Why Does God Allow People To Suffer

I am often asked the question, why does God allow people to suffer? This is one of the most difficult questions for Christians to answer. The "problem of pain," as the well-known Christian scholar, C.S. Lewis, once called it; is the non believer’s most potent weapon against the Christian faith.

All true science and history, if rightly understood, support the existence of God. This evidence is so strong that, as the Bible says:

"The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God" (Psalm 14:1).

That is, they say, how can a God of love permit such things in His world such as war, sickness, pain, and death, especially when their effects are often felt most keenly by those who are apparently innocent? Either He is not a God of love and is indifferent to human suffering, or else He is not a God of power and is therefore helpless to do anything about it. In either case, the Biblical God who is supposedly one of both absolute power and perfect love becomes an impossible anachronism. Or so they claim!

While there is much evil in the world, there is even more that is good. This is proved by the mere fact that people normally try to hang on to life as long as they can. Furthermore, everyone instinctively recognizes that "good" is a higher order of truth than "bad". We need also to recognize that our very minds were created by God. We can only use these minds to the extent that He allows, and it is, therefore, utterly presumptuous for us to use them to question Him and His motives.

"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25).

"Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, why hast Thou made me thus?" (Romans 9:20).

We ourselves do not establish the standards of what is right. Only the Creator of all reality can do that. We need to settle it, in our minds and hearts, whether we understand it or not, that whatever God does is, by definition, right.

Having settled this by faith, we are then free to seek for ways in which we can profit spiritually from the sufferings in life as well as the blessings. As we consider such matters, it is helpful to keep that knowledge continually in our minds.