Why Does God Allow Suffering?
- Guest Writer: Gary L Ellis
- May 10
- 4 min read
The Question That Just Won’t Shut Up
We’ve all heard the clichés: “God has a plan,” “everything happens for a reason.”
But when life actually breaks, those answers feel paper-thin. Let’s take a raw, honest look at why a good God allows suffering — and why the Bible doesn’t give us tidy answers, but something better.
This is a question that doesn’t come up in a theology class with neat, certain answers. You know, the class with a whiteboard and bullet points.
This is the painful question that shows up in hospice rooms and text messages that start with “I have bad news.”
Why does a good God let this happen?
You don’t ask that because you’re curious. You ask it because something inside you is crumbling with anguish.
This isn’t really a question born from curiosity. It’s more like a scream we turned into words.
Let’s Not Pretend the Answers Are Satisfying
You’ve probably heard the usuals.
Free will.
Soul growth.
It’s all part of God’s plan.
One day it’ll all make sense.
Maybe you even believed those at some point. Maybe you still try to. But when your kid’s in the ICU or the MRI scan comes back wrong or the earthquake kills 20,000 people overnight, none of those answers feel like enough.
Because they’re not.
The Bible Doesn’t Try to Tidy This Up (and neither should we)
Here’s something people forget: the Bible doesn’t try to answer this question with a tight little bow either.
It gives us Job, whose life collapses. His kids die. His health fails. And his friends try to explain it all away like they’ve got a theological flowchart.
Job says, Nope. I didn’t do anything wrong.
And — here’s the kicker — God agrees with Job, not the friends. (Job 42:7)
So what’s God’s answer to Job’s pain?
A storm. Literally. A whirlwind. And basically a very long speech that says, “This world is way more complicated than you can handle.”
Which is God’s way of saying: You don’t get the answers. You get Me.
Jesus Doesn’t Explain Suffering — He Joins It
If you grew up in church, you probably learned that Jesus died to “pay for our sins.” Fine.
But there’s something deeper happening on the cross. Something that doesn’t fit on a Sunday school flannelgraph.
Jesus isn’t just fixing a legal problem. He’s showing us what God is like.
And what is God like?
God bleeds.
When Jesus says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he’s quoting a Psalm (22:1). But he’s also doing something bigger — he’s giving us a picture of what it feels like when heaven seems to go silent.
“Free Will” Only Explains So Much
The free will argument gets used a lot. I’ve used to use it too. It seems to make sense, especially for the pain we cause each other — violence, greed, systemic injustice, all of it.
But what about the other kind?
Earthquakes don’t have free will.
Neither does cancer.
Or mental illness.
At some point, “We chose this” doesn’t hold up. Some suffering just is.
People try to bridge the gap with the “soul-making” idea — that God uses suffering to grow us.
Yeah. Sometimes, maybe…although not always the things we apply it to.
Try saying that to a mother who lost her baby. Or to someone who was abused. Or to someone whose life just never got easier and who dies bitter and alone.
You start to see how shallow those slogans are.
Maybe the World Isn’t a Blueprint
Here’s something I wish more churches said out loud:
Maybe this world isn’t tightly managed. Maybe it’s just really messy where God walks with us. Helping us through it.
Theologian Greg Boyd has this picture of creation not as a blueprint, but as a battlefield. Not everything happens because God wanted it to. Some things just… happen. (Sounds heretical to the “God is always in control crowd.” But, the battlefield explanation doesn’t mean He’s out of control.
Spiritual forces. Human choices. Random chaos.
In that view, God isn’t the chess master moving pieces. God is the medic dragging bodies off the battlefield. Bleeding with them. Staying. No man left behind.
“God doesn’t cause all things for a reason,” Boyd says.“
But God can bring reason out of all things.”
Maybe the World Is Wild on Purpose
We’re in a universe built on tectonic plates and cellular mutation and weather patterns that aren’t sentient. This world gives us wine and babies and sunsets — and also earthquakes and cancer and droughts.
It’s all one system.
Some people see that and say, “How could God make a world like this?”
But maybe that’s the only way to have a real world at all. One that breathes, evolves, breaks, and heals. I’m not asking you to “buy” that. Just consider the possibility.
Pain doesn’t mean the world is broken.
Pain means the world is alive.
And God? Still in It. Not Over It.
Maybe what we need isn’t an explanation.
Maybe what we need is to know that God is still here.
Not as an idea. Not as a doctrine. But as someone who still walks into suffering and sits there with you. No escape plan. No platitudes.
Just presence.
“The cross is not the end,” Richard Rohr says.
“It’s the beginning of a new way of seeing.”
Faith Isn’t About Explaining Pain
It’s about not turning away from it.
The Bible doesn’t fix the problem of suffering. It just shows us that God doesn’t run from it.
Jesus doesn’t promise we’ll understand it.
He just promises we won’t go through it alone.
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33, ESV)
It’s not a “cheer up, buddy” kind of thing — it’s more like a command to stand tall when the waves are pounding and your knees are knocking.
It’s His way of saying, “I know it looks scary, but I’m here. Don’t let fear write the story.”
And So…
If you’re carrying pain and wondering where God is in it, I hope this gives you permission to stop pretending everything makes sense. And maybe a little comfort in knowing you don’t have to feel you’re alone.
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