Why is there suffering?

If God is a loving God, why does He allow suffering to occur? Why do things like cancer or tsunamis happen?

The typical answer I’ve heard to this is “we can’t know the will of God, there must be a reason only God knows”, but I know that’s not enough. We will never be able to know the will of God completely, or to adequately understand why suffering occurs, but simply saying that God knows and we don’t is not enough. When people look around them and see such suffering, they naturally question how there can be a god.

There is no way I can justify the way the world works, and the way God works in it. I have a few ideas to put forward, but I don’t expect to explain suffering away, or to ‘make it all ok’. It’s not something that can be brushed away even by the best of explanations. These are simply some thoughts on how suffering and God can coexist.

One idea is the importance of suffering in the way we live our lives. I can look back on the hard times of my life (although trivial compared to many) and see how those experiences have shaped me and are a part of who I am. I was reading a book recently which explored this idea really well – “For man to be free and capable of growth, he needs to be in an environment that challenges him. If we lived in a world where it was impossible to suffer, wouldn’t we remain incredibly bland and childlike?”* That captures my ideas really well, and it’s a thoughtful exploration of the importance suffering plays in human thought and existence. Suffering does act to shape the way humans think, behave and respond to the world.

Related to this is the thought that the presence of suffering can give direction to our lives. The presence of suffering leads people to question the nature of existence, of a higher power, and provokes thoughts about death and eternity and what they mean. While suffering isn’t something God wants us to go through, it does play a part in our understanding of our existence and purpose.

Possibly one of the most important considerations is that in the frame of Christianity life is only a precursor to eternity. So even when someone suffers a horrendous life, when they do die they move on to eternity, and depending on what choices they’ve made in life they can have an eternity with no suffering. While this can sound like a coverall feel-good idea to make people disregard suffering as somehow OK, it does come into understanding how God can allow suffering. Its nature as being very temporary is really important, as it makes it far less significant in the big picture, rather than a lifelong curse or cruel ending.

Besides, Jesus himself suffered one of the most painful forms of death, crucifixion, and also suffered on earth just as humans did. God is not some distant entity oblivious to the sufferings of mankind. To assume that suffering is something God has cursed man with is to forget that it played into the life of His son as well, meaning that God (as Jesus is God, a part of the trinity) has experienced the very pain and sufferings we deal with.

A final thought to consider is the idea of Spiritual battle. I don’t understand what form this takes, or how it works, but with both God and the devil both active in the world, could suffering be at least partially attributed to the devil’s opposition to God?

When it comes down to it though, I really have nothing I can say to a parent of a kid who dies of leukaemia, or in response to hundreds of thousands of people dying in the tsunami. To try and cover up suffering with a cheerful “God’s in control” is so hopelessly inadequate. I don’t know that what I’ve written here is much better. There is no way I can hope to make the concept of suffering any less real, any less painful or any less challenging. All I can hope and believe is that in the context of the greater frame of existence, of life, death and eternity, that somehow this suffering becomes a little less significant, a small part of a greater whole. That it will become a part of our identity because of its very pain, through what it teaches us and causes us to question, but also that in time it will become a part of our understanding of God, causing us to question, to explore, to engage with God because of the suffering of the world, not to turn away from Him as a result.

Some Bible verses to check out on this topic: Job (all); Romans 8:17; 1 Peter 4:1-2.

* Richard MacKenna, God for Nothing…