God and Suffering
FAQs and Faith
Frequently asked questions.
This page will try to deal with tough questions which you or your friends may have. We promise to be as honest and open as we can, but we also want to honour God. To this end our answers will always attempt to be true to the Bible’s teaching.
Why does God allow suffering? There is no doubt that the Bible teaches us that God is both loving and all powerful. This can be a great comfort to Christians when they are going through a trying time, but it can also present us with a real difficulty. If God is both all powerful and all loving why do children die? Why are wars allowed? Why do people go hungry? Why, why, why...? Surely if God is all powerful He can stop these things, and if He’s all loving he would want to!
The Bible does not give us all we would like to know about this problem. We do not know why God allowed evil into his world, but there are certain things which help the genuine inquirer. We are told that God created a perfect world, a world that had no suffering at all:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:1,31)
In this perfect word God placed a single couple, Adam and Eve, and they had freedom to either obey or disobey God, to conform to his standards or rebel. They chose to disobey, and as a result evil and suffering entered into creation, and have been with us ever since. All the suffering we see stems from that original act of rebellion. The world is now not what it ought to be, it is still rebelling against God. People still reject God’s laws and prefer to ‘do their own thing.’
But why does God not do something about it?
Firstly, if God were to intervene where would each one of us stand? If God decided that at midnight tonight every rebel and all evil would be stamped out, would anyone be left to tell the story? God is both loving and powerful, but He is also a just God. In God’s universe whenever someone is hurt, or slandered or killed, it matters. If someone is robbed or takes more than their fair share it matters. If someone is neglected or shunned it matters. Evil cannot be simply overlooked, and who would want it to be?
Secondly, God has done something about it. Jesus, the Son of God, came into our world and suffered and died so that we can be forgiven. His suffering and death is God’s way of bringing the world back to what it ought to be. Those who accept and receive Jesus into their lives will participate in a new creation, a world where there will be no more suffering.
One Christian’s attitude to suffering sums up what Christians believe. Francis Schaeffer, who had served God all his life, was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. When asked how he reconciled the goodness of God with his current situation, he replied “Why shouldn’t I get cancer. I live in a fallen world and am subject to all the plagues that come with that world just as the non-Christian. The difference is that I know my eternal future because I belong to Jesus Christ.”
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39).
Further Reading:
John Dickson, "If I were God I'd end all the pain." Available from The Good Book Company.
D.A. Carson, "How long O Lord." Available from Amazon.