Why does God allow bad things to happen?
Few questions press harder than this one: if God is good and all-powerful, why is the world so full of pain? Commentators in this collection answer it from several directions at once — where evil came from, what God is doing with it now, why He has not yet stopped it, and how it ends.
Where the trouble started
Writers here trace the world's misery back not to God's design but to a choice made against Him. One commentator walks through the opening chapters of Genesis — a garden prepared with care, then disobedience, then murder within one family:
J T MawsonHatred, strife, and cruelty are the offspring of disobedience to God, which is sin, and it is because man stays in this disobedience that these terrible things are winning today. They are not God's choice for man. They are the consequences of the choice man has made for himself in defiance of the will of God.
But not every sorrow is a punishment
Sin really does produce suffering — yet turning that into a rule that explains every case is exactly the mistake made by Job's friends, who assumed his losses proved his guilt.
William KellyIt is untrue that evil has nothing to do with man's suffering in this world. If there were no evil, there would have been no suffering... It is true, not only in the future but also in the present, that one reaps what one sows. But is that the only truth, or the whole truth? Is God limited to His government? In no way. That is where Eliphaz and his companions were wrong; and Satan knows well how to bend to his own purposes the one side of truth which we either choose or overlook.
Allowed is not the same as out of control
Some try to defend God by saying He simply cannot prevent what happens. Commentators here reject that, and say something stronger: what He permits, He also puts to work.
Alfred E. BouterGod not only allows difficult circumstances, He is even in full control and uses them to form believers in His school. His ways ultimately and surely lead to the fulfilment of His purpose, that we should be conformed to Christ, the Firstborn among many brothers. Why do we have sufferings? Is it not also to make us realise that we are living in a world which is in direct opposition to God's will?
A Father's hand, not a judge's
For those who belong to Him, the tone of trouble changes completely. Writing to a man under a blow, one commentator urges him to read it as family dealing rather than a verdict:
J. N. DarbyDo not lose heart, then, if a rebuke has come this way. He speaks to you as a Father — and what a Father! — to a child, disciplining the one He loves. Trust His love; trust it for yourself, for your family, for everything. Be sure that nothing escapes Him, and you will find in the end that what He has done was not an unkind act.
Why He does not step in now
A second question sits underneath the first: why does God not simply stop the people who cause the harm? The answer given is that His delay is mercy, and that it protects us too.
J T MawsonIf God were to judge all the bad men in the world, how many would escape? "If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?" God is not indifferent to the unrighteousness of men. He has said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," and we may rest in that. But this is not the day of judgment; it is the day of mercy. It is the day of God's patience, and "we count the patience of our Lord as salvation."
God did not stay outside the pain
The charge that God is distant from human agony is answered, commentators say, by what He did rather than by argument:
James BoydHas the living God no compassion or sympathy? Can He not be moved by the sight of human suffering? The presence here of the One whom the Father sent is a full answer to that. And is not the cross of the Son the great display of that love and pity with which He looked down on a world ruled by sin and Satan?
When no explanation comes
Often no reason is given at the time, and honest believers are left in the dark. One writer holds up two words from John 13 as the shape of that experience:
C. H. MackintoshHow often it happens that "now" is wrapped in deep and impenetrable darkness. Heavy clouds hang over our path. The dealings of our Father's hand are completely unexplainable to us... We are wholly taken up with "now," and our minds are filled with dark, unbelieving reasoning — until those precious words fall on the ear in a still small voice: "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand."
The evil has an end
The final answer is not an explanation but a removal. Commentators point to the cross as the place where the root of all sorrow was dealt with, and to the new creation as the place where its last traces disappear:
J. A. TrenchGod had gone to the source of all that brought in sorrow, and swept it away in the judgment of the cross. The former things had passed away. The God who once had to drive the man and woman out of Eden in tears is able to meet us on the threshold of a new heaven and a new earth as the One who wipes away every tear from our eyes.
Summary
- Cause — The world's hatred and cruelty are traced to man's disobedience, not to God's design; they are the consequence of a choice made against Him.
- Care — Sin brings suffering, but God is not limited to repaying conduct; Job's friends were wrong to read every sorrow as a sentence.
- Control — What God permits He also governs and uses, shaping believers toward the likeness of Christ.
- Compassion — He did not stay outside the pain: the cross is the display of His pity for a world under sin.
- Conclusion — His delay is mercy, not indifference, and the story ends with sorrow's source removed and every tear wiped away.