🕷️ Crawler Inspector

# [Shelley Smucker](https://shelleysmucker.substack.com/) Subscribe Sign in # That one story about suffering. ### Spoiler alert--it doesn't answer your questions. [](https://substack.com/@shelleysmucker) [Shelley Smucker](https://substack.com/@shelleysmucker) Mar 13, 2026 11 Share It’s been difficult to write anything lately. I try to type on the blank page and nothing comes. The things I want to say I can’t, the things weighing on me I can’t unburden, and it all ends in a stalemate of my fingers poised over a silent keyboard, my eyes staring at an empty screen. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. [](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1586380951230-e6703d9f6833?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw3NHx8YmlibGV8ZW58MHx8fHwxNzczNDA5NzQxfDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080) Photo by [Sixteen Miles Out](https://unsplash.com/@sixteenmilesout) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/) Much of life has been dark, hard, and heavy, and the words just do not come to process it all. So instead of hearing what I may have to say, let’s dust off the cover of our Bible and see what it has to say about the topic of suffering. (Lots of this summary references a video by The Bible Project—they create free resources that explain the Bible in such an interesting and accessible way, check it out [here](https://youtu.be/xQwnH8th_fs?si=eDkwM0UwJsJ4b5eo).) Let’s proceed: Job is easily one of the wildest stories in the Bible. First off, the author is unknown, which makes me feel like it could be an unreliable narrator, except that this is the Bible we’re talking about, and the Bible is all true. Secondly, there is no clear time period, which makes this feel like a fable, but the purpose is to focus us in on the questions it raises. And boy oh boy, are there questions. The story starts off with a court room scene of sorts, where God seems to be holding a staff meeting, and Satan is there too as the accuser, or prosecutor. God asks him what he’s been up to lately and we get his infamous answer, “Oh, roaming to and fro on the earth, seeking whom I may devour”. God then presents Job as this righteous dude who lives a blameless life, maybe to show Satan he hadn’t yet ruined everything? Got everyone to fall? Who can know. And Satan goes on to claim that “the only reason your servant Job really loves you is because you’ve given him everything he’s ever wanted. But if he actually suffered something worse than a bad hair day, he would turn his back on you and curse you.” And maybe the wildest part of this whole thing? God actually agrees to it. He gives the accuser (Satan) permission to basically wreck Job’s life. This is the toughest part of the story, in my opinion. It feels tragically unfair. Cruel, even. Here is Job, living holy and upright and choosing to follow and obey and for what? To get thrown into the arena and fed to the lions to prove a point? I wrestle with this part of the story, and to be honest, I’ve never got a clear idea of why this has to happen. But as hard as the implications of all of this are to take in, it is in this moment when the reader thinks, “Ahhh, maybe now we will finally get an answer to the age-old, question we’ve been asking since the dawn of time…WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? \*Spoiler alert\* We never get the answer to the question. So now Job is suffering—he’s lost everything he’s ever had. In one fell swoop, (maybe the truest usage of that term, ever) he loses all his cattle, sheep, camels, wealth, and children, when the house they’re all partying in collapses, killing them all. Basically every worst, possible grief, sorrow and nightmare happening in a day. Later, he additionally loses his health and gets boils and open sores all over his body. He also loses relationship, especially in his marriage, because his wife tells him to just curse God and die and get it over with. He goes into mourning, and that’s when we get the special delight of meeting Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar (try those baby name suggestions at your next baby shower game). These men operate from their understanding that God is just, and rules the world accordingly, so if you’re a good person, good things will happen to you. If you’re evil, bad things will happen to you. It’s simple math. So you can see by this logic how they became 100% convinced Job must have done something terrible to warrant this spiritual attack. Job insists he’s innocent, they insist he’s not, and on and on it goes for chapters. Their condescending, critical, and brutal verbal tirades are at least eloquent and poetic, I’ll give them that. Job gives one last impassioned plea of innocence and also demands that God show up already and explain himself. Then this new guy Elihu enters the scene. He agrees with the other friends that God is just and God uses judgment to rule the world, but instead of drawing the conclusion that Job must have sinned, he draws the conclusion that maybe suffering could be given as a warning to avoid sinning in the future. Or maybe the purpose is to build character. This is all presented really well and concisely but warrants no response from Job. I think he’s pretty much done at this point with the pontifications of others who are quite literally, not walking in his shoes. Then the Almighty God enters the chat. He asks, rather sarcastically, where were they when He laid the foundations of the world? Do they know about the organization of constellations and galaxies, the boundaries of the oceans? Do they know how to command the rising and setting of the sun or control of weather? What about the grazing habits of mountain goats and the birth process for deer? God paints a panoramic picture of how narrow our human gaze is when we view our little lives in our tiny little bubbles and view the world through that microscopic lens. We just simply have not even a fraction of the size of lens we would need to have to be able to view things from God’s point of view. God’s world has beauty and order, it’s amazing and good—but it is also not safe or perfect. It is wild and dangerous. So now we circle back to the ultimate question—why is there suffering in the world? Whether it’s an earthquake or a terminal cancer diagnosis or genetic mutation, why does a good God allow all this? The closest thing we get to an answer is that we live in an amazing, complex world that at this stage, is not designed to prevent suffering. That’s it. That’s God’s response. We are not in a position to question God’s justice, because our view is so small, and He invites us to trust His wisdom in the things we can’t understand. Job responds in humility. He apologizes for doubting God and overstepping his bounds. And this brings the story to its close. But before the final page is turned, God approves of a few things Job got right: 1. His Struggle 2. His honesty 3. His prayers. He likes that Job came to him in his wrestling, with full, raw-throated transparency and sorrow. Job lamented, he wailed, he thrashed about and tore his clothes and covered his head with ashes. There was no sugar-coating it, no finding the silver lining, no positive spin moves. Just real, ragged, gut-wrenching sorrow. But not sorrow for sorrow’s sake, but Job processed his grief through prayer. In the end, Job has all of this wealth, health, and family restored. Not as a reward, but as a generous gift from God. I’ll be honest, I wish we would get more of an answer. I wish God would just explain it all, top to bottom, beginning to end. No uncertain terms. Just the question we’ve longed for since the dawn of time. The answer to the “WHY” that so many of us have cried out from the depths of our souls. But what we do get, is an invitation to trust God’s wisdom when we DO suffer, rather than search for reasons. The search for a “reason” is likely just going to lead us to simplify God like Job’s friends, or accuse God, like Job did. So we are left with this—bring your grief and your pain to God in prayer. All of it, no matter how raw and ugly. Then, even though every fiber of your being cries out against it, choose to trust that God actually cares, and He knows what He’s doing. That may not seem like much, and believe me, it’s not the 12-steps-to-victory blueprint that I wish it was, or a patented formula to fix-all-that-ails-you that I desperately wish it could be. But I’m learning, slowly and painfully, that we don’t get the answer to our “whys” nearly as often as we’d like. Sometimes never. Suffering isn’t accompanied with quick-fix solutions or magic wands to erase all the pain. Of course we know this is true, but it doesn’t seem to stop our brains from wishing for it, desperately. We want to believe that if there were only some sort of cosmic reason for our suffering, it will hurt less. But Job teaches us that sometimes, the only tool we have available to us is one small, barely visible step of faithfulness. Choosing to cry out to God instead of cry into the darkness. Choosing to believe He is faithful instead of choosing hopelessness. Choosing to surrender the questions that have no answers, the ‘whys’ that remained unknown. It might not seem like a big thing we can do, but maybe it’s the only thing we can do. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 11 Share #### Discussion about this post Comments Restacks Top Latest Discussions No posts ### Ready for more? © 2026 Shelley Smucker · [Privacy](https://substack.com/privacy) ∙ [Terms](https://substack.com/tos) ∙ [Collection notice](https://substack.com/ccpa#personal-data-collected) [Start your Substack](https://substack.com/signup?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=footer) [Get the app](https://substack.com/app/app-store-redirect?utm_campaign=app-marketing&utm_content=web-footer-button) [Substack](https://substack.com/) is the home for great culture This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. 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It’s been difficult to write anything lately. I try to type on the blank page and nothing comes. The things I want to say I can’t, the things weighing on me I can’t unburden, and it all ends in a stalemate of my fingers poised over a silent keyboard, my eyes staring at an empty screen. Much of life has been dark, hard, and heavy, and the words just do not come to process it all. So instead of hearing what I may have to say, let’s dust off the cover of our Bible and see what it has to say about the topic of suffering. (Lots of this summary references a video by The Bible Project—they create free resources that explain the Bible in such an interesting and accessible way, check it out [here](https://youtu.be/xQwnH8th_fs?si=eDkwM0UwJsJ4b5eo).) Let’s proceed: Job is easily one of the wildest stories in the Bible. First off, the author is unknown, which makes me feel like it could be an unreliable narrator, except that this is the Bible we’re talking about, and the Bible is all true. Secondly, there is no clear time period, which makes this feel like a fable, but the purpose is to focus us in on the questions it raises. And boy oh boy, are there questions. The story starts off with a court room scene of sorts, where God seems to be holding a staff meeting, and Satan is there too as the accuser, or prosecutor. God asks him what he’s been up to lately and we get his infamous answer, “Oh, roaming to and fro on the earth, seeking whom I may devour”. God then presents Job as this righteous dude who lives a blameless life, maybe to show Satan he hadn’t yet ruined everything? Got everyone to fall? Who can know. And Satan goes on to claim that “the only reason your servant Job really loves you is because you’ve given him everything he’s ever wanted. But if he actually suffered something worse than a bad hair day, he would turn his back on you and curse you.” And maybe the wildest part of this whole thing? God actually agrees to it. He gives the accuser (Satan) permission to basically wreck Job’s life. This is the toughest part of the story, in my opinion. It feels tragically unfair. Cruel, even. Here is Job, living holy and upright and choosing to follow and obey and for what? To get thrown into the arena and fed to the lions to prove a point? I wrestle with this part of the story, and to be honest, I’ve never got a clear idea of why this has to happen. But as hard as the implications of all of this are to take in, it is in this moment when the reader thinks, “Ahhh, maybe now we will finally get an answer to the age-old, question we’ve been asking since the dawn of time…WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? \*Spoiler alert\* We never get the answer to the question. So now Job is suffering—he’s lost everything he’s ever had. In one fell swoop, (maybe the truest usage of that term, ever) he loses all his cattle, sheep, camels, wealth, and children, when the house they’re all partying in collapses, killing them all. Basically every worst, possible grief, sorrow and nightmare happening in a day. Later, he additionally loses his health and gets boils and open sores all over his body. He also loses relationship, especially in his marriage, because his wife tells him to just curse God and die and get it over with. He goes into mourning, and that’s when we get the special delight of meeting Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar (try those baby name suggestions at your next baby shower game). These men operate from their understanding that God is just, and rules the world accordingly, so if you’re a good person, good things will happen to you. If you’re evil, bad things will happen to you. It’s simple math. So you can see by this logic how they became 100% convinced Job must have done something terrible to warrant this spiritual attack. Job insists he’s innocent, they insist he’s not, and on and on it goes for chapters. Their condescending, critical, and brutal verbal tirades are at least eloquent and poetic, I’ll give them that. Job gives one last impassioned plea of innocence and also demands that God show up already and explain himself. Then this new guy Elihu enters the scene. He agrees with the other friends that God is just and God uses judgment to rule the world, but instead of drawing the conclusion that Job must have sinned, he draws the conclusion that maybe suffering could be given as a warning to avoid sinning in the future. Or maybe the purpose is to build character. This is all presented really well and concisely but warrants no response from Job. I think he’s pretty much done at this point with the pontifications of others who are quite literally, not walking in his shoes. Then the Almighty God enters the chat. He asks, rather sarcastically, where were they when He laid the foundations of the world? Do they know about the organization of constellations and galaxies, the boundaries of the oceans? Do they know how to command the rising and setting of the sun or control of weather? What about the grazing habits of mountain goats and the birth process for deer? God paints a panoramic picture of how narrow our human gaze is when we view our little lives in our tiny little bubbles and view the world through that microscopic lens. We just simply have not even a fraction of the size of lens we would need to have to be able to view things from God’s point of view. God’s world has beauty and order, it’s amazing and good—but it is also not safe or perfect. It is wild and dangerous. So now we circle back to the ultimate question—why is there suffering in the world? Whether it’s an earthquake or a terminal cancer diagnosis or genetic mutation, why does a good God allow all this? The closest thing we get to an answer is that we live in an amazing, complex world that at this stage, is not designed to prevent suffering. That’s it. That’s God’s response. We are not in a position to question God’s justice, because our view is so small, and He invites us to trust His wisdom in the things we can’t understand. Job responds in humility. He apologizes for doubting God and overstepping his bounds. And this brings the story to its close. But before the final page is turned, God approves of a few things Job got right: 1. His Struggle 2. His honesty 3. His prayers. He likes that Job came to him in his wrestling, with full, raw-throated transparency and sorrow. Job lamented, he wailed, he thrashed about and tore his clothes and covered his head with ashes. There was no sugar-coating it, no finding the silver lining, no positive spin moves. Just real, ragged, gut-wrenching sorrow. But not sorrow for sorrow’s sake, but Job processed his grief through prayer. In the end, Job has all of this wealth, health, and family restored. Not as a reward, but as a generous gift from God. I’ll be honest, I wish we would get more of an answer. I wish God would just explain it all, top to bottom, beginning to end. No uncertain terms. Just the question we’ve longed for since the dawn of time. The answer to the “WHY” that so many of us have cried out from the depths of our souls. But what we do get, is an invitation to trust God’s wisdom when we DO suffer, rather than search for reasons. The search for a “reason” is likely just going to lead us to simplify God like Job’s friends, or accuse God, like Job did. So we are left with this—bring your grief and your pain to God in prayer. All of it, no matter how raw and ugly. Then, even though every fiber of your being cries out against it, choose to trust that God actually cares, and He knows what He’s doing. That may not seem like much, and believe me, it’s not the 12-steps-to-victory blueprint that I wish it was, or a patented formula to fix-all-that-ails-you that I desperately wish it could be. But I’m learning, slowly and painfully, that we don’t get the answer to our “whys” nearly as often as we’d like. Sometimes never. Suffering isn’t accompanied with quick-fix solutions or magic wands to erase all the pain. Of course we know this is true, but it doesn’t seem to stop our brains from wishing for it, desperately. We want to believe that if there were only some sort of cosmic reason for our suffering, it will hurt less. But Job teaches us that sometimes, the only tool we have available to us is one small, barely visible step of faithfulness. Choosing to cry out to God instead of cry into the darkness. Choosing to believe He is faithful instead of choosing hopelessness. Choosing to surrender the questions that have no answers, the ‘whys’ that remained unknown. It might not seem like a big thing we can do, but maybe it’s the only thing we can do. No posts