Why does a loving God allow bad things to happen?

Suffering comes to us from different quarters and for various reasons, but that which is testing the greatest number now, and causing the most suffering at this time is the war, and many are asking why it should be? Why, if God is good, should there be any war at all? That is a question that calls for an answer. God is good, ten thousand times ten thousand voices bear witness to His goodness, but the world as such has rejected God, and despised the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that His goodness would lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4) and has chosen to follow Satan, the adversary instead of God. In Eden Adam listened to the voice of Satan and turned his back upon God and by that act of disobedience sin entered into the world and death by sin (Rom. 5:13) and when sin came in, peace spread its wings and flew away. “There is no peace, says the Lord, unto the wicked” (Isa. 48:22). The world has been Satan’s world since that day and “suffering and sweat and tears and blood” are the result, they are part of sin’s foul brood.

Of the supremacy of God in His own universe there can be no question in the mind of any one who has been brought out of his native darkness into the light of the revelation which has come to us in the person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He controls the elements of evil that are found there, yea, even uses them for the effectuation of the purposes of His love, and guides with a skilful and omnipotent hand into the various channels which lead to the one grand, glorious result, the eternal glory of His great, illustrious name and the supreme blessedness of all who submit themselves to His good and gracious decrees. If Satan has fallen, if spirits have rebelled against His authority, if man has been overthrown by the power of evil and lies with all his descendants under death, sin, and the power of the devil; if His laws have been broken, His words despised, His servants murdered, His beloved Son persecuted, rejected, cast out, mocked, nailed to a gibbet, and if His Holy Spirit has been resisted, and if there has been no intervention on His part to stop or hinder such wicked doings, it was simply because these things prepared the way for the fulfilment of the grand designs which He had in view before the world was. We know that God is love. What rest and peace and joy this knowledge brings into the heart that has been casting about in vain for some foundation in this morass of iniquity, upon which to place the foot of faith knowing that it is unshakable.

Thus far we must needs go, then, with the Arminians, and the truth of predestination does not conflict with this in any way. We have here simply to inquire what is, and we can affirm that Omniscient Goodness willed it so to be, from eternity so willed it; did not of course desire or work the evil, but ordained to suffer it, and in this sense that it should be. The mystery of evil being thus suffered we accept, — do not explain, or suppose it possible to be explained. As a fact, we know it is, and know too that God is, and that He is against the evil. Scripture is of course in no wise responsible for it, while it gives us, not an explanation, but such a revelation of God Himself, and in view of it, that we can have perfect faith in Him, and leave it unexplained. The cross has glorified Him in every attribute more wonderfully as to sin than this could raise suspicion; while it demonstrates that not mere power could deal with evil, the victory must be that of goodness, and in suffering.

It should be understood that God can take no counsel with man. It is evident that being God He must do that which He considers right, and must work all things after the counsel of His own will, and it is quite hopeless to fight against His will. At the same time God is love, and His will is that which is the very best of all possible things for His creatures, and blessed is he who bows to that will. If it be asked, How are we to know that God is love seeing that there is so much misery all around? the answer is that this is a time for faith and not for sight. We who have but puny minds, who are acquainted with but one globe, which is but a speck in the universe, and whose knowledge of the past is but as it were of a moment, are, surely incompetent to judge of God, who has the whole universe in the hollow of His hand, and before whom past and future are alike spread. Beside, to all the difficulties, the apparent contradiction, the sorrows we see there is this answer, unsatisfactory doubtless to the one, who would argue with God but perfectly satisfactory to the simple: God gave His Son, He gave His all in so doing, and seeing He has done this He has proved Himself to be love, and therefore we can trust Him to be fully justified in all His dealings in the day when all results are made manifest.

In this we see not only the wisdom of God but His mercy also. Directly sin entered the world a baffling problem presented itself in the slaying of righteous Abel. Why should the godly suffer? If a man's life really pleases God, why should that pleasure not be indicated by special good being his in this life? There is, of course, the alternative problem Why should the ungodly prosper) — and this is dealt with in Psalm 73. But long before the days of the Psalmists God saw fit in His mercy to solve the enigma for us by permitting extreme disaster to come upon Job, and then causing the story to be recorded and preserved in an inspired writing. The solution was given as soon as "the oracles of God" began to appear.

And is it not so with us spiritually? God, although not the author of evil, has allowed it to come into the world, and unutterable miseries have followed in its wake. But His intervention in grace has done infinitely more than remedy the evil, the knowledge of His love has come to us in the very way in which the evil has been met and dealt with, and instead of being innocent creatures rejoicing in His goodness, His love has been declared to us in the death of His Son, and our eternal place is to be “holy and without blame before Him in love.”

God does not cause the suffering to His own, but He allows it to happen, so that His servants can benefit from the experience (e.g. increase their faith), and also for His own glory. Two examples are: Job, whom Satan tested to the uttermost, see Job 1 & 2, and Peter, whom Satan desired to sift as wheat, Luke 22:31.

Yes, God has allowed it, and why? That is a question for each nation concerned to solemnly and seriously answer for itself. A reason there must be. It is impossible to think that He who has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked”—nay, who in love for a guilty world spared not His own Son, can find it in permitting affliction and misery to come upon His creatures without a very sufficient cause. That were incredible.

Am I denying, then, that God does at present by his providence secretly and effectually control all things? God forbid. Even Satan himself is in that sense subject to him, accomplishing his purposes, and doing his will. But I speak of the open, public, manifest government of the world. Is that conducted on the principle of righteous retribution and reward, or is it not? There can be but one answer. No doubt, man's evil and Satan's malice are kept in check by the secret restraints of God's providence, as well as by the institution of human government and laws which he has appointed, and until now upheld. If it were not so, men would destroy each other till the earth would be depopulated. But still, where is the person who can imagine that there is at present, or has ever been since the fall, a distribution of temporal good and evil, according to men's character and conduct, so as to be an adequate witness to God's character of holiness, benevolence, and rectitude, as the righteous judge and Governor of the world? Why the fact is, that goodness has been allowed to be so oppressed and trodden under foot, and evil has been allowed to be so rampant and triumphant, that when the blessed One himself, the perfect, the sinless One was here, HE was put to death! We know why this was permitted. But I want you to consider the fact — it was permitted. Yes, God looked down from heaven and witnessed the murder, by man's wicked hands, of his only-begotten, well-beloved Son!

The woes of the human race are beyond the possibility of exaggeration, and seem to rise up at every turn as a witness against the notion of infinite goodness; for if God be all powerful, how is it that for so many millenniums His creature has been left in this corner of His creation to welter unpitied in his wretchedness? Can the Creator be indifferent to the woes of His creature? Who can tell us? Is there no voice from Him?