How Can God Allow Suffering?

The existence of evil and suffering in the world is perhaps the most common objection to belief in God. If God is both good and all-powerful, then surely evil and suffering would not exist. The world is characterised by violence, pain and suffering, so God – if he exists – either lacks goodness or has limited power.

The problem of pain

You might ask: ‘If God is meant to be good and all-powerful, how can he allow my parents’ marriage to fall apart, or simply stand by while my father dies painfully on a hospital bed?’ That is just small-scale stuff; what about those nightmare images of starving children and earthquake victims?

Surely, an all-knowing God would have known that evil would come into his world and an all-powerful God would be able to stop it and a good God would want to prevent evil in the first place. Evil clearly exists, which surely confirms the atheistic objection and makes it a serious challenge to belief in God.

Atheism or theism?

‘I cannot imagine any omnipotent sentient being sufficiently cruel to create the world we inhabit’ wrote Iris Murdoch (A Severed Head); ‘The only excuse for God is that he doesn’t exist’ (Stendhal, the French sceptic). We must start with the most basic of choices of belief or unbelief: atheism or theism.

God either exists or he doesn’t. If God doesn’t exist, then we should expect the atheistic explanations about our suffering to be more satisfying, in the sense that they would tune in intuitively with our experience of living in a godless universe, than the religious ones. If atheism is to be reliable and useful in thinking about suffering, we have a right to demand that it offers more substantial and convincing answers than anything Christianity can offer. So let’s ask our heartfelt questions within an atheistic framework.

A blind pitiless universe

Why did the 2010 Haiti earthquake happen, killing so many children and innocent people? Why did an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011? Why is life characterised by so much heartache? Atheism replies: ‘You can’t ask a cold, random and impersonal universe the question ‘why?’ Every part of our existence is merely the fallout of a random, chance explosion at the birth of our universe. It is a nonsense question. So just pull yourself together and get on with surviving.’

Richard Dawkins answers in this way: ‘The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference’.[1] The universe is cold, blind, silent and pitilessly indifferent to your suffering. This atheistic view is echoed by Francis Crick, the DNA-discovering Nobel prize-winning scientist: ‘You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules’.[2] Christopher Hitchens, the prominent atheist who tragically died of throat cancer, said: ‘To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?’[3]

Are you satisfied with answers that deny your basic and primal intuition that suffering is not how things should be? The joy of having a child and the sorrow of losing one are surely more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules? Surely it is our basic intuitions about the world and how it should be that cause us to ask these agonising ‘Why’ questions? Such intuitions prompt us to cry out in the middle of our suffering for answers, fresh perspective and renewed strength to keep going. Where does such intuition come from? Is it merely a cosmic prank, an evolutionary sick joke? Atheism dismisses such intuition and does not permit you to ask any agonising ‘Why?’ questions, for no one is there to be angry with or to ask these questions of. Atheism remains calm and serene in the face of suffering and removes itself from any critique or outrage.

What does atheism offer in the face of suffering?

In the immediate aftermath of tsunamis, earthquakes and terrorist attacks, the otherwise ubiquitous media atheists seem to become somewhat invisible. At such times atheism’s voice sounds shrill and hollow, because atheism lacks the categories to speak into suffering with words of understanding, comfort and hope.

Are you not concerned that atheism dismisses your intuitions about who you are and the way the world should be? Atheism regards your self-aware questions ‘Why suffering and why me?’ as an inexplicable evolutionary malfunction, a genetic discrepancy.

The suffering question assumes the existence of God

Perhaps the main reason we find suffering to be such a moral problem is because deep down we think of this world as belonging to a good all-powerful God, so that when something terrible or unfair happens we are easily outraged that God should allow things to happen in this way.

So, far from disproving the existence of God, the suffering problem assumes his existence. If we remove God from the equation, you still have to endure suffering, but not the agonising problem of ‘Why?’ Suffering just is! The human story without God is no more than a survival of the fittest. So, far from disproving God, our ‘Why suffering?’ questions assume God’s existence.

Thoughtful writers such as Sheldon Vanauken and C S Lewis (both of whom watched their wives die slow painful deaths) have suggested that suffering brings our intuitive belief in God to the surface, like a wake-up call. ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts at us in our suffering; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world’.[4]

What is God like?

So we need to move on from asking ‘How could a good, all-powerful God let suffering happen?’ and ‘Does God exist?’ to ‘What is God like?’. God’s existence is assumed in the ‘Why suffering?’ question: it’s his character that is being disputed. That’s the real problem posed by suffering. What is God like? Does he care? Isn’t he meant to be all-powerful and good? If so, then how is it possible to have so much suffering in the world?

‘Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?’ (Epicurus).

Either God has lost the plot or maybe God is spiteful: he is perfectly content to allow suffering even though it is within his power to end it. That’s the simplest way for Christians to answer the problem – to either limit God in his power or to make him appear disinterested in us and our world and remain serene and morally neutral.

Dualism

Let’s consider the first option, which theologians call ‘dualism’ – we might call it good versus evil or God versus Satan. Instead of God being all-powerful, he is working against a very powerful and malignant force. God remains good and is fully occupied fighting the dark side, which at times seems at least as powerful. In this view we are effectively letting God off the hook by blaming bad stuff on the devil, who causes people to hijack planes and causes sickness and earthquakes, tsunamis and train derailments. Meanwhile a good, but limited, God is rushing around trying to put out the fires and make everything right.

Good things from God and bad things from the devil?

On the surface, it does seem to make sense, but according to the Bible it’s not that simple: ‘I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things’ (Isaiah 45:7, NIV). The God of the Bible is sovereign in his running of the universe and nothing happens outside his control. Satan is an agent of evil, but is only finite and not a near equal. He is only able to operate within the world (until his ultimate judgement) because God permits him to.

If there was a duality in the universe, then God’s purposes might ultimately be thwarted. It wouldn’t matter how noble God’s character and aspirations were if he was incapable of bringing things under control. Instead Christians have confidence that one day God will end the evil, injustice and violence of this world, and that righteousness will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

With dualism we could have no such confidence since not all things are in the hands of God. Christians cannot adopt the view that God is not all-powerful – convenient though this view might appear to be!

Monism

The other possible move is to blur the categories of good and evil and conclude that because God brings about light and darkness, maybe God has a dark side to him. In this view, the problem with suffering is simply one of perspective. If we were truly enlightened we would perceive everything to be one, rather than divided into the dualities of good and evil, suffering and pleasure, kindness and cruelty. What we call good and evil, light and darkness are not to be opposed to one another but blended into an undifferentiated oneness. This would solve our problem with evil and suffering by changing our view of both God and suffering. The Bible’s revelation of God’s character will not allow this (largely Buddhist) view to prevail.

If we have to reject dualism to be sure there is a heaven to inherit, then we must also reject monism to be sure there is a heaven worth inheriting. One reason God hates suffering in his world is that it is so closely linked to human rebellion and wickedness. It is because God hates evil and suffering that we can be assured heaven is a place where such things will be no more.

‘God is light; in him there is no darkness at all’ (1 John 1:5, NIV). God is good, loving, righteous and just. There is no alter ego or dark side to him. God did not create evil; he simply made human beings with the capacity to reject him and so contract an evil nature themselves. It’s because God goes on record as not approving of suffering and evil and of being committed to eradicating them that we can have confidence in his character that he is not a mixture of good and evil. God does not remain unmoved in the face of suffering. Jesus spent a large proportion of his time healing the sick, because it was God’s will to alleviate the consequences of a fallen and rebellious world. The desire to reflect God’s character has led the Christian church to be at the forefront of alleviating poverty and healing the sick around the world.

Squaring the circle

Having rejected two false moves which strip God of his attributes of either power or goodness, Christianity is left open to two profound objections: if God hates evil and suffering so much why does he put up with it? And why do innocents suffer?

In some way God sees it necessary to the moral order of his universe to permit a certain amount of suffering in his world as a penalty for human rebellion and wickedness. The human race would be blissfully unaware that it has provoked God’s righteous anger if there were never any consequences for our behaviour. If the toast always landed butter side up in life, and there were no painful consequences for our actions, we would be living in a fool’s paradise.

An Indecent Proposal

The shocking suggestion of God imposing a penalty on the world leaves itself open to the misunderstanding that all suffering is a direct consequence of God’s judgement. Not so, according to the Bible; rather, there are two basic types of suffering:

As a young boy, I managed to set my parents’ garage on fire by lighting fireworks inside it and then walking away. I experienced both intrinsic and imposed suffering as a result of my firework stunt. Intrinsic to my actions was the conflagration of all my toys stored in the garage. Second was the subsequent and additional punishment imposed by my parents!

Intrinsic suffering

Suffering that is intrinsic to our actions accounts for the vast proportion of suffering in our world. Operating an economic system that does not pay a fair wage to developing world farmers and allows 300,000 people to die needlessly every week from starvation is down to human greed and complacency. Governments and corporations who do not use adequate materials when building schools and houses in an earthquake zone (as in the Haiti earthquake) is also about greed.

Most writers on the subject seem to agree that most suffering in this world is caused directly by humanity: war, oppression of individuals and groups by other individuals or groups; starvation arising from war and corruption; illness caused by pollution of the environment. Though these things are terrible, they are consistent with the Christian analysis of the human fallen condition. They are obviously self-inflicted wounds.

Imposed suffering

Though the largest proportion of human suffering is obviously attributable to our chosen and reckless behaviour towards our planet and fellow creatures, nevertheless an irreducible amount of misery remains that cannot be so easily laid at our door. Natural disasters such as earthquakes and resulting tsunamis are often cited as arguments against the existence of a loving God, along with other misfortunes such as sickness and genetic abnormalities which appear to strike indiscriminately without any obvious human cause.

The Bible’s explanation is that this world and our stewardship of it has fallen from an original perfection. Our rebellion against God had grave consequences for the world. The first consequence was that humans became diminished in their desire for, and capacity to, look after the natural environment and for one another. In a pre-fallen state, humans would have been much more in tune with the environment and would have been able to detect an approaching tsunami (as can certain mammals). They would have had a similar knowledge of volcanic eruptions and would have avoided building vulnerable houses on a fault line.

Furthermore, God wanted to register his disapproval and provide a reminder of the consequences of human rebellion. He did this by altering the conditions in which humans lived. Rather than living in a perfect garden, humans were cast into a fallen and wild earth, still mind-numbingly beautiful, but much more hostile and harder to look after than before. We became vulnerable to the diseases and decay that emerged from a poorly stewarded world. It seems God felt it necessary to impose a level of punishment and disapproval on humanity so that we would recognise the nature of the world we are living in and live accordingly. Sadly, we have not responded well and rather than work together to live wisely in a fallen world (eg drain all malarial swamps and make universal vaccinations cheaply available for all), we have continued to rebel against God and his ways and values.

Why doesn’t God stop all the suffering?

So far, we have considered two choices (theism or atheism) and rejected two false views of God (dualism and monism). We have also reflected on the two basic types of suffering, intrinsic and imposed.

We are still left with two main objections. Why doesn’t God stop all the suffering? And why do innocents suffer? The big objection to suffering is that it violates our view of what we think life should be like. So, how should we expect God to stop suffering without similarly violating our humanity? If a drunk driver was about to kill a child, how should a loving, powerful God intervene without robbing us of our essential humanity? Should God lift the child out of the way of the car or lift the car over the child? In such a world we would not be properly human if we were unable to choose and take responsibility for our actions. We would be more like puppets whose strings are pulled to protect us from any possible harm. Even the most obsessive parents know that unless their children are eventually allowed to take responsibility for their actions they will not become mature adults.

Another way of reducing suffering would be for God to remove all the evil people from the world. You might understandably have murderers at the top of your list for removal, but where does God finish if he is to prevent human greed and pride resulting in further misery? Should he remove you and me before we cause suffering in our families, friendships or marriage? That’s the tricky bit: where does God stop and who sets the standard? Should there be any mitigating circumstances for those from poor and dysfunctional backgrounds in which crime is more endemic? Surely the only fair mechanism is a final judgement in which God impartially judges all people for the suffering and evil they have personally caused in God’s world.

Why innocents?

With regard to why some people suffer rather than others, the Bible refuses to blame individuals. The long-suffering Job was accused by his religious friends of having incurred God’s anger. Similarly, in John’s Gospel, a man born blind was thought to be suffering for either his or his parents sinful actions. On both occasions the answer comes loud and clear. What do we really know? This is not a judgement on people but is linked to a much more complex and profound mystery that lies at the heart of reality (see Job chapters 38 to 42 and John chapter 9).

Why can’t God organise it so that calamity always comes to people in precise proportion to their sins? One answer the Bible gives is that it is not possible for suffering to work that way because we are human. We are social creatures who posses a unique kind of solidarity: one person’s actions potentially affects millions. Whether that is a rogue trader, or a terrorist who poisons the air conditioning in a major subway, the human race suffers together in a painful but unavoidable solidarity.

In one man we are all guilty

In the Bible, the apostle Paul says the ‘whole human race is guilty in Adam’ (Romans 3:9-19; 5:12,19). The choices Adam made to rebel against God represented the choices we would have made, so there is a collective dimension to sin itself. Because we share a common sinfulness, we shouldn’t be surprised that we share a common suffering. This is why ‘innocents’ suffer: the actions and neglect of all people of all places and all time are linked and cascade down through relationships, social structures and the physical fabric of this world.

We can’t avoid being collectively involved in one another’s sins and the suffering they cause; suffering that is either intrinsic to those sinful actions or which comes in the form of imposed punishment for those sinful actions.

Two choices

This brings us full circle: we are faced with two alternative interpretations of things:

1. Reality is chaotic and meaningless. Events we call good are just chance happenings thrown up by the laws of statistics, and events we call bad must have an equal moral value of ‘neutral’. This is the atheistic world view. Or:
2. As we enjoy the good and beautiful aspects of life, we can think that is the way things should really be, and that evil and suffering are a result of some distortion that has crept into a fundamentally good world. This is the Bible’s view.

The best fit

Although there remain unanswered questions, at a fundamental level the Bible’s view of evil and suffering makes more sense of who we are and how the world is than any alternative. The Bible points us away from the glib simplistic answers offered by atheism, dualism or monism. It even points us away from the ambiguities of our world to an even more startling paradox

An innocent man hanging on a cross

The greatest confirmation of God’s love for suffering humanity is the anguished figure of one suffering man. God entered the genetic solidarity of the human race from birth to death in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus uniquely stood as both our representative and God’s. The only truly innocent person who ever lived willingly laid down his life and took upon himself the curse and brokenness that human rebellion brought into the world. Just as death came through one man, the ultimate end to death and suffering came from the death and resurrection of this one man.

As a man, Jesus stands in solidarity with us, fully representing the human race, but as God, he alone has represented God and satisfied God’s just demands for human wickedness to be punished. Jesus has paved the way for a new world order to be formed at the end of time, one in which there will be no more suffering, tears or death because the root cause of all suffering and evil has been dealt with in his death and resurrection. Jesus achieved all this, not by remaining serene and detached from our pain, but through his own suffering, tears and death.

The death of Christ mirrors all those questions we have asked of suffering:

Was Jesus’ death due to God’s lack of power or moral goodness?

Why did the innocent Jesus suffer while evildoers got away with it?

Why did Jesus experience further suffering imposed by God?

Can we seriously believe it was God’s will that people should crucify his Son?

The answer is both yes and no. It was not God’s will in that he did not approve of the jealousy, pride and murderous conspiracy that took Jesus to the cross.

But it was God’s will in that he permitted Jesus’ death as part of his bigger plan to put an end to evil and suffering by taking the human penalty on himself.

Why didn’t God put a stop to Jesus’ suffering? It was because of God’s love for you and for me. God allowed Jesus to lay down his life so that we could have our friendship with God restored and experience peace, strength and comfort in our present suffering, with the certain knowledge that evil and suffering will one day be wiped from God’s creation.

God knows about suffering. He watched his own Son being tortured and murdered and he could have stopped it, but he didn’t because it was the only means by which we could be forgiven and evil and suffering could be dealt with justly.

So what?

During Christmas week in 2007 my eleven-year-old nephew was told by a hospital consultant that he was going to die. A scan had just revealed the sudden and aggressive spread of multiple brain and spine tumours.

David, my sister’s son, looked into the doctor’s eyes and said: ‘I’m not afraid of dying, doctor – I have a friend called Jesus who will take me to be with him for ever.’

The doctor smiled warmly and said, ‘David, I’m so glad you know Jesus for he is my friend and Saviour also.’

David continued to trust God until he died just ten weeks later, in the certain knowledge that Jesus had defeated death and provided the means by which he would one day be given a new body and would live in a new world without suffering, sickness, tears and death.

Whether you were brought up in a Christian home like David or whether you were brought up as a Buddhist, like his hospital consultant, you too can be given the same comfort and confidence in the face of suffering and death.

Your response

If you are suffering right now, God might feel a million miles away; he is in fact only a prayer away. Ask him to help you in your suffering and by his Holy Spirit to reveal himself to you so you can enter into a relationship of knowing him through Jesus Christ.

Prayer

Lord God, I come into your presence. I admit I have broken your law, that there is a deep rebellion in me, that by myself I cannot love you as I should. I realize my personal need of Jesus Christ.

I turn away from all that is wrong in my life. I am truly sorry that I have not lived life your way but mine.

I thank you Lord that in your great love you have made the way open for me to come back to you. I realize that it is only the cross of Christ that can bring me back to yourself. I want to respond to your goodness.

I thank you that Jesus Christ willingly laid down his life on the cross for me. Give me faith to believe that Christ died on the cross for me, taking on himself the punishment due to me to satisfy your just demands, to forgive my sin, and to make me clean from all my guilt.

I thank you that Jesus Christ was not exempt from suffering. May I know your peace, strength and comfort in my life right now.

I trust my whole life to you. I humbly yet confidently look to Christ right now. Come to me as my Saviour to rescue me from death and hell. Come to me as my Lord to direct my life towards God and heaven. Come to me as my closest friend to help me in my suffering. Come by your Holy Spirit and make me a new person and give me the power to follow you for the rest of my life.

I want to give my whole being – my heart, mind and will – to you, Lord Jesus, right now. Jesus Christ, I take you to be my God. I want to follow you always.

Amen.

If you have prayed this prayer, contact your university Christian Union who will be able to help you find a local church: https://www.uccf.org.uk/christian-unions