morally responsible.

Human sin can have devastating effects on the natural world around us.

God is not like a mechanic who chooses to fix the suffering of the world from the outside the world, God is more like a good medicine, choosing to heal the world from within, by entering deply into its life. God saves the world by taking its suffering into the very heart of the divine life, bearing it there and then wearing it in the forms of a cross (2 Corinthians 12 v 9).

As well as us people, God also suffers. He suffers because the people have rejected him. He suffers with those who are suffering and enters into their suffering experiences with us.

God's creation is intended to go somewhere, it is a work in progress.

Natural disasters are a key agent of God in the continuing creation of the world.

At the same time, God is involved in the healing of the environment.

Meanwhile we remember that though Jesus stilled a storm, he didn't remove all storms from the life of the world, though Jesus cured individuals of diseases, he didn't rid the world of thoses diseases.