Why does God allow suffering?
If God is good and almighty, why do children die, why do earthquakes destroy cities, why are people tortured? There is no answer that explains everything, and whoever gives one as if it were simple often hurts people who are suffering. But the Bible does not dodge the question: it asks it itself, out loud.
What the Bible says
The Bible laments too
A third of the Psalms are laments. “How long, O LORD?” Job curses the day he was born, and God later calls his honest complaint better than the pious explanations of his friends.
Suffering is no proof of guilt
Jesus rejects the idea that whoever suffers must have deserved it: the man born blind did not sin, nor did the eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell.
God suffers with us
Jesus weeps at the grave of his friend. On the cross he prays the psalm of lament: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Christian God does not watch from a distance.
Suffering does not have the last word
Paul does not make light of present suffering, but sets it beside what is coming: God will wipe away every tear, and death shall be no more.
What Christians answer
Freedom to love
Augustine and many Christian thinkers
Much suffering comes from what people do to each other. God created people who can love, and so can also refuse and wound. A world with real love is a world with real freedom.
A creation that groans
The classic Christian reading
Illness and disasters, too, belong to a creation that is no longer as it was meant to be. Paul writes that the whole creation groans and waits for its liberation. Why God allows it to be so remains largely a mystery.
Growth through trial
Irenaeus of Lyon, and many still today
Suffering can shape people: patience, compassion, faith. That is true, and it is in the Bible. But it is an answer you can find for yourself, not one you may impose on someone else.
The cross and hope
Shared by all traditions
God gives no explanation, but gives himself. In Jesus he enters suffering, even unto death, and through the resurrection he opens a future in which all will be well. Christians have no answer, but they do have Someone.
These answers do not exclude each other; most Christians use them together. None of them makes suffering small or explains each individual grief.