The first post in this series can be found here.

Sometimes the question “Why does God allow suffering?” is used not so much as a question, but an argument against the existence of God. And that’s fine, it’s a very reasonable argument to make. If suffering wasn’t a major question, passages about it wouldn’t feature so much in the Bible!

The challenge

At popular level this argument is often based on the ‘logical problem of evil’ and goes something like this:

If there really is a God who is all-knowing and all-powerful and entirely good, then why does he allow suffering? If such a God sees people suffering terribly and could act, why doesn’t he? I think it shows that if there is a God then he’s evil.

Since God hasn’t stopped the suffering, one of the following must be the case:

1. An all-powerful and entirely good God does not exist.
2. God would like to prevent suffering but is not capable, so he is not all-powerful and all-knowing.
3. God could stop the suffering but doesn’t want to – so he is not entirely good and loving.

Conclusion: An all-powerful and entirely good God cannot exist.

(Note: I am aware that amongst scholars the ‘logical form of the problem of evil’ is considered defeated and rather ‘old hat’ these days, but it’s still very common at popular level so it’s worth addressing.)

Fair Question, Flawed Options

The above seems pretty powerful when you first hear it, especially if delivered well. The questioner gives three options – either God is not all-powerful, or God is not entirely good and loving, or God does not exist.

It’s fairly clear that none of these options sit very comfortably with the Christian message about God! But there is a hidden flaw – an unspoken assumption. As usual, be very careful when someone declares they have thought everything through on your behalf and are certain these are the only answers you may give. They might be right, but to quote an old proverb ‘The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.’

Let’s look at each possibility:

Option 1 – "An all-powerful and entirely good God does not exist."

The first option (God does not exist) is the one the questioner is trying to convince you to believe by eliminating the alternatives.

Note that if the questioner wants to pick this option, they still have their own burden of proof… (click to show/hide details)

The theory that denies the existence of a creator has plenty of its own challenges to answer from a philosophical angle, like: – Accounting for rationality and our sense of free thinking without invalidating their own reasoning. – Explaining the unreasonable applicability of mental concepts like mathematics to the physical world. – Finding a way to take moral reasoning seriously but ground it outside God. – Explaining the incredible fine tuning of our universe that allows for such a bafflingly wide variety of *complex structures and systems* at every level of scale. Their best option is the popular combo of the multiverse hypothesis and the anthropic principle. Honestly, even though the ‘multiverse hypothesis’ is a fun narrative device for movies, postulating an *infinite number of other unobserved universes* (and the unobserved laws of nature for creating them with all the possible variations needed) just to answer the fine tuning question…is a mind-boggling hypothetical overreach. Surely it’s on course for a serious shave from “occam’s razor”… – Accounting for the characteristics of the cause which began our universe. Eg that cause needs to be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, incredibly powerful… and there are reasons to think that cause must be rational and moral as well because of the rational and (arguably) moral phenomena in the universe.

I happen to think the first one is a huge issue for the average atheist. Anyway, these sorts of issues are why it’s become fashionable for atheists to say that they aren’t making the claim that God does not exist, but simply ‘lack belief that he does exist’. It allows that sort of atheist to ask tricky questions of the theist (and even make the odd bold claim if you let them) but try to avoid the need to answer any tricky questions of their own. However, I suspect those who like to make this move still want to pick option 1 from the particular argument we’re looking at today, since “I just don’t know if a good God exists” would be a bit of a weak conclusion to offer here.

But does the argument *succeed* in showing Atheism to be the only logically consistent conclusion, anyway? Is option 1 the ‘last option standing’? Well no, as we shall see…

Option 2 – "God would like to prevent suffering but is not capable, so he is not all-powerful and all-knowing."

The second option (God is unable to stop the suffering) seems unlikely, since any being capable of causing all space, physical laws and matter to continue existing by sheer will alone would surely have full awareness and full control of that creation. It’s pretty absurd to think that such a creator wouldn’t be able to do anything about a virus, a hurricane, an evil human or an evil spiritual creature.

Some will try to say that God is all-powerful but has elected to restrict his ability/right to intervene for one reason or another (free will of humans or Satan are commonly cited) and therefore cannot prevent all suffering despite being all-powerful. There is some Biblical support here that this may be a true statement. Buuuut most of us will notice that when deployed not just as a statement but as a defence of God’s goodness, any self-limiting that God may have done is really just option 3 (God chooses not to stop the suffering) very thinly disguised. You may as well go straight to affirming option 3 and avoid the feeling of dodging the question!

Option 3 – "God could stop the suffering but doesn’t want to – so he is not entirely good and loving."

Apparently, the Biblical answer is nearest to option 3. The Biblical documents repeatedly and variously indicate that God is fully capable of stopping both moral evil and all suffering, and indeed that he has ‘set a day’ to do just that. There may be some constraints he is under because of other goals he may have, but any such limits are ultimately self-imposed and still part of his choice.

For now, option 3 in the above discussion is the nearest to the truth, but the ‘so he is not entirely good and loving’ part is smuggling in an extra conclusion that hasn’t been checked.

*Is it really true *that anyone who is good and loving must want to prevent all suffering immediately? How did the questioner reach that conclusion? They assumed it. And it’s a clever move, because it’s the kind of assumption that’s often true, and also makes someone look bad for even thinking about questioning it! But an assumption is not a very good ground for determining the truth of anything, so let’s test it. Do completely loving and completely caring people always want to prevent all suffering?

It’s generally accepted that option three needs modification to be fully true, because it’s definitely possible that an entirely good and loving person might choose to still allow (or cause) suffering if they have a good reason that overrides. One good example of that is that whilst generally attacking people is morally bad, we view things very differently when somebody is protecting one person from another! Here’s an example in which a man attacks another man with what turned out to be lethal force, yet the court agreed he should not be charged. Notice that as soon as his daughter was safe, the man went back to trying to relieve the suffering and save the life of the man he had attacked. I’m sure that dad isn’t perfect, but he was a good man. I’m not saying this explains suffering, but it goes against the notion that a loving person would never cause suffering. We just found one reason a good person might: in this case, to protect someone else. The thing about the logical problem of evil (and suffering) is that it’s brittle. It’s strong while it holds, but even a single counterexample of a good person causing suffering for good reason means that the this version of the argument fails to achieve the aim of proving a good God cannot exist. That’s why more refined philosophers usually avoid such an ambitious aim, and settle for more modest versions that try to show the existence of a good God is merely unlikely, not impossible.

Possible reasons why a good person might allow (or cause) suffering do exist. Let’s try to think of some more:

• The most obvious reason for allowing (or even causing) suffering is…to reduce the total amount of suffering over all time. The example above with the man defending his child would broadly fit into this category. If it somehow ends up reducing the total amount of suffering, it’s very plausible that a good God might still take actions that seem to go the other way in the short term. He would be the ultimate example of a long-term thinker. Sub-categories of this might include:
  • Using suffering to limit the spread of moral evil. A good person would not want evil to spread. If that good person is in a position of responsibility (and it’s hard to argue that a creator would not be) then it would be their duty to suppress evil. Death is one great example of a limiting factor…it’s not a pleasant thing for any of us, but at least everyone only gets a lifespan measured in decades so people like Emperor Nero, Hitler and Stalin can only operate for a limited time.
  • Using suffering to warn. I do this for my children when I create a small artificial negative consequence for misbehaviour now (eg loss of play time if they hit their sibling), in order to avoid them having to ‘learn the hard way’ where that leads later in their life. Perhaps if they don’t learn self control now, as an adult they might punch somebody else who frustrates them enough…and if they do that, they might get fired from their job and gain a criminal record, shipwrecking their career. I don’t want that, so I give the child a less severe but more immediate consequence to help them in self control when frustrated, so that they won’t make that mistake later and suffer for it.
• Perhaps a good person might allow suffering now if it maximises the total happiness or satisfaction for all concerned over the long term. Accounting for the fact that the Biblical God does promise to end all suffering at a finite time and then offer an eternity of ‘the good life’(Matthew 5:3-10, Revelation 21:3-7), the idea that a good God might have a reason to allow or cause suffering now in order to secure a better eternity for everyone later is at least a possibility. Any increased happiness or satisfaction which lasts forever would then infinitely outweigh the cost of the suffering right now…
  • One well-known example of a long-term good which allows for suffering might be that creating creatures with free will does allow for the possibility of rebellion against the creator and wrongdoing (which could create suffering) but certainly increases the amount of genuine relational happiness or satisfaction, as a true friendship is only possible if both people have free will. Plausibly, if God had engineered a situation where everyone had free will but for some reason nobody ever rebelled, wouldn’t we all have nagging doubts for the rest of eternity about whether our choice to stick with God really was a free choice? If he instead allows us to turn against him first and then shows that he himself is willing to pay a cost of suffering to save us, really proves to everyone how much he values us. And if eternity lasts as long as advertised, then the benefit of that deepened relationship could potentially be infinite compared to the finite sufferings now.
• It’s also possible that a good God, despite himself desiring to minimise suffering…also has something for us to learn. Not just learn from a textbook, but learn through lived experience. For example, without suffering we could never learn all those virtues which are displayed when we face suffering: Compassion for others, courage, perseverance, generosity, empathy, sacrificial love, patience…all of these would be either gone or at least hollowed-out for people who have no experience or understanding of hardship. Plausibly, a good God could be using a time of difficulty (before an eternity of peace) to give us the opportunity to become mature, courageous, empathetic people. Lord knows I needed it, at least! There are a number of times in my own life that were difficult – too difficult – at the time…but now I find myself thanking God for them because of what I learned through them.

That last one seems to be the point that the apostle Paul is getting at when he writes:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Paul’s letter to the Romans 8:18–23 (ESV)

We’re not trying to say any one of these is the case. Just that they are plausible enough to make option 3 (‘God chooses not to stop the suffering’) seem much more reasonable.

What we’ve learned so far…

What we have done is simply show the flaw in the questioner’s third option – it is very plausible that a good God may have good reasons to allow or sometimes even cause suffering.

And that means the argument fails to push us logically to option 1 (‘God doesn’t exist’), which was the questioner’s main purpose. We choose option 3 ‘God chooses not to stop suffering’ (at least yet), but it does not have to mean that God isn’t good.

It’s tempting to stop there, but even though the ‘logical problem of evil/suffering’ has been defeated philosophically (I mean by real philosophers, not this article, hah!), we’d hardly call the issue resolved! Yet this was a good ‘jumping off’ point to help us realise that there potentially might be a good God who allows or causes suffering, and has good reasons. We haven’t discussed if that’s the case yet, no whether the Biblical God gives any specific reasons. The point of this article is just that we should slow down a little and not rule anything out too hastily, because this is a big complex topic. If the logical problem presented above seemed convincing initially, then we should also notice that it’s easy to be fooled by a poorly (or perhaps cleverly) worded question. Proverbs 18:17 applies in all our truth-seeking endeavours.

If we ensure the question is presented fairly and does not make us choose from a skewed set of options, then it’s a great question:

If there is a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful and entirely good, then why does he allow suffering? If God is good and sees people suffering terribly and could act, why doesn’t he?

I hope you’ll agree this is a fair rendering of the suffering question and that I’m not trying to dodge anything. Far from it, because this is an important question on the hearts of those who are suffering right now, and flimsy answers comfort no one.

In the next article we’ll explore whether the Biblical sources actually give any good reasons why God is allowing or causing suffering to remain in our world, at least for now.