if god is good, why is there suffering?

We live in a world full of brokenness, full of disaster, chaos, and immeasurable pain. Suffering is simply inescapable. We do everything in our power to prevent the bad from reaching us, but no matter how fast, how far we run, tragedy finds us and devours us. Every other magazine article, every newspaper front, every television broadcast screams the words fear, loss, and grief. Incomprehensible hurt seeps into our lives when we least expect it. So, If God is good, why does he allow me to suffer? If He is loving, why did He take my parents away from me? If He is merciful, why did He not protect those innocent children in that mass shooting? If He is good, why did my best friend get sick? If God is as good as He says He is, if He is as good as you say He is, why does He allowing me, His child, to suffer?

As a Christian, these are questions I get asked more than often. If I am being honest, I have even asked these questions myself. Through my deepest suffering and through my wrestling, I have concluded two things: suffering exists and God is all that He says He is: true, loving, good, sovereign, merciful, and all-powerful. Then I am left with the question of “if God truly loves me, if He promises good for my life, and if He is all-powerful, how can He be all these things yet still allow me to suffer?” I believe there are many answers to why God allows suffering, however, I don't believe any answer will ever be enough to satisfy you or me. For this is one of those things that I don't think we will ever fully be able to comprehend, but we can try.

The most logical explantion to why God allows us to walk through life with pain is simply

F R E E  W I L L.

Let us begin by defining free will: free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. In simpler terms, we have the ability to choose. Going back to the beginning of creation in the book of Genesis, we were created not as robots but as a people of choice...” And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden…” (Genesis 2:16). With choice comes consequence. It goes onto say in the next verse, “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." (Genesis 2:17). Adam and Eve were given options and each tree they could choose to eat from had an outcome attached to it; life or death. With life came a world free of pain, free of evil, free of impurities. This world is the world God created them in and intended us to live in. With death came endless pain and suffering, disasters, immorality, and separation from God, our Maker, for all human beings. 

C.S. Lewis put it best in His book, Mere Christianity (which I HIGHLY recommend) when he said: “God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata- of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating”  Suffering exists because free will exists. There can be no evil, no suffering, without good.

Since we've defined free will, we have to clarify what we mean by suffering. Suffering is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. When addressed with the problem of evil, St. Augustine asked the same question, “if God is all-powerful and good, why does He allow suffering?” He starts off by defining the cause of suffering: evil. For Augustine, evil alone is not a thing, it is a privation of good. The hole in the center of a bagel is nothing, it is not anything, it is just a lack of dough. This might sound like a silly analogy but likewise, where there is evil, there is just a lack of good. If this is true, if evil doesn't exist as a thing in itself, then God is not the cause of evil. God is the cause of all things good but we as sinful human beings make ethical choices that result in evil which therefore causes us to suffer.

If God is not the cause of pain and suffering, but He is indeed good and all-powerful, why then can He not prevent bad from happening? I would argue that just because God is omnipotent, does not mean He has the power to do anything. In C.S. Lewis’ book, “The Problem of Pain,” he explains that there cannot be independent laws of nature in a world where man is free. He argues that human reasoning has a disconnect. We tend to believe things are possible when they are intrinsically impossible. Try making a two sided hexagon, it's impossible. Just because natural disasters exist doesn't mean God is not good or that He is unloving. This takes us back to the issue of free will and the idea that evil is just a parasite on good. Good things can cause harm. Water has the ability to drown and cause diseases, sun can cause cancer, fire can destroy homes, food can cause health problems. But we would be foolish to say that water, sun, fire, and food are evil or that they are simply bad and need to be destroyed entirely. These things are good but because of the fall of man, because of free will, these good things cause people distress.

To end evil, to rid the world of pain, God would have to destroy the cause of it all; this means He would either have to completely get rid of humans or He would have to take away our ability to choose. God’s primary purpose in creating us with free will is that we could decide for ourselves whether to love Him or live life apart from Him. By ridding us of free will, we would be forced to love Him. But obligatory love is not love at all. To have a world in which love exists, we need free will, and free will is what makes any agony or sin present.

God being a loving, good Father doesn't just allow us to go through tragedy without a purpose behind it. Since suffering is inevitable and He cannot simply remove all evil, all types of suffering from Earth, He graciously uses our hurt for our overall benefit. But How is that a loving father would allow his children to endure such pain? Think back to when you were a child. Your mother and father would bring you to your doctor for your annual shots. Your parents knew the pain you would experience in that moment as that needle was forced into your skin. They knew beforehand that you would try to resist; they knew your tears would be streaming uncontrollably down your cheeks as you reached out for your daddy’s arms to hold you. They knew you would not understand why they would sit there and watch you get inflicted with pain and not do anything to stop it. However, what you did not know at the time and what they were well aware of is that the pain was temporary and the medicine that was being injected into your body would benefit you by preventing you from harmful viruses. In their loving you, they allowed you to go through suffering for your own good.

This is the same with God and His children. He sees things we don't. He uses the trials of this world to heal us, to strengthen us, to grow us. The pain we endure keeps us from a more serious physical or emotional hurt. Not studying for an exam and failing the test reminds you to study harder. Burning your finger on the stovetop reminds you to avoid touching hot things. Other's tradgedys show us what to avoid in our own lives so we don't experience the consequences they once did. Pain teaches us. Suffering as a result of our foolishness shows us that there are consequences for our actions. And whether we recognize it or not, unpreventable suffering reveals our desperateness for Jesus- the one who offers strength, comfort, and peace- and our longing for Heaven; a place free of suffering where we become one with our Maker. 

In the midst of our suffering, let us cling to Jesus and the promises He makes to us in Romans 8:18-28:

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

_______________________________

footnotes:

‘The Problem of Pain’, by C.S. Lewis An Outline (April 9, 2013), http://www.samselikoff.com/writing/book-outlines/cs-lewis-problem-of-pain.html

Robert Velarde, How Can God Allow So Much Evil and Suffering? (2009), http://www.focusonthefamily.com/faith/becoming-a-christian/is-christ-the-only-way/how-can-god-allow-so-much-evil-and-suffering

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 47-48

Augustine: On Evil (2002), http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Augustine/augustine_evil.html

Sid Litke, Why is there Suffering? (2004), https://bible.org/article/why-there-suffering

Julie Phillips, "If God is Good, Why is There Suffering?" (November 1, 2016), California Baptist University

free people

Most define freedom as 'the ability to do whatever, whenever, without hinderance.'
Nothing or no one is holding you back. The ones who define freedom this way are usually the ones who won't fully commit to Christ. They look at Scripture as a list of dos and don'ts that prevent them from living freely.

But I want to challenge you- what is it that you so freely partake in that you feel like you can't give up for Christ? Maybe for you it's alcohol. maybe it's sex, or drugs, or pornography. You know what that thing is. Now that you have that thing in your mind, I ask you right now, "can you give up that thing and never go back? never look at it again. never interact with it. never think about it. can you stop?"

If we're being honest here, your answer is probably no. The truth is, you're enslaved to it. if you can't simply let go of it, you are bound by it. that thing is holding you back from living in the fullness God intended you to live. We've fooled ourselves into thinking we're free when we're actually enslaved to our own selfish desires. Your freedom isn't really freedom at all.
When you're enslaved to sin, you're free from righteousness; but what benefit do those things have for you? They just bring temporary satisfaction and then you're left empty again. But when you walk in grace and choose life with Jesus, you're no longer bound by these worldly things but you are slaves to Christ- reaping holiness and goodness- resulting in not only abundant life, but eternal life. {Romans 6 & 7}

The relationship of sin and self is a lot like a dislocated finger. When you look at the finger, what does it look like? A finger. But something's off. It may still look like a finger and it might even still have some function of a finger, but not to it's full intent. A dislocated finger cannot function properly or fully in its deformed state. It's not useless, it's just not working its purpose. It needs adjusting. It's only when the finger is popped back in place to its proper form where it can function as it was created to function.

Sin is a dislocation of creation. We were created with purpose, for a purpose. But when we step out of God's plan for our lives, when we follow our desires instead of being in alignment with His will, we create a dislocation. Each person, each created thing is to be used a certain way. Windex is used for cleaning glass but if you think you can use it to clean your teeth, you'll soon realize it wasn't inteded for that. Like eating soup with a fork or playing baseball with a football. Things are created with a certain design, for a special purpose, in a specific context. When taken out thier context and used improperly, it loses its purpose. That bottle of windex doesn't become toothpaste, it's still cleaning spray, but its not being used how it was designed to be used.

Choosing to walk under the authority of Christ, giving up those things that hold us back from Him, isn't giving up freedom, it's walking in it. In our enslavery to sin, we are no longer living in the fullness and in the freedom God inteded us to live. It's when we die to what once bound us that releases us from death and enters us into new life- a life free to be exactly how our Creator intended us to be: F R E E  PEOPLE.

Footnotes:
Dr. Todd Bates, California Baptist University, Apologetics.