Why does a loving God allow suffering?

In 1983 a famous Rabbi in the US, Harold Kushner, published a book about the problem of suffering. In it he suggested that we should not blame God for sufferings (which is right); then he goes on to say that God is good, but that He cannot help it when evil befalls His people (which, of course, is a wrong thesis). Perhaps we may remind ourselves at this point of Romans 8:28, where we see the very opposite of Kushner's claim. God not only allows adverse circumstances, He is even in full control and uses them to form believers in His school' (Rom. 5:3-5; Jam. 1:3). His ways ultimately, and surely lead to the fulfilment of His purpose, that we should be conformed to Christ, the Firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). Why do we have sufferings? Is it not also, to make us realize that we are living in a world which is in direct opposition to God's will? (cf. 1 Peter 2:15).

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.

p249 DEAR BROTHER, - I write a line, not having been able to see you in my very hasty visit, to sympathise with you in your present trial, quite feeling how real a one it is to you. I enter not only into the way this would exercise and naturally prey upon the mind in all its thoughts - "the multitude of thoughts within me," as the Spirit of God deigns to speak. It is a serious trial to the father of a family, occupied as you are, to be deprived of sight. When the outward trial of being thus rendered comparatively helpless, brings all the heart into exercise, the subjection to God's will, the humbling ourselves under His mighty hand and contentment with whatever lot He may assign us and besides the question of an humbled will, there often arise doubts practically of His love, an impugning of His wisdom and almost a preference to be out of His hands, what Elihu calls a choosing iniquity rather than affliction. I do not say that this has been produced in you at all. I speak of the trial and temptation when such a case arises, and I speak of it, dear brother, that you may be helped by the remembrance of our Father's love, and turn at once to Him, and the assurance of His love. Remember that God, even our God, has better thoughts for us than rest or a portion here. He is educating us for a blessed and eternal rest, free from evil and all that would cause it, and He is bent on the blessing of His children; and moreover He is bound by His holiness to purge us suitably (though most graciously) for the place He has called us to. How often He lets Satan do this painful work, and try and sift us as Job! But His hand and will are behind it all. He gives His saints up to Satan's hand to a certain point, but only so far as to bring the heart fully to a bearing before Himself, and enter into deep questions with it, breaking down its pride. But not only was the tempter absolutely limited in what he was to do to Job, but it was the Lord who first proposed his case to Satan. He had His own end in it, as we see: Job gets into blessing with a knowledge of himself and of God, incomparably beyond what he had before. In all these cases, therefore, though Satan may sift and try us by a thousand trials without and thoughts within, our business is to think on His hand and love who originates it all as to the ultimate purpose. By its being the enemy the soul is sifted in it, tempted to murmur. God could not do that: and what flesh is, is fully brought out to us, and there is a giving up of self, which enables us infinitely better to appreciate God.

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.

The judgment in Genesis 3 was upon Satan, though it was there for Adam to lay hold of. There was no promise to the fallen Adam, no promise to man in sin any more than innocent. Evil came in by the devil; with man, by temptation. God was over it: this is the reason why He suffered evil and the fall - in view of a greater good to come in. My answer to him who asks it is, "why, you foolish man, if you had not been a sinner, you would not have had Christ at all." And this is a true answer too, because it was in God's counsels to introduce and reveal Christ in glory ultimately.

God did not make man in the condition in which he is now; He did not throw the world into its moral confusion, not to speak of its physical misery. He that can conceive a divine being to have made man as he is, and the world as it is, must have the notion of a demon, an Ahriman, instead of the true God. That infinite power should create man to be the victim of such sorrow, to have his heart distracted with varied, intense, and ceaseless misery — to have, according to the word of God itself, evil inbred in his very nature (a doctrine enforced by the facts of every day), he that could conceive God to have so made man in such a world has the least worthy notion of God that even Rationalism could conceive. The word of God alone supplies the key, and explains this otherwise inscrutable riddle. According to that word He made man upright; the world and every creature in it He formed good; but man departed from God, and lost Him morally. No wonder, if foundations are out of course — God left and man fallen through self-exalting rebellion, that there should be misery; for the only possible spring of happiness is in the communion of God with His creatures. Sin necessarily destroys it; and man having lost Him becomes a prey to all the evil that the enemy of God can bring into the world, more deeply and if possible irreparably, to sever man from God. This is the account of the Scriptures, and there is none other that can compete with it or explain all, so as either to justify God or to clear up the state of man. To make God Himself the author of man's moral evil is heinous wickedness, and man's conscience knows it, even when he might wish it to excuse himself. Here then at the outset the immense and singular value of God's word comes in; and upon this too a remark of general import may be seasonable.

Do you ask, reader, Why then are we in such a world still? I will tell you. Scripture tells us, God in grace is still leading souls to profit by and enjoy this. It is a world of misery, and sorrow, and oppression. Did God interfere to change it, He must come in judgment and close the time of mercy; and that He does not do, while yet any have ears to hear. He allows, therefore, the evil which He will judge, to go on meanwhile. And we, though we may thus have to suffer awhile in the world, ought in this sense to rejoice that it is yet allowed; because it is still a time of mercy extended to others. The end will be everlasting joy in a much better world. Christ is gone to prepare a place for us, and He will come again and take us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. Thus Peter says, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

Down the ages, God has often allowed His own to be evilly entreated, and it is not always possible for us to understand why He should allow wicked men to persecute and slay His saints and His servants. We do know that God allows these things for the purifying of His people, and that all His actions towards His own are in the perfection of His love and wisdom; and even if wicked men seem to prosper, and the righteous are put to grief, yet the day is surely coming when, at the judgment seat of Christ, we shall understand as we cannot now, the ways of God, which are past finding out.

People like to walk by sight, and that was the great fallacy that lay under all the speeches of these three friends. They looked at Job; they looked at what he was; and they look at what he now is in all this terrible crushing to the dust, and they said in effect, 'Well, God is a righteous God, and if there were not some dreadful thing behind all this, God would never have allowed it.' They were completely wrong, and Job was thoroughly right in saying, 'No, I know it is not so, and all your talk cannot get rid of the fact that you have most wicked men that are most flourishing, and you have pious men that are exceedingly suffering, in the world as it is now.' How is that? Because Satan is actively working here; because Satan is the one that men follow without knowing. They are slaves and captives of the devil; and those that are not slaves of the devil are the objects of his vengeance and hatred. God does not remove that; He does not put down Satan yet; he is allowed his way. And there never was a greater proof of it than his leading the world and the Jewish people to crucify their own Messiah, the Lord of glory. Was there any fault here? Here you have the crucial proof. Here was the absolutely sinless One and never such a sufferer.

We understand it. The greatest calamity might come, and God send it, and a number of people perfectly innocent might perish just as much as the wicked people — say the sack of a city, or a pestilence sent by God in His moral government. Well, I say, these things are there undoubtedly, and Job stuck to that. All their talk did not at all drive him from the plain fact which they shirked and shut their eyes to. "The earth," he says, "is given into the hand of the wicked." And is not that true? Is not Satan the god, and the prince, of this world? That is wicked enough. And further, "He covers the faces of the judges thereof," i.e., he allows the judges to pronounce altogether wrongly and unjustly. That is, somehow or other their faces are veiled from the light, and they judge according to appearance. It is very certain that that is not a way to judge soundly. "If not, where, and who is he?" Who is he that does that? These things happen; innocent people suffer; guilty people escape; all these things are coming every day — are coming in England. It is not merely in Turkey, or Russia, or Tartary, or China; no, it is in England, in London; and nobody can hinder it. Things are out of course, and will be till the Lord takes the reins.