Welcome to Part 2 of 10 our Frequently Asked Questions series. These are the top ten questions I receive As a pastor.
Question: Hey Pastor, if God is good and all-powerful, why does He let so much evil and suffering happen?
Answer: Great question! Let's get into it.
Let me say up front: this is the hardest question in this whole series. I've sat in hospital rooms and at gravesides where no argument would have helped. If you're asking this because you're hurting right now, I'm so sorry. Please hear me: God is not offended by your question. Whole books of the Bible, like Job, Lamentations, and many of the Psalms, are filled with people asking it.
So I won't pretend to give you a neat little bow. But I can give you some solid ground to stand on.
Where evil came from
God didn't create a broken world. Genesis 1 says over and over that what He made was good. So what happened? God created people with the ability to choose. And we chose to go our own way. Genesis 3 tells the story of the first rebellion, and ever since, the world has been cracked down the middle.
Why would God give us that kind of freedom if He knew we'd misuse it? C.S. Lewis answered it this way in Mere Christianity:
"Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having."
Think about it. Love that's forced isn't love. A robot programmed to say "I love you" isn't in a relationship. God wanted real love, and real love requires a real choice. A huge amount of the suffering in our world comes straight from human choices: war, abuse, greed, betrayal. And the rest comes from living in a creation that Paul says is "groaning" as it waits to be set free (Romans 8:22).
Pain isn't pointless
Here's something the Bible shows us again and again: God doesn't waste our pain. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and thrown in prison. Years later he told those same brothers, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good" (Genesis 50:20).
God didn't cause the betrayal. But He was working through it the whole time. Romans 8:28 promises that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him." Notice it doesn't say all things are good. It says God works in all things for good.
Lewis wrote one of his most famous lines about this in The Problem of Pain:
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
Most of us don't think much about eternity when life is easy. Pain has a way of waking us up to what really matters.
Here's the part people miss
The objection assumes something important. When we look at evil and say, "That's wrong," we're appealing to a real standard of right and wrong. But if there's no God, where does that standard come from? Without God, suffering is just what happens when atoms bump into each other. Nobody gets outraged at a rock rolling downhill. Our outrage at evil is actually a clue that we were made for a better world.
God didn't stay at a distance
This is what makes Christianity different from every other answer. Our God didn't watch suffering from far away. He stepped into it. Isaiah called the Messiah "a man of suffering, and familiar with pain" (Isaiah 53:3). At the tomb of His friend Lazarus, knowing full well He was about to raise him, "Jesus wept" (John 11:35).
And on the cross, Jesus took the worst evil the world could throw at Him. He was betrayed, mocked, beaten, and killed. Whatever you're facing, you're not facing it with a God who doesn't understand. You're facing it with a God who bears the scars.
Lewis knew this personally, by the way. He wrote about pain as a scholar, and then years later he lost his wife Joy to cancer. His faith was shaken. But it held, because it was anchored to something deeper than his circumstances.
The story isn't over
Jesus was honest with us: "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). The Bible ends with a promise that God "will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Revelation 21:4).
Evil doesn't get the last word. Jesus does.
Paul, a man who was shipwrecked, beaten, and imprisoned, put it this way: "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).
So if you're hurting today, don't walk away from God. Walk toward Him. Bring Him your questions and your tears. And let His people walk with you. You don't have to carry this alone.
