Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God allow so much suffering to happen in the world? How could God be all-powerful and all good? These oft-repeated questions form the core of what philosophers have come to call “the problem of evil.” Countless people have thrown up their hands at these difficult questions and concluded one of two things: either that there is no God or that if there is a God, he is either not omnipotent (which means all-powerful) or not omnibenevolent (all good). But these conclusions, while convenient because they do not require a great deal of thinking, are neither the most rational nor the most empirical answers, given what we know about the nature of God and his actions in the history of humanity.
Surely, human free will is a key part to answering this timeless question, specifically in the cases of when good people suffer at the hands of other people. Genocide, rape, murder, war, and slavery are the fault of sinners, not God. And as the great Fulton Sheen once wrote, “God refuses to be a totalitarian dictator in order to abolish evil by destroying human freedom.” But what about forms of suffering not directly caused by other people or ourselves; for instance, disease and natural disasters? Well, as it turns out, there’s a sensible explanation as to why God allows these evils as well.
In 2009, the great Christian philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig debated the clever and eloquent atheist Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. The question they debated was simple: “Does God exist?” After the first hour of arguments, the moderator opened it up to the audience to pose questions to Dr. Craig and Mr. Hitchens. One student asked Dr. Craig why, given God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence, he allows good people to suffer so intensely. Dr. Craig’s answer was both enlightening and refreshing, because, unlike so many who have attempted to answer this question, he didn’t downplay people’s sufferings or simply say there are some things we will never know. Rather, the brilliant philosopher attempted to switch the audience’s view from the temporal to the eternal lens. “God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil in the world,” Dr. Craig began. This was a good start. After all, it’s important to know, as God says to Isaiah, that God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8). It’s entirely logical to conclude that he has a good reason for allowing people to suffer in ways that seem unnecessary and cruel to us.
Fair enough, but we crave more specificity than that to reconcile the sheer weight of suffering man endures with God’s almighty and perfect nature. What conceivably could be a reason for allowing disease, famines, and natural disasters? Dr. Craig offers an enlightening and entirely possible explanation. “Maybe,” he continued, “God’s purpose for human history is to bring the maximum number of people freely into his kingdom to find salvation and eternal life. And how do we know that that wouldn’t require a world that is simply suffused with natural and moral suffering? It might be that only in a world like that would the maximum number of people come to know God and find salvation.” Wow. Put into an eternal context, that explanation seems not only possible but likely.
For example, when you think of times of suffering in your own life, did those hardships cause you to pray more or less? During the darkest time of misery in my life, I spent hours every day reading the psalms, trying to dredge God’s Word for some modicum of comfort that could make me feel normal again. I understand this is not the way everyone copes with suffering, but it’s true for a lot of us. In fact, we read in the psalms, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). Sometimes, when things are going swimmingly and we haven’t a care in the world, we put God’s commandments and promises on the back burner, mistakenly thinking we don’t need them. Suffering frees us from the illusion that we can get by without God.
So, given God’s divine and eternal plan, it’s conceivable that he permits intense suffering and early, painful deaths for many in order to populate paradise with as many people as possible–people who otherwise may have deemed God unnecessary or fallen away from the faith if permitted to live longer, healthier, more comfortable lives. In this entirely plausible scenario, God is neither neglectful nor sadistic, but rather compassionate. He’s a God who cares about our eternal wellbeing so deeply that he allows his beloved children to suffer in order to bring it about.
In that case, how should we view suffering when it comes upon us? As proof that the devil doesn’t have us yet. Dr. Craig concludes his response to the question of suffering as follows: “Christianity tells us that God is not some kind of impersonal being or an indifferent tyrant who folds his arms and watches the world suffer. Rather, he is a God who enters into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. And what does he do? He suffers. On the cross, Christ bore a suffering of which we can form no conception. Even though he was innocent, he bore the penalty of the sins of the whole world. None of us can comprehend what he suffered. And when we contemplate the cross of Christ and his love for us and what he was willing to undergo for us, it puts the problem of suffering in an entirely different perspective. It means that we can bear the suffering that God calls upon us to endure in this life with courage and with optimism for an eternal life of unending joy beyond the grave because of what Christ has done for us.” Amen.
Jonathan Kettler is a history teacher at Brandon High School.
