Why Does God allow So Much Suffering in the World?
For many reason people it is not the exclusivity
of Christianity that poses the biggest problem, it is the presence of evil and
suffering in the world(http://worldwidewarning.synthasite.com). Some find unjust suffering to be a philosophical problem, calling into question the very existence of God. For others it is an intensely personal issue. They don’t care about the abstract question of whether God exists or not, they refuse to trust or believe in any God who allows history and life to proceed as it has.
In December 2004, a massive tsunami killed more than 250,000 people around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Over the following weeks, newspapers and magazines were full of letters and articles asking “Where was God? One reporter wrote: “If God is God, he’s not good. If God is good, he’s not God. You can’t have it both ways, especially after the Indian Ocean catastrophe” (Ron Rosenbaum, “Disaster Ignites Debate: Was God in the Tsunami?”). Despite the confident assertion of the columnist, the effort to demonstrate that evil disproves the existence of God is now acknowledged all sides to be completely bankrupt. Why?
Evil and Suffering Isn’t Evidence Against God
Philosopher J.L Mackie makes this case against God in his book The Miracle Of Theism (Oxford, 1982).He states it this way: if a good and powerful God exists, he would not allow
pointless evil, but because there is much unjustifiable, pointless evil in the world, the traditional good and powerful God could not exist. Some other god or no god may exist, but not the traditional God. Many other philosophers have identified a major flaw in this reasoning. Ticked away within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely, that if evil appears pointless to me, and then it must be pointless.
This reasoning is, of course why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one. Again we see lurking within supposedly hard-nosed skepticism an enormous faith in one’s own cognitive faculties. If our mind can’t plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can’t be any! This is blind faith of a high order.
If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have a God great and transcendent enough to have good reason for allowing it to continue that you can’t know. Indeed, you can’t have it both ways.
Redemption and Suffering
In Jesus death, God suffer in love, identifying with the abandoned and godforsaken. Why did he do it? The Bible says that Jesus came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without endings us.
Let’s see where this has brought us. If we again ask the question: “Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue? And we look at the cross of Jesus; we still do not know what the answer is. However, we now know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.
So, if we embrace the Christianity teaching that Jesus is God and that he went to the Cross, then we have deep consolation and strength to face the brutal realities of life on earth. We can know that God is truly Immanuel-God with us-even in our worst suffering.