Why does God allow suffering and evil?
Few questions press harder than this one: if God is good and all-powerful, why is the world full of pain? Commentators writing on this do not offer a tidy formula — they trace evil to its source, show what God is doing with it, and admit where our knowledge runs out.
Where evil came from
Writers begin not with God's failure but with man's freedom. God could have made a creature unable to go wrong, but that creature would not have been a person at all.
F. G. PattersonThe answer is plain. Because, if He would create a glorious creature — man, made in His own image and likeness, free to choose either good or evil, and not a creature governed by a mere chain of instinct, like the birds and beasts around him — He must leave the entrance of evil to him a possibility, though not a necessity.
Suffering as the fruit of a world that turned away
That freedom was used. One writer, asked why a good God permits war, points back to a decision made at the beginning of the human story and to everything that followed from it.
J. T. MawsonGod 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 patience, not knowing that His goodness would lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4); it has chosen to follow Satan, the adversary, instead of God. In Eden Adam listened to the voice of Satan and turned his back on God, and by that act of disobedience sin entered into the world and death by sin (Rom. 5:12), and when sin came in, peace spread its wings and flew away… 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.
God is not a helpless bystander
A popular way to protect God's goodness is to limit His power — to say He would stop the pain if He could. One writer names that idea and rejects it.
Alfred E. BouterIn 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 happens to His people (which, of course, is a wrong thesis)… 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; James 1:3).
Not every sufferer is being punished
Job's friends assumed his pain proved his guilt. One commentator holds both halves of the truth together: sin really does bring consequences, and yet that rule does not explain every case.
William KellyTake man here below; take anyone indulging in any evil: does he not suffer? Of course he does. So it is a positive principle of God's righteous government that evil can never be indulged in without bringing on the solemn dealing of His hand, though room is left for the distinct working and even suffering of grace… But is that the sole 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 that particular side of truth which we either choose or overlook.
The cross as God's answer
The deepest response commentators give is not an argument but an event. Evil reached its worst at Calvary, and there God dealt with it.
James McBroomThe cross explains the riddle of the universe — the riddle of suffering… It explains the permission of sin… It shows us too how all things serve God's great end, for sin, Satan, death, demons, and hell must serve Him. There is nothing — there could be nothing — like the cross. It is the complete solution of every moral question; the means by which all wrongs shall be righted.
God came into the pain Himself
The cross also means God did not stay at a distance from human grief. One writer draws an unexpected conclusion from that.
J. N. DarbyThere is no comfort like the thought that Jesus has entered into all our sorrows… Suppose Adam had never fallen, we could not speak of God with the comfort that we now can, since He has come in sympathy to us through the incarnation of our blessed Lord… The Lord has entered into all the depths of sorrow, so as to give us all the depth of comfort, in order that we may know that God knows the very secret of our case.
Evil has an end date
The permission of evil is temporary. Commenting on the promise that God will wipe away every tear, one writer notices who does the wiping and how final it is.
J. N. DarbyThere is more in this than that tears are wiped away: God shall do it. There is the compassion that has caused the removal of the sorrow, and this is more than that the sorrow is gone… Not only has He taken away the evil, but it is never to be any more. That is, there is now full and perfect security and blessedness.
What we are not told
Even after all this, one writer refuses to claim more than he has.
A. J. PollockAnd while we give this answer — the only answer that can be given — we are still left with incomplete knowledge on the subject. And this incomplete knowledge will continue as long as we remain on this earth.
Summary
- Cause — Evil entered because man was made free to choose, not because God authored it; a creature unable to choose would be an animal, not a person.
- Control — God is not too weak to stop suffering. He allows it, stays above it, and uses it to shape His people.
- Caution — Job's friends were wrong: sin does bring consequences, but not every sufferer is being punished.
- Cross — God's answer to evil is not an explanation but Calvary, where evil peaked and was defeated, and where God entered our sorrow Himself.
- Consummation — He will wipe away every tear personally, and evil will never return. Until then, our knowledge stays incomplete — and that is honest, not evasive.