Why does God allow innocent people to suffer? Have you ever thought about that question? Does it nag at your rational mind? If God is so good, then why doesn’t he restrain evil and suffering? Why does suffering exist at all? Why doesn’t He explain his reason for allowing so much pain and suffering? Why do I a believer, a Christian, feel such awful pain in my life?
This is one of the most difficult questions for Christians to answer and maybe the single greatest dilemma of faith today.
The “problem of pain,” as the well-known Christian scholar, C.S. Lewis, once called it, is atheism's most potent weapon against the Christian faith. All true science and history, if rightly understood, support the existence of God. The evidence is so strong in fact that, as the Bible says: "The fool says in his heart, There is no God." (Psalm 14:1).
Every one of us will experience suffering at some time in our lives. Many of us are experiencing it in what feels like unfair doses that seem to never let up. And in very recent years we have seen unimaginable natural disasters and genocide's that challenge our ability to comprehend the existence of God. Evil and suffering are real in our world... present and personal to each one of us.
In such difficult times of human suffering and unbridled evil... questions about God take center stage in our thinking. What is He doing? From the human vantage point... nothing. How can a God of love permit such things in His world as war, sickness, pain, and untimely death, especially when their effects often are felt most keenly by those who are innocent? Why would an all-good and all-powerful God allow the world to be overwhelmed by such evil and suffering? Either He is not a God of love and is indifferent to human suffering, or else He is not a God of power and is therefore helpless to do anything about it. In either case, the Biblical God who is supposedly one of both absolute power and perfect love becomes an impossible contradiction. If suffering is up close and personal for you... then you are likely to question whether God really cares about humanity or even exists.
These are ageless questions that have plagued mankind from ancient times. Evil and the suffering of humanity breeds unbelief. High-profile atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and even former believers like Bart Ehrman, a prominent theologian, answer these questions simply: The existence of suffering and evil proves there is no God.
Christians know that is not the case... God does exist! BUT do we really trust and understand the matrix of God’s existence and His relationship with humanity? Christians are just as susceptible to being overtaken by disbelief in God’s existence as any true-blue atheist.
This next sentence or two will quite possibly touch a nerve.... we need to recognize that our very minds were created by God. In our current state of sin and imperfection we can only use our minds to the extent that He allows, and it is, therefore, utterly presumptuous for us to use them to question Him and His motives... even in the matters of suffering and evil. We humans do not establish the standards of what is right or wrong, even when we think we understand the will of God. Only the Creator of all reality can do that. We need to settle it, in our minds and hearts, whether we understand it or not, that whatever God does... is by definition, right, just, righteous and most of all... loving. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25).
Okay... we are limited in our understanding of God. But that doesn’t do much to answer these nagging questions of why God is not helping a young person suffering from depression and anxiety... thinking life isn’t worth living, because God is not helping ease the pain. Or a woman with small children suddenly stricken with cancer that will soon take her life and leave her children motherless. Or the family who just lost a loved one in a tragic accident. When it’s personal... especially when we are “believers”... we want God to intervene and to make things well... to cure the sick... to shield us from pain and suffering. Why doesn’t He intervene?
The answer to all of this isn’t easy to swallow when it’s YOU suffering. It may well be that in our walk as Christians, we simply glossed over the harsh realities of the human condition that are clearly explained in the Bible. We tend to fill our minds with only the good things of God’s promises. Maybe we’re too emotionally driven... believing that a “person in Christ” should be somehow exempt from suffering... that God should be a our beck and call to soothe our pain and sorrows.
Coming to terms with suffering and sorrow is sort of like preparing your final burial arrangements and writing your obituary when you’re young and healthy. No want wants to face the reality of such circumstances, whether it’s suffering through personal pain, tragedies or life’s end.
Man was disobedient to God as recorded in Genesis 3:6-7. Disobedience to God is sin. God... rightfully and justly reacted to the situation. The world is now existing under a Curse (Genesis 3:17) because of man's rebellion against God's Plan for humanity. It came with consequences... evil, suffering and sorrow. God reveals to Adam and Eve the consequences of their sinful choice in Genesis 3:16-19. God told Adam and Eve that they would now experience SORROW and DEATH. Therefore, the suffering and sorrow that you and I deal with today is not the work of an unjust or uncaring God... it's the consequences of sin. It’s a just and righteous Curse that has plagued all of humanity since the beginning (Romans 3:23; 5:12).
This “bondage of sin and corruption,” with the "whole world groaning and suffering together in pain" (Romans 8:21, 22), is universal, affecting all men, women and children everywhere. Don’t for a minute think that God finds any pleasure in the pain and suffering of humanity. He does not. God did not create the world this way, and one day He will set all things right again. In that day, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain" (Revelation 21:4).
How to cope? Live everyday of your life focused on Jesus. Who He is and what He did. Christ died for our sins (I Corinthians 15:3). He suffered and died, in order that ultimately He might deliver the world from the Curse, and that, even now, He can deliver from sin and its bondage anyone who will receive Him in faith as their personal Lord and Savior. This great deliverance from the penalty of inherent sin, while the most significant event in all history, still doesn’t relieve one from personal suffering and sorrow... now.
One thing can... Faith. Full faith in God's goodness and in Christ's redemption can help us recognize that our present sufferings can be turned to His glory and our ultimate good. The sufferings of Christians should always be looked upon as the means of developing a stronger dependence on God and a more Christ-like character. As we are admonished and warned... No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. (Hebrews 12:11 NLT).
God is loving and merciful even when, “for the present,” He allows trials and sufferings to come in our lives. “For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Pain and suffering doesn’t feel like a good thing under any circumstances. Living through such ordeals seems a contradiction that any human suffering can produce something good when it’s causing people so much pain. We can find ourselves caught in a faith vortex, spinning out of control... teetering between belief and unbelief. “When I became a Christian, I thought God would care for me, protect me, and shield me from pain and suffering... but He does nothing.” “I don’t think He cares about me... I don’t think HE even exists.’”
Faith builds Trust.... Trust yields Faith. The foundations of “belief” must be firmly anchored in a balanced understanding of who God really is... not who we want Him to be! He’s not waiting on us like a personal servant who waves a wand and solves our problems when we call out to Him. Nor is He the master puppeteer, pulling our strings, maneuvering and manipulating individual people into circumstances and situations that cause suffering and sorrow. Moment to moment throughout our lives we make choices and those choices have consequences... good, bad and unintended.
This world, in its present condition was never intended to be God’s final answer for humanity. The suffering that God allows is small when compared to the eternal joy that awaits faithful Christians. The apostle Paul said it very well.... “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
