“Why would a good God allow so much suffering?”

At the church where I serve we are in the middle of a sermon series entitled Skeptic. During this series we are spending our time looking at the eight common questions that skeptics pose as a challenge to the Christian faith. And as we go through this series, our hope and prayer is that we would address these eight common questions that skeptics pose to challenge Christianity in way that answers these questions and that equips us to have confidence and convictions about the nature and character of God and His activity in the world around us.

This week I would like for us to address the fifth of these eight common questions that those who are skeptical ask as a challenge to God and the Christian faith. And that question is this: “Why would a good God allow so much suffering?”

Now this is a question that we all ask at some point in our lives. And, for many people, this question serves as the chief objection to the Christian faith.  The timeless reality is that every human being experiences suffering. For example, we experience suffering as a result of the frailty of our bodies and the inevitable march toward death that we all experience. For some that death involves the suffering of disease.

For others, that death involves the suffering that comes from some type of accident.  We also experience suffering as a result of the seemingly cruel laws of nature that produce earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, or a branch falling on a moving car in a storm. The second law of thermodynamics, which is the scientific law of entropy, that demonstrates that the earth is moving from order to disorder, in a process of decay, produces acts of nature that result in suffering.

However, what makes suffering even worse is the human element- our suffering is magnified by the hatred and hostility of humanity toward one another. Whether it is the terrorism of 9/11, the human sex trafficking market, ethnic violence, or crime, human beings often feel surrounding by the suffering that flows from the mistreatment and exploiting of one another.

And it is not just the quantity of the suffering that causes us to question the existence of God. The very nature of the grief that surrounds suffering causes us to question God. It only takes a single person that we care about coming into a season of suffering to bring us to a place where we question God. It doesn’t take the murder of 6 million Jews to question God. It only takes a small personal tragedy to drive us to ask “Where is God? How could an all-powerful God let this happen? Is God real? Is God really there? Does God really care? Or is God distant and disinterested? Or does God even exist?

So how should we respond to the skeptics question “Well if there is a God, then why would a good God allow so much suffering?” Those who reject God often make a very strong case against God when it comes to the issue of suffering in the world. As Bill Kynes points out, the philosophical case against God often goes something like this: A God who is all powerful would be able to prevent evil in the world. A God who is all good would want to prevent evil in the world. However, evil exists in the world. Therefore, an all-powerful and all-good God cannot exist.

This argument is referred to as a syllogism. A syllogism simply states that if A = B, and B = C, then A = C. And when you look at this philosophical argument against God, it seems like a very strong argument. So how should a follower of Jesus respond to such a strong argument?

Often religious people will try to respond to this philosophical argument against God by trying to water down one of the premises. For example, some religious people will respond to this argument against God by proclaiming that evil is not as real as we imagine. As a matter of fact, much of Easter Religious philosophy, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, tends towards this direction.

However, the problem with this view is that its truth is fundamental challenged by universal human experience. Across continents and cultures, throughout human history, evil has been a real and present reality. And because of that reality, denying evil is not a right and realistic response to this question because evil is an all too present reality that hurts too badly.

Other religious people will respond to this argument against God by proclaiming that God exists but He just simply isn’t as powerful as we thought. This was the position taken by Rabbi Harold Kushner in his popular book “When bad things happen to good people.” This thinking is promoted by proponents of what is referred to as “open theology”.

Advocates for open theology maintain that God allows sickness and cruelty to come into the world because He just can’t do anything about it. God wanted a loving relationship with real people, so he decided to take the risk of creating humanity with free will, and how could he possibly know what they would choose? So God has to simply let things play out according to the rules He’s established. God is like a master chess player who does not know the moves that humanity will make but is so great a chess player that He will eventually win the game in the end.

So when bad things happen to good people, the question for humanity, according to Kushner, is can humanity learn to love and forgive God despite His limitations? In response to Kushner’s book, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel powerfully proclaimed, “If that is who God is, why doesn’t he resign and let someone more competent take his place?” Elie accurately pointed out that this idea of a limited God that is promoted through open theism is not the God who is proclaimed in the letters that make up the Bible.

Still other religious people respond to this philosophical argument against God by proclaiming that God is all powerful, but He is just not as caring as we would like. He is a God who created the world but now lives in a way that is distant and disinterested with what is happening in the world. This view pictures God like a clock maker who makes a clock, starts the clock, then walks away from the clock, distant and disinterested in the clock as it keeps time.

This seems to be the predominant view of Islam, for example.  The Qur’an expresses it simply in 57.22: “Every misfortune that befalls you is ordained”. Buddhism, while having a very different view of God, reflects a very similar attitude of resignation when it comes to how God engages the word that is created.

But are these the best responses that we can come up with to this philosophical argument? That evil is really not that bad? That God is really not that powerful? That God is really not that good?

What if I told you that there is a better response? What if I told you that there is a response that is found, not just in the letters that make up the Bible, but in the very life of the historical figure of Jesus?

Tomorrow we will begin to discover that response together…