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Up until recently, men and women accepted sickness and suffering as inevitable features of life in this fallen world. They would have agreed with the words of D. A. Carson who said, 'All we have to do is to live long enough, and we will suffer.' However, in more recent times, wonderful medical advances together with a major change in outlook have led many to think not only that they now have the capacity to rid themselves of all sickness and suffering, but also that they have the right to a long and happy life.
For the Bible-believing Christian, such shifts in the popular outlook might be written off as symptoms of a godless modernity. However, the entrance into some parts of the evangelical world by those who put forward a Christianized version of the above, manipulating biblical texts in the process, has brought this whole issue of our attitude to sickness and suffering much closer to home. Real confusion exists among the people of God, which is seen in the many and varied answers to these important questions: What are we to make of sickness and suffering? And how are we to respond to it?
