If there is a God and God is good, kind, merciful, and loving, why does God allow humans to suffer so—sickness and ill health, poverty, hunger and thirst, crippling deformities, and finally, death and dying? It’s that age old question, “why do bad things happen to good people”?
Simplistically speaking, there are two quick possible answers to this question: one answer is to conclude that God is actually not all that good. We might call God unreliable, fickle, inconsistent, even unfair; the point being is that we could say that God is good one moment and unfair, mean spirited, and careless or uncaring the next. This would be a ready explanation as to why some seem to suffer terribly and others seem to have a great time in life with no rhyme or reason as to just desserts or fair-play involved.
Or, another answer is to say that God is limited in power and ability. That is, we can conclude that God IS a good God but is unable to prevent bad things from happening for lack of absolute power. This answer presumes that God is up against an equal but opposing force to His goodness. Sometimes God wins (Goodness triumphs) but sadly sometimes the opposing force wins (Evil triumphs). It’s just the way it is.
In effect, the whole Biblical narrative is an attempt to answer this question, why we suffer, why do bad things happen to us, etc. And Biblically speaking, neither of the above two answers are acceptable. For Biblical Revelation makes it very clear that God IS indeed a very good God and is ALL powerful as well. So, why DO we suffer?
We blame God. We hold God responsible. We accuse God of being this and that, and everything else, unreliable, untrustworthy, inconsistent, fickle, cruel, mean, abusive, hard-hearted, cold, distant, and uncaring. But that’s US! Not God. We humans are the problem. We are the selfish ones. We are the haters. We are the cruel, spiteful, in-your-face, ego-centric, proud and arrogant, torturing war-mongers, and doers of evil in this world.
God is love. God is good. God is kind, merciful, and gracious. God is patient and longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, says the Bible.
It’s called Free-Will. And the human raced has chosen against the goodness of God. Without choice there is no free-will. And without free-will we cannot be authentically human. We are fallen. Our character is tainted. We are in rebellion. We are effectively waging war against God. And we are suffering for it. This is the Biblical explanation.
But God is merciful and gracious, not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9). And for this, God sent a Savior (yes, the meaning of the Christmas story), that we might be saved from ourselves, saved from the end result of our rebellion against God—which is judgment and final condemnation. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
“Sinners,” a word fast becoming outdated and meaningless in common speech, ignored at best, laughed-at or ridiculed at worst. But that’s what we are, who we are. And it is why we suffer. It is also why we need a Redeemer, a Savior.
The contrast is striking. God’s patient, enduring, and longsuffering compassion toward “sinners” is profound. God chooses not to destroy us in righteous indignation but to provide a means of escape. This is God’s mercy at work, the provision of grace—the provision of undeserving love and salvation to a rebellious and recalcitrant people—to us: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever should believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
So, the next time you experience a deep loss or undergo much sorrow and grief, turn toward God, not away from Him. He is a God of comfort and compassion. God is love. And He promises that soon, one day, he will wipe away every tear and all sorrows. Until then, trust Him and believe. God cares. The proof is in the Person, Jesus, who is called the Christ/Messiah.
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