The first post in this series can be found here.

Before I go into answering the big question of why God allows or causes suffering, it’s very important to show what the Bible does not say. The previous post and this one are dealing with some common misconceptions, and today we face a big one. This idea sounds nice, but it’s horrible to actually live out:

A popular answer that sounds ‘nice’…but really isn’t…

I have many times heard well-meaning believers try to ‘get God off the hook’ regarding suffering by saying:

“Well God doesn’t cause those disasters/sicknesses/struggles/deaths etc. No, God would never do that. It’s Satan who does those things!”

-Well-meaning but as it turns out…unconvincing, unhealthy, and unbiblical.

There is a grain of truth here (God is good and not malicious or petty or selfish at all) but the vague mention of God’s goodness is not worth the damage this ‘defence’ causes! Despite its popularity and apparent ‘niceness’, the “God only does good things, Satan causes all the suffering” response is not only unconvincing; it actually ends up harming and holding captive Christians who believe it. And it is contradicted by the Bible anyway! So I tackle it here not to tear anyone down or make myself look good, but because I don’t want anyone to be hurt by this well-meaning-but-human philosophy, nor do I want sceptics to think the ‘Satan does it all’ defence is the answer given in the Bible. I at the end of this section I’ll handle the ‘grain of truth’.

Unconvincing:

If you give the ‘God does only nice things/Satan causes bad things’ answer to the question of suffering, the questioner may suspect (rightly) that w Christians are squirming and wriggling out of a perfectly fair question…after all:

• Don’t we Christians believe that God created everything? Doesn’t that include Satan? (yes)
• Don’t we Christians also believe that God is all-powerful, far greater than Satan? (yes)
• Don’t we Christians really believe that God can stop Satan at any point, and will do so in the future along with removing all evil and suffering from the world? (yes, thankfully!)
• So if God chooses for now not to stop Satan, and instead allows Satan to continue to rule and people to suffer, isn’t it very insincere to try to pass it off like the suffering we see has nothing to do with God’s choice? (yes, very insincere.)

“People’s lives are being devastated, and you say the creator and sustainer of the universe is off the hook because some rebellious angel he made is messing up his ‘almighty’ plans? What kind of God is that? In fact, I don’t think you even really believe that!”

-The price of being ‘nice’ when ‘authentic’ is needed.

It’s a good thing we Christians don’t actually need to believe the ‘God does only nice things/Satan causes bad things’ defence, because it’s full of holes! And remember, we are likely to be talking to someone who has a particular instance of suffering or a loved one in mind when asking this question, so a poor answer isn’t just bad intellectually – it could very well be insulting.

Wouldn’t it be better to admit that our God is choosing for the world to contain suffering, at least for now? Yes, it would. It’s more honest and…it’s what various books and documents in the Bible clearly teach.

Unhealthy:

The ‘God does only nice things/Satan causes bad things’ defence to suffering actually harms and holds captive Christians who believe it, because there are two possible routes to go for the believer who seriously thinks God would never ever cause suffering directly, but sees that suffering does happen:

1. The ‘need for breakthrough’ route.

   This concludes that unless specifically invited by his followers, God doesn’t really have a lot of direct control over what occurs on this Earth due to the dominance of dark spiritual powers, and that fighting back the powers of darkness by prayer, fasting, worship and ‘taking authority’ is essential for every believer if God is going to get anything done at all. Or perhaps there are special ‘anointed people’ who can ‘break through’ and let God help you the way he wants. Either way, this dependence on your own or other people’s actions for spiritual security and well-being is anxiety-inducing indeed. It basically comes down to ‘God has made a way for salvation, but everything else in life is up to how hard you pray or how many meetings you attend to allow him to ‘give you breakthrough in this or that issue’! Can you really trust God? Can he really protect you and make good on his promises, or does he need your help? What if the church never gets it together – will God’s plans still succeed? This view can lead to some really unhealthy thinking patterns for anyone who believes it whilst professing to “trust” God. Galatians 3:2 is helpful here. Those who follow this route of reasoning can also fall into blaming ‘demons’ for anything bad that happens in life, which aside from making such a believer seem a little unhinged, tends to be used to explain away even self-caused problems!

   If someone really does think that God is held back from stopping Satan by something other than his own sovereign choice, Satan can be really happy because what he ultimately wants is to be treated as equal to God. So ‘God does only good things/Satan causes bad things’ can lead to some ways of thinking that can victimise believers and give undue honour to Satan.

   I do fully accept that evil spiritual forces are at work in the world (to the extent that God allows them to be) and that part of the role God has given to his people on Earth is to call out in prayer and invite his intervention. But you have to take a pretty small view of God to think he is actually limited by anything or anyone else. I think he simply sometimes chooses to operate ‘conditionally’ in response to prayer to encourage us to walk closely with him and to show us that our choices *really do make a difference. But only as far as is beneficial for building maturity in his followers (Romans 8:28, Hebrews 12:5-11).
   

2. The ‘prosperity preaching’ route.

   Those who think that God never causes suffering conclude, with reference to verses like Colossians 1:13, that if only non-believers are ruled by Satan then (because the whole point of the ‘Satan does it all’ defence is to say that God cannot be responsible for suffering) the only way those ‘in the kingdom of God’ can suffer is either by the evil actions of other people or themselves and certainly not by God’s will. Definitely not sickness, disaster or anything external like that! You would think this would be hard to uphold in the face of 2 Corinthians 11:24-31, Hebrews 11:39 and other such passages, as well as life in general! But many teachers actually double down at this point and explain that a Christian’s exemption from ‘natural’ suffering only applies to the extent that the believer has faith/prays/does not stumble into sin/has curses broken off them, or other factors for which their actions are the deciding factor. Some “Christian” teachers, mixing in a little non-christian new-age teaching, even teach that the definition of ‘faith’ includes ‘refusing to acknowledge the existence of the suffering’, which borders on dishonest. Refusing to share in any genuine way about any struggles, and refusing to acknowledge any need for help from fellow believers ruins’ any hope of close fellowship within the church, and leads to an atmosphere of ‘super-spiritual’ hypocrisy. Jesus did not say ‘By this all men will know you are my disciples, because none of them need any help from each other’! Refusing to ‘confess’ suffering can easily become outright immoral in some cases: eg people who believe this refusing to admit or hiding COVID-19 symptoms ‘in faith’ and going on to infect others, people who tell other believers not to ‘confess’ their illnesses by taking their medication. This teaching is poison. None of that is taught in the Bible…thankfully! Oddly, because it teaches that God always wants to bless/heal/end the suffering immediately and therefore that any problem ‘is not on God’s end’, the ‘health and wealth for all believers’ route has the same anxiety-inducing and self-focused results as the ‘need for breakthrough’ route, with the addition of a massive overfocus on physical benefits, a whole lot of puffed up piety, complete detachment from reality and a whole lot of guilt for any believer who is not healthy, wealthy and successful in every area.

   Why do some teachers teach this then? I have heard many dear brothers and sisters believe this and teach this because it sounds nice, but without having thought through the results of asking suffering believers to live it out. But the main propagators of the “God only does nice things/Satan causes the suffering” seem to teach it precisely because it pushes their followers into accepting their ‘health and wealth for all believers’ or ‘all healing all the time’ teaching agendas. And they use the suffering of sick and desperate believers to sell the fixes to the theological problems they have created: the secret to ‘getting what God has for you now’/getting healed/activating your gifts/seeing breakthrough in finance/keeping your healing/having ‘Your Best Life Now’. Of course, this often involves attending training events, donating ‘symbolic’ amounts of money or buying the teacher’s materials. Watch out for the ‘God only does things you like’ teachers. Whether the teacher has good intent or selfish, the teachings themselves are harmful!

   Note that I am not saying there are no grains of truth anywhere here (eg the problem sometimes is ‘on our end’, eg the end of 1 Peter 3:7 and James 4:1-3), but I am saying if we teach that God himself only ever wants to do things that we like, we are going to tie suffering believers in knots and pierce them through with many sorrows. Thankfully, the ‘God does only good things/Satan causes bad things’ defence of suffering is thoroughly ruled out by the Bible…

Unbiblical:

(Since those that try to give the ‘God does only nice things/Satan causes bad things’ defence are usually Christians, I hope this matters to them. To others, I hope you can at least see that this is not a true Christian teaching): In various places in the Bible, God clearly states/shows that he is fully able to stop Satan, and does control, stop or directly cause various disasters including sickness, death, earthquakes, famines, plagues, accidents and nations being overcome by attacking armies. I’ll get to the ‘why’ part later, but for now I’m just refuting the ‘God would never cause suffering’ argument so here are some examples of the Christian scriptures disagreeing:

• If God is not able right now to stop Satan, or stop suffering/disease/death/evil of any kind (including coronavirus) then it makes Jesus’ statement in Matthew 28:18 a lie! That should probably be a red flag…

• Even on some occasions when the Bible describes Satan (or one of his demons, or a person) doing something that causes suffering to someone, although God is not the one doing it, God acts as though he has responsibility for the suffering because he allows it when he could have said ‘no’ and prevented it. For example, compare:

  • Job 1:11-12 (Satan speaking…God permits him to attack Job)
  • Job 2:3 (After Job loses all his possessions. God speaks as if it was himself who had struck Job)
  • Job 42:11 (After God restores Job)
  • Luke 22:3-6 vs Acts 2:23 (both books written by Luke) – compare how Luke describes why Jesus was betrayed to the Jewish leaders.

• God specifically declares that he will send suffering under certain conditions, for example when warning the Israelites as they are about to enter the promised land about how he will discipline them if they rebel and ignore his laws, the passage Deuteronomy 28:20-28 makes this very clear.

• I’m just showing the teaching that God only does nice things or ‘can’t give what he doesn’t have’ is not biblical. To that end, here are other examples of God clearly stating or demonstrating that he does cause some calamities, diseases, deaths and so on:

  • Genesis 3:17-19
  • Exodus 4:11
  • Leviticus 26 (whole chapter, but for our purposes see eg Lev 26:16-17, Lev 26:20-21 etc)
  • Numbers 12:9-13
  • Deuteronomy 32:39
  • Isaiah 45:7
  • Jonah 4:6-8
  • Psalm 135:5-10
  • John 5:5-6 then through that chapter John 5:8-9 then John 5:14.
  • John 9:1-3
  • Romans 8:38-39 (on the positive side. Clearly God overrules all others here)
  • 1st Corinthians 11:30-32
  • Revelation 2:20-25 (from the mouth of Jesus)
  • Revelation 22:18-19 (from the mouth of Jesus)

The Bible does not say God does any of this arbitrarily, or heartlessly – since I’m responding to the popular teaching that God only does nice things, I’m just quoting many passages that show he can and does cause suffering, but I’m not (yet) quoting passages explaining his many and varied reasons. Ezekiel 33:11 and other passages make clear that whatever God’s reasons, they are not arbitrary or heartless. One of the central themes of the book of Jonah and countless other passages is that God’s heart is to see a change and not have to punish. Here I’m just giving proof that it is unbiblical to say that God cannot/does not cause suffering at all.

The grain of truth…

Now that I’ve pointed out its deep flaws, I do want to recognise the grain of truth in the argument that “God doesn’t cause suffering/disease/disasters, only Satan does that”. The Bible teaches clearly and consistently that God is kind, patient, intrinsically good, loving even his enemies (Romans 5:7-8, Matt 5:43-45), eager to forgive and comprehensively exceeds us in his self-restraint, compassion and eagerness to forgive. That while God hates and will punish evils like lying, scheming, corruption, selfishness, gossip, cruelty, impurity and all the other evil he sees us take part in, he does not have a single morally evil thought towards anyone, nor is he tempted, and he truly desires all of us choose to turn from sin and be saved from even deserved punishment (Ezekiel 33:11, 2 Peter 3:9). The Bible agrees that God does not think or do morally evil things, and that Satan (and us humans) frequently do. And that Satan has been allowed to rule over worldly people. But this is still under God’s own, wider, rule and so it’s not correct or helpful to suggest that God could do nothing about it. He can, and will.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:6-7

We believers must be careful before we try to defend God…he is wiser than us! In fact, this triangle of knowing God allows or causes suffering, knowing God is good and trying to explain the suffering without diminishing either God’s nature or his character, is the central theme of the old testament book of Job. That’s why the book of Job contains so many discussions, and ends with Job recognising that he spoke foolishly about God. Let’s be careful to learn his lesson, and start with a foundation of trusting God – both his absolute power and his absolute goodness – and pursue understanding from there.

The clear claim all through the Bible is that God is entirely good, all-powerful, and fully in control and yet although God himself does not do moral evil, he currently chooses not to prevent others (both demonic and human) from doing evil and God himself does clearly state that he causes some suffering, including at least some disasters of various kinds and sicknesses…and he certainly is aware that we live in a broken, hurting world. And that he could end that immediately, but does not, despite genuinely caring for all people. But why, we ask?

That’s what part 4 and 5 will be about. Why so many parts? Because, as we have seen, there are multiple factors involved and we need to consider them carefully.