Things like cancer, which causes untold amounts of human suffering and sadness in our world, remain one of the most difficult things to deal with theologically. Why did God's good creation lead to things like this? Suffering and sadness, however, seem to be related somehow to the divinely structured evolution of life on Earth. We know from personal experiences that pain and loss can have beneficial affects. We grow, we learn, and sometimes we find deeper spiritual life through such things. Why it has to be this way, we don't know.
If, however, we are going to "blame God" for all of this suffering and sadness, then it is also only fair to understand that God also created (and continues to create) us with the potential for medicine—for being increasingly able to reduce suffering and bring relief to those in pain. Evidently (or, better, evidentially), the capacity to overcome diseases is engineered in us as a potential we are more and more realizing. And when we also realize that nature itself provides the basis of many medical treatments including many herbs and plants—well, if we're going to blame God for allowing the suffering, it is only fair that we praise God for graciously engineering in us and our world answers to our suffering.
The God who built grief into us has also built joy, and there seems to be a connection between them that we don't understand very well at all. It's worth wondering, however, if our joy would be so deep, so meaningful if we had never known grief. Are not joy and sadness partners in the dance of life, together drawing us to a deeper place within ourselves? Is that place not wisdom, which remains one of our most precious human gifts? This is not to say that we should not seek to conquer cancer with things like JX 594, but rather to say that in doing so we are heading in the direction set us for us from the beginning—the peaceable Kingdom of God. Amen.
