Why does God allow pain and suffering?

A three-year-old boy was playing when his dad’s truck rolled down the driveway and crushed him to death. A beloved staff member died alone in a hospital room during Covid, his family unable to say goodbye.

These aren’t abstract theological problems. They’re the raw, heartbreaking realities that make us cry out, “Why?” 

The question of suffering is perhaps the greatest challenge to faith in a loving, all-powerful God. If God exists and cares about us, why doesn’t he stop the truck? Why does he permit the devastating loss? These aren’t just intellectual puzzles. They’re the anguished cries of broken hearts that crave answers. 

The universal problem

Whether it’s personal tragedy, natural disasters, disease, or the weight of injustice in the world, we cannot escape suffering. For those who believe in God, this reality raises profound questions. How can we reconcile belief in an all-good, all-powerful God with the very real presence of evil and pain in our world? 

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus framed this dilemma perfectly: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” 

This challenge has driven some people away from faith entirely. The pain becomes so overwhelming that rejecting God seems like the only response. It’s understandable — when your world collapses, questions about God’s goodness become intensely personal. 

 God grieves with us now and promises ultimate healing to come. 

Throughout history, different worldviews have attempted to explain suffering. Optimists might say suffering is just an illusion, or that what appears evil actually serves a greater good. While there’s truth in the idea that we can learn from hardship, this view risks minimising real pain. 

Pessimists take the opposite approach: suffering is simply reality. You live, you hurt, you die. From this naturalistic perspective, pain serves no higher purpose. It’s just the way things are. This view acknowledges the reality of suffering but leaves us without either hope or meaning. 

Dualists see good and evil as equal forces in eternal conflict, like a cosmic Star Wars battle. While this explains the struggle between light and darkness, it secures no ultimate victory for good. Worse, suffering never ends. 

The Christian Response: A Three-Act Story 

Christianity offers a different framework, which views pain and suffering through a three-act story: Creation, Fall, and Salvation. 

Act One: Creation — God Makes Good Things 

In the beginning, according to Genesis, God created everything and declared it “good.” This includes human beings, made in God’s image with the capacity for choice, love, and moral decision-making. God declared human beings “very good.” 

Here’s a crucial insight: evil isn’t a “thing” that God created. Following theologians like Augustine, many believe evil is the absence, or corruption, of good — as darkness is the absence of light, or cold is the absence of heat. If you removed all good from the world, nothing would remain, because evil cannot exist independently. 

Act Two: Fall — The Entrance of Evil 

God gave humans genuine freedom to choose, including the freedom to reject him. This wasn’t a design flaw; it was essential for authentic love. Forced love isn’t love at all. When we choose to show kindness to a stranger or sacrifice for someone we care about, that choice makes our love meaningful. 

But freedom comes with consequences. When the first humans chose to disobey God, their rebellion introduced evil into creation. This wasn’t just a personal failure; it corrupted the entire human experience. Like a virus spreading through a system, sin affected not just individuals but all of creation, including the natural world itself. 

The result? We live in a broken world where natural disasters strike, diseases spread, and human choices cause tremendous harm. We’re “sinners twice over” —affected by humanity’s original rebellion and guilty of our own wrong choices. 

Act Three: Salvation — God Entered Our Pain 

Rather than abandoning his broken creation, God did something extraordinary: he joined our suffering. In Jesus Christ, God became human and experienced the full range of human pain — poverty, rejection, physical agony, and death. 

The cross represents God’s ultimate response to evil. As Dorothy Sayers wrote, God “had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine.” Whatever he allows us to experience, he has experienced himself. Jesus took upon himself the weight of human evil and suffering, and he offered both forgiveness and hope for restoration. 

The Promise of Restoration

Christianity doesn’t promise that suffering will end in this life, but it does promise that suffering isn’t the end of the story. The Bible concludes with a vision of complete restoration: “He 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).

This future hope doesn’t minimise present pain, but it provides a context for understanding it. Our current suffering, however real and devastating, is not permanent. God grieves with us now and promises ultimate healing to come. 

The question remains: if God can end suffering, why wait? The Bible suggests that God’s delay might be an act of mercy — giving more people time to find faith, forgiveness, and restoration before final judgment comes. 

But ultimately, we cannot fully comprehend either God’s timing or his methods. As the Bible says, God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Our finite minds are incapable of grasping the full picture. 

Choosing your response 

While we may not understand why suffering exists, we can choose how we respond to it. The same painful experience can make one person bitter and cynical while making another compassionate and kind. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed that even in the worst circumstances, we retain “the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 

We can choose to acknowledge the reality of suffering without offering empty platitudes. We can “mourn with those who mourn” and work against injustice. We can find hope in God’s promise that one day, every tear will be wiped away. 

The question of suffering may never be fully answered in this life. But in a world marked by pain, the Christian message offers something remarkable: a God who doesn’t stand apart from our suffering but joins in it, carrying our burdens and promising ultimate restoration.