Why is there so much pain & suffering in the world?
We all know, as human beings, that some suffering in this world is inevitable and unavoidable. We can’t easily stop life with all its challenges and hurdles. Suffering is a part of life, even if we pretend that this is not true. In terms of why there is so much pain and suffering in the world, some people blame God whilst others use the argument that because there is suffering then there can be no God! What’s clear is that there is a lot of suffering the world and perhaps we are in some way of adding to it. However, when we are on the wrong side of suffering this generally builds resilience in us.
Let’s first look at the response to suffering in relation to God. I’ve heard many people use the existence of suffering as a reason for the non-existence for God. For example, if there was a God — he would be able to stop suffering; since he is not willing then he must be malevolent (Cruel) therefore if he is unable and unwilling — why call him God at all? What strikes me about this is that we can’t hang on God everything that is wrong in the world if we don’t believe he exists in the first place. To even call God as a witness implies that we are helpless to answer the question without him. But if God can neither stop or be responsible for pain and suffering. Who is?
Some people lay a lot of the suffering in the world squarely at the feet of mankind. It’s quite possible that evil is as a result of our own actions. Over a lifetime who hasn’t been selfish, arrogant or manipulative. We might have left a trail of crushed and damaged people in our wake because of what we did to them, even quite innocently. Perhaps we didn’t always stay around to see the wounds or the tears. For those people, getting rid of suffering in the world may mean getting rid of us. It’s just a thought. Let me elaborate a little.
The Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned during his lifetime for Criticising the Communist leader Stalin. He was interrogated, beaten and sentenced to 8 years of hard labour in the coldest part of the Soviet Union, where conditions were utterly deplorable. What he witnessed and wrote in a three volumes book about the harshest cruelty that anyone could bear, inflicted by other men. But he didn’t stop there. He argued that the problem of evil is fundamentally human. It is precisely because God gave us free will that we all have the potential to do good, or to do evil!
Why doesn’t God stop all evil?
The problem here is: if God were to step in and stop all evil, where would He start and where would He end? He might begin with someone who offends someone else because they don’t like the way they look. Perhaps God would stop someone driving over the speed limit near a Children’s School crossing or maybe someone jumping the queue at a bank with ten pensioners patiently waiting to be served.
God says in the bible that above all else the heart of man is evil. Isn’t it reasonable not to expect God to step in every time we see someone else do something that seems harmful to someone else? God could stop all the terrible things that happen in the world, but the cost to us would be less freedom to act ourselves.
But what does God say about the suffering in the World, Jesus said this:
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16 v 33
If suffering is inevitable and unavoidable and God can’t stop it without infringing on our own free will. perhaps we can use the experience of pain and suffering to build resilience and strength of character? Or perhaps it is precisely through pain and suffering that God calls us closer to Him. CS Lewis put it like this:
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Whether it be through a natural disaster, illness or death, pain and suffering has been how human life has operated through for 1000’s of years. No one gets away with it, not one human being that lives will avoid it. Therefore, when disaster strikes perhaps it can be a deep opportunity. Moreover, perhaps by working it through with God some semblance of meaning can be obtained.
