the intolerable thirst of the suffering.

Define suffering.
Is it always unjust?
Why does suffering exist?

We hear statistics, of which I searched all day long--planning to list them out for you. I wanted the shock factor to dominate the introduction to this blog. But after about an hour on the internet, reading story after story, surfing from website to webiste, i realized how numbing statistics are. They are way over our heads. So I left them out.

Here are some of the websites I visited today, if you are interested. The last one is a video that actually really annoys me, but it's worth seeing:
international justice mission
amnesty international
jubilee debt campaign
ONE campaign video

and just for fun: good ole' cs

Back to my questions. Why does God allow suffering? I ask this everyday. Why do squatter women with no real means of attaining their own building/home in certain Southeast Asian countires live under the fear of a government that tramps through the countryside looking for someone to prey upon?
Why are the death tolls of women in Guatemala between January and November of this year in the 500 range?
Why do girls in Thailand complacently sell their bodies to faceless monsters for a small fee?
Why are children in India bonded laborers for 50 cent debts incurred through medical bills from their sisters near death experience after being brutally raped?
Why did 98% of Achenese residents in certain parts of Sumatra die when the tsunami hit?
Why are Moldovan orphans sold to Italy, Germany, the U.S., and other countries in a business that contributes to the $9.5 BILLION generated in annual revenue from human trafficking?

What is suffering? Is it always unjust? What is the purpose of coerced pain?

I want to know how God can sit and watch generations, billions of years of countless moments of injustice. I want to know, because it's real. It is real, maybe not in my world. But this stuff happens, and I want to know how God can just allow it. I'd love your thoughts, and don't be afraid to say something "wrong".

As Americans, we don't know much about injustice. We just don't. It's not our faults, really. I mean, we cannot control where we are born and raised, the family we acquire, the environment around us. We are creatures destined for a certain upbrining. But there comes an age in life when we have to start accepting responsiblity for our ignorance. That age, for any of us reading (or writing) this, has come.

So welcome to the wake up. This is it. This is my attempt to awaken myself from my sleep. From my "Can you believe the AIDS problem in Africa? Now, let's go eat some chicken" existence. As I've said before, this is not the way the rest of the world lives.

So, God. How do you allow this? Clearly you are omnipotent. Clearly you've seen it all, from the first to the last cry from the pits of unjust suffering. If it pisses me off to read one story in one book about one kid suffering like this, how do you, being God and all you claim to be, allow this?

I'd like to say I found the answer in the Bible. And I"m sure it is there. But today, when I was asking this question, I found that I'd left my Bible at It's a Grind. I have others, but they are hard to navigate. They are not MY bible, where things are marked and stamped and highlighted and tabbed.
So I turned to Gary Haugen, president of International Justice Mission. I'm in the dead middle of his book "Good News About Injustice." Seemed like a good place to look.

Seriously, God is awesome. And he answered my questions. PLEASE read this and see the answer, at least the answer I am completely able to accept.
Haugen's outline: 1) we don't know the secrets of God. We know in part.
Deuteronomy 29:29 'There are things hidden, and they belong to the LORD our God, but what is revealed belongs to us and our children for ever; it is for us to observe all that is prescribed in this law.' (new english bible)
2) (this is the answer) we remember the cross.
John Stott said it right: "I could never myself believe in a God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as "God on the cross". In a real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the stature of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our suffering became more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering. "The cross of Christ...is God's only self-justification in a world such as ours."

Haugen responds, and this is SO good: "So when at times I flippantly challenge the Almighty as to why he allows horrendous suffering, I am pulled up in a shudder of humility as I recall that there is no measure of his creation's suffering that he has not been willing to bear himself."

AH!--as Joshua would say. God, that is good. Literally, "God, that is good."
This perspective is so obvious, I guess, but I never thought of it. That the suffering of Christ, the real unjust suffering inflicted upon one man for the sins of all who've lived and died and suffered and inflicted suffering, inclusively covers every form of suffering. And, if you believe in anything God says to us, then you believe EVERYTHING God says to us, which leaves you believing that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and died for us.

Gimme some comments. If you made it this far!
"god whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our painL it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." --my boy jack