In all of theology, few issues are more pressing than why an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing God would allow suffering and death to exist.
Few experiences are more universal than pain, grief, sickness, and death. The emotional burden of these events is intense and can lead us to doubt God’s goodness, love, and even His existence altogether.
But when one looks deeper into the nature of evil, we see that it’s far from meaningless. Suffering is the primary method God uses to bring about our redemption.
To understand why God allows evil, we must first examine how it came into the world. We learn in the book of Genesis that God first placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a place of perfect beatitude. There in Paradise, they experienced no suffering whatsoever. However, they lost this privileged status when they broke their friendship with God by disobeying his only command — to not eat the forbidden fruit.
This event, known as the Fall of Man, had tragic consequences. As a result of Adam and Eve’s choice, they were expelled from the garden and separated from God. Their intellects and wills were weakened. Furthermore, they and all of their descendants have had to cope with natural disasters, scarce resources, and a whole host of other natural evils. Worst of all, they were punished with death, something that was never part of their original status in the garden.
Evil, then, is not something God intended for us to have. Evil is the consequence of our choices. One might object here, saying that we did not choose this state of affairs, since we had no control over what Adam and Eve did. But God knows us perfectly and chose as the founders of humanity two individuals who would represent us perfectly. Paul notes that their behavior is consistent with the inclination of all men in Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”
The fact that humanity experiences evil as the result of our own collective, representative choice is of some help in explaining why God would allow it. But still, it’s hardly a sufficient explanation on its own. When one sees an innocent child dying of cancer, merely saying that this tragedy is the consequence of God’s just punishment for sin is not exactly the most comforting thought! Instinctively, we know that there must be more to the story here.
At varying times in my life, I’ve tried to systematically study the art of writing fiction. Storytelling has a variety of elements that need to be combined to assemble a compelling narrative, but above all, one element stands out as absolutely essential: struggle.
Every good story includes struggle and adversity for the protagonist. Nobody wants to read about someone who never goes through anything difficult. This is in large part because all good stories are about the transformation of the protagonist. Unless the protagonist undergoes major trials, they never have the opportunity to develop heroic virtue.
According to 1 Timothy 2, God desires that all men would come to repentance and be saved, therefore dwelling once again with Him in heaven. However, He doesn’t just force this gift upon us. Instead, He gives us the free opportunity to accept or reject Him. The best way for God to do this in our fallen world is to do what any good fiction writer would do: He puts us in a world of trials, where we can – if we cooperate with God’s grace – develop courage, compassion, fortitude, and other virtues through our experience of evil.
It’s a world filled with suffering that provides the best, most compelling arena for the drama of life to play out. Even in punishing us for the Fall, God is undoing its effects. The self-discipline and virtue developed through suffering helps bring our unruly wills, damaged by original sin, back into proper order.
Humans are broken by the Fall. We have a constant inclination towards sin, and our intellects and wills are deeply compromised. Revelation 21:27 says of Heaven: “But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
We cannot enter heaven until our sinful natures are healed. This can only be done through suffering, which transforms us through virtue. Suffering brings us to the recognition that we can’t make sense of the world apart from God and that we can’t make it right alone. As we fall to our knees in humility, our eyes lift upward to the one who can save and make it all right.
Some may object to all of this. Certainly, one might say, God is bringing about greater goods by allowing evil, but He still is being unfair. After all, no good parent would deliberately inflict or even allow severe harm to their child simply to make them more virtuous or “toughen them up.”
This is an understandable response, but it is a flawed one. There are several crucial disanalogies between the cruel parent and God that make God’s position far more reasonable. Parents aren’t all-knowing, so they can’t be certain that their actions will necessarily bring about the greater good. On the other hand, God is all-knowing, so He can be certain that His course of action is ultimately for the best. Furthermore, parents have only limited authority over their children, since they only have power over their children insofar as it is entrusted to them by God. By contrast, as the creator of everything, God has unlimited authority.
He has vastly more freedom in overseeing His creation. Lastly, a parent who allows serious harm to their child has little ability to compensate them for what they’ve allowed to happen. By contrast, God, who allows very severe harms to happen to humans all the time, can compensate humans with an infinite, all-good afterlife. All the suffering God allows in this life will be utterly insignificant when contrasted with the goodness of heaven.
While these arguments address the problem of evil and suffering on an intellectual level, they still might feel insufficient to someone who is currently experiencing suffering.
During those times of trial, it is important to remember that God does not just sit back and watch us endure pain and struggle. God Himself took on a human nature, lived a difficult life, and eventually died a horrific, torturous death on the cross for our sins.
No human suffered or ever will suffer as deeply or as meaningfully as Jesus of Nazareth. In addition to being our Redeemer, He is also our greatest model that we can and must turn to for consolation whenever we find ourselves burdened with seemingly unbearable trials.
Our suffering is not meaningless—it is the crucible in which God refines us, the fire through which we are made whole. And in our darkest moments, we can look to the cross and see not just our Redeemer, but our hope—proof that suffering, when united with Him, is the very path to redemption.
