Sue knew that Jesus had not let her down by allowing her to be raped. Jesus himself was violated until dead at the hands of sinful men, and he specifically said that his followers could expect to be treated just as he had been treated. Over and over the Bible warns that Christians will suffer in this life. In fact, a sizable portion of the Bible was written by Paul, who with agonizing regularity was shipwrecked, stoned, flogged, beaten up and imprisoned (2 Corinthians 11:23-29). Other New Testament writers and early Christians likewise had encounters with God so powerfully real that they reveled in the incomprehensible vastness of God’s love, while they and their loved ones suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of people opposed to God.

Significantly, Paul himself only became a Christian because God had let him torture and kill Christians until he finally came to his senses and yielded to Christ. Who would ever have guessed that God’s tolerance of this hate-crazed bigot would eventually lead to the transformation of countless thousands of people throughout the rest of human history?

Taken from If anyone has reason to hate God, it’s Sue

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