Why does God allow suffering and evil?
2/4/2025
I want to start a new series on my website where I answer some of the most common doubts that people have about the Christian faith. For the next few articles, I’ll be answering some common questions/objections that people have about Christianity including:
Why does God allow suffering and evil if He’s good?
How can Christians claim to have the one true religion?
How can God be gracious, merciful, and loving and yet also send people to hell?
Isn’t Christianity against science?
Etc.
If you have a question/suggestion for a topic, please feel free to email me at aaron@thegreatestcommandment.org!
I fundamentally believe that Christianity is rational and can hold up to the strongest intellectual objections.
That being said, let’s dive into the first doubt/question that comes up pretty commonly:
Why does God allow suffering and evil?
There is a modern line of reasoning that goes something like this: 1. God is all powerful 2. Evil and suffering exists 3. He must either be all powerful but simply not care enough to end suffering and evil or he might be good, but simply not powerful enough to end the suffering and evil in the world 4. Therefore I choose not to believe in this God
It sounds like a modern argument, but it actually isn’t. Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 3rd/2nd century BC proposed this exact line of reasoning nearly two millenniums ago. He said,
“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?”
―Epicurus
So which is it? Is God good but not powerful enough? Is he powerful but not good? The Bible certainly has many answers to this question.
1. If God were to do away with all the evil and suffering in the world and finally restore peace on earth, He would have to annihilate the entire world. Most of the time when people think of evil and suffering, they think of others who commit evil and atrocities in the world today - IE Hitler, murderers, rapists, criminals, evil dictators and warlords. Romans 3:10-11 states, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” Have you ever caused suffering to another or committed evil before in your life to anybody? Of course you have. You’re a human being. We hurt friends, we hurt our own family members, we do evil against strangers, we do evil against coworkers, and we certainly all rebel against God’s will and His decrees. We have evil thoughts, we have evil feelings, and we all do evil things. Evil is not just “out there”, it’s inside of us. Jesus tells us about the nature of human beings in Mark 7:21-23, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” There are certainly degrees of evil, but be certain of the fact that we all indeed do evil. According to the Bible, we sin with our thoughts, with our feelings, and with our actions. If God were truly to bring peace on earth and do away with all evil and suffering, He would have to wipe out the entire world.
2. Just because you can’t see a good reason for evil and suffering doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I’ve been playing chess nearly my entire life for fun, but my chess rating is only about 1100. What that means is that I can barely see 2-3 moves ahead (I’m not particularly good). The best chess players in the world including Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura have a chess rating of 2800+. Magnus Carlsen can allegedly see anywhere from 15-20 moves ahead at any point in time. God is infinitely smarter and wiser than any human being. If God is truly sovereign over all and all knowing, that means that He sees ALL the moves at any given time. Romans 11:33 says, “O, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways!” Sometimes great evil and suffering can come upon us, and we’re only able to see the immediate results and so we come to the conclusion that God is not good and that God’s plan is bad. In the Bible alone, there are many examples of evil and suffering coming upon God’s people including: Joseph (get’s sold into slavery by his own brothers), Job (a righteous man of God that loses his entire family and all his possessions), and of course even God’s own son Jesus Christ. When Peter is preaching the gospel in Acts 2:23, he tells his audience that “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” Jesus died according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. In other words, even the worst evil to ever happen on earth (the Son of God being murdered) was used as part of God’s plan to save millions. God’s IQ > our IQ. We are limited, finite human beings. God is eternally wise, all knowing, and good. Just because you can’t see a good reason for evil and suffering doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Can’t you yourself think of a hardship or difficulty in your life that ended up being really good for you in the long run? Of course you can.
3. One day God is certainly going to judge everybody for what they have done and hold them accountable. 2 Corinthians 5:10 tells us, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” It’s funny, some people think that when God looks at all the evil and suffering in the world that He’s okay with it. He’s not. What kind of psychopath would God be if he saw all the ways people were hurting one another, hurting themselves, and committing evil and be unmoved or unaffected by it? I don’t know about you, but when I read the news and learn about all the terrible things happening in our country and around the world, something stirs within me - “THIS ISN’T HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE!” God gets angry when people do evil. Psalms 7:11 describes God’s character and nature, “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.” God feels indignation everyday. God feels indignation when people murder one another. God feels indignation when injustice occurs. God feels indignation towards evil governments and rulers. God feels indignation when people suffer at the hands of others. God feels indignation when people choose to rebel against God’s righteous decrees that would allow us to prosper and thrive. One day, we will all stand before the judgement seat of Christ and have to give an account to God whether we have done good or evil. God is a righteous judge and surely He will execute justice and judge every wrong doer. It’s interesting because the very same people questioning how God can be good if evil exists are the ones that that would call God unjust for sending people to hell (judgement).
4. Bad things don’t happen to good people, that actually only happened once. Many people in the modern world today believe in the idea of karma, that you get what you deserve. Good people deserve good things and bad people deserve bad things. So when we see “good people” getting bad things, we become outraged. The problem is there is an incorrect presupposition. We assume that there is such a thing as a good person in the first place and that in fact there are many good people on this earth. R.C. Sproul Jr once said, “Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once and He volunteered.” The only person in the history of the world that never sinned and never did evil is Jesus Christ. “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). And yet, Jesus suffered. Jesus was humiliated, Jesus was unjustly betrayed, Jesus was unjustly tried, Jesus was flogged, Jesus was executed, Jesus did no wrong, and yet
He endured great suffering and great evil was done to Him.
5.Without Christianity and without religion in general, we don’t even have categories to define “evil” or “suffering” in the first place. In nature, when a lion murders and eats a zebra, do we call that evil or suffering? No, we’d simply say that’s the strong eating the weak, that’s natural selection, that’s just how things are. So When human beings do violence against one another or when stronger or more powerful human beings take advantage of others, why do we label that as “evil” or “suffering” - isn’t that just nature taking its course? Didn’t the world supposedly come into being by random chance and without any reason or divine purpose? So when “bad” things happen to people, isn’t that just the random world we live in being random? What makes us want to label things as “evil” or “suffering” unless there is a God that has purposed us not to do evil against one another or if there is a God who designed us not to suffer in the first place? If a hurricane rips apart an entire country to shreds or a plague wipes out half the worlds population, isn’t that just nature taking its random course in history? Without Christianity or without religion, we wouldn’t even have categories to define evil and suffering in the first place. If anything, all the evil and suffering in the world points to the fact that this world is not as it should be and creates in me a great longing for a world that is free from all evil and suffering.
Christianity and the Bible clearly acknowledge the great suffering and evil that exists in the world. The Christian faith offers deep resources to understand suffering and evil that leaves us with great hope and with great joy in Jesus Christ. In Christianity, our God suffers with us - Jesus the one who lived a perfect life, died in our place for our sins, and resurrected triumphing over Satan, sin, and death suffered for us. As a Christian, we have deep understanding of why evil and suffering exists and great hope in the future where God will one day wipe away ever tear and make all things new. In Christianity, I know that even as a good person I can suffer just like Jesus. As a Christian, I know that one day God will do away with all evil and suffering and judge everybody for their their evil and suffering they caused. As a Christian, I know I deserve eternal death for the evil and suffering I have caused in the world but have been given mercy, forgiveness and grace through my Savior Jesus Christ.