Victims of innocent suffering: Biblical help and hope

Stories about innocent suffering make the news daily.

Five watercolor paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler failed to sell at auction last weekend, reminding us that the Nazi dictator was a failed artist before inciting the deaths of six million Jews and twelve million other victims in World War II.

Nearly one hundred children have died in Africa from the second-deadliest outbreak of Ebola in history. More than eight hundred people have reported symptoms.

And the appalling report about clergy sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention continues to make news today.

Tragically, no organization is immune to such abuse. The Roman Catholic Church continues to respond to reports of clergy abuse over the last several years. Sexual abuse scandals have rocked the Presbyterian Church USA, the Boy Scouts, gymnastics, swimming, hockey, college football, and political leaders as well.

A study found that nearly five hundred schoolteachers were arrested in 2015 on sexual abuse charges. Shockingly, about 10 percent of children in eighth through eleventh grades were found to have been subjected to some form of sexual abuse by an adult at school (most often a teacher or coach).

Where is God when such tragedies occur?

“Why have you forgotten me?”

Job 9 poignantly describes the pain innocent victims feel when God seems to fail them.

Job pictures the omnipotence of the One “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea . . . who does great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things beyond number” (vv. 8, 10).

But this omnipotent God seems impervious to Job’s cries for help: “If I summoned him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice. For he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause” (vv. 16-17). In fact, according to Job, “When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent” (v. 23).

This must be how many victims of sexual abuse feel…