The Most Googled Questions About God — Episode 3: Why Does God Allow Evil and Suffering?
There’s nothing new about this commonly asked question about God and religion. From prophets in the Old Testament to martyrs in the Revelation, saints of God have struggled to understand the answer to the simple question: “Why?”
In this episode, we will delve into verses that provide a basis for understanding this puzzling dilemma of mankind—If God is all-powerful and if He is perfect in love, then why does He permit evil and suffering? As we think on these passages, we’ll gain strength and patience to endure in a world that, as the great Old Testament character Job described it, is “full of trouble.”
Read about this subject
- Scripture: Genesis 3; Deuteronomy 8; Hebrew 12:1-11
- God at a Distance
Listen to more on this subject
Transcript
Kerry Duke: Hi, I’m Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you’ve learned with others.
Why does God allow evil and suffering? One of the reasons is because God gave us free will and He lets us use it. He gave us the ability to choose, and we abuse that freedom. We make wrong choices. In other words, simply put, we sin. From Adam and Eve all the way down to your life and mine, the whole human race is to blame for some of the pain and heartache in this world.
If you read the first three chapters of the Bible, you can’t miss that. God didn’t make this world evil. It was good when God made it. God made the light, and it was good. God made the land and the waters, and it was good. God made the vegetation, and it was good. God made the sun, the moon and the stars, and it was good. God made the birds and the sea creatures, and it was good. And on day six when God made the land animals He also made man. And when God looked on everything that he had made, the Bible says behold everything was very good. That’s Genesis chapter 1.
Genesis chapter 2 breaks some of this down and gives us more details, especially details about mankind. God made Adam and Eve and joined them together in what we’ve come to call holy matrimony. God made the human race male and female. God created this thing called marriage. God is the one who gave away the bride in that first wedding. The Bible says after He had made the woman, he brought her to the man and they became husband and wife. They had a much better home than you and I will ever have. When they married, there was no sickness and death. There was no fear of killing and stealing. They didn’t have to work as hard as you and I do. Adam and Eve had this thing called free will. God gave them every reason to love Him and do what He told them to do, but the choice was theirs.
And, in Genesis chapter three, Adam and Eve‘s loyalty to God was tested. Satan tempted Eve. God told them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They knew God said it. They knew it was wrong. But the devil has a way of clouding, our minds, or better said, he has a way of clouding our feelings. That’s what he did with Eve. God had told them that if they ate of the tree, they would die. But the devil told Eve that God was just saying that because He didn’t want them to enjoy the food and be wise like him. So Adam and Eve made a choice. A bad choice. They deliberately disobeyed God. And they paid a heavy price. God told Eve that she would have trouble as a woman that she had never known before. God had always intended for Eve to have children. We know that because of Genesis one verse 28. He told them to be fruitful and multiply. But in Genesis chapter 3, verse 16, God said child bearing would be different from that point on. God said, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” This verse says that having a baby would be harder for Eve because of her sin. If you’re a mother, this is where you more than anyone can relate to what happened. If Eve had not sinned and had a baby, she would have felt pain. It would have been an emotional experience. But it would not have been as painful or as often as it was after she sinned, and as it is today. And that’s why women to this day have the level of pain and suffering they experience.
What about men? Adam sinned too. God cursed the ground and it is much harder to take care of. God had always intended for man to work. He put Adam to work before he sinned. The Bible says in Genesis 2 verse 15 that God put Adam in the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. He worked the ground in the beginning, but it was much harder to work after he sinned. Every time a woman has a baby, she should think of what happened in the garden. Every time a man is tired from work, he ought to remember what Adam did. The burdens of life are harder because of sin.
But Adam and Eve both suffered in another and even worse way. God told them for the first time ( at least as far as the Bible records) that they would die. He told Adam those famous words: “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3 verse 19). He didn’t say He would strike them dead all at once. He just said they would die. Death became a part of life. They never had that that feeling before as far as we know. We don’t even know if they had thought of dying. But now they know where their life is headed. They know it will all end, and that has caused pain and heartache in the human race ever since. In Hebrews 2 verse 15 the Bible talks about the fear of death being like bondage, like chains, like being in a prison. Read the book of Ecclesiastes. If you look at it carefully, you’ll see that Solomon tells us why life can be depressing. It’s because death is like a dark cloud hanging over you. So we suffer, to varying degrees of course, in an emotional way because of death that is here because of sin. We suffer grief when someone close to us dies. We feel anxious about dying ourselves. The good news is that Jesus helps us bear that fear and hurt in this life. He tells us to come to Him and we’ll find rest (Matthew 11 verse 29). And, He promises us eternal rest when we die. The Bible says in Revelation 14 verse 13: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”
When Adam and Eve sinned, their bodies changed. They began to decline. You’ll notice in Genesis chapters five through nine that some lived to be over 900 years old. Then in Genesis 11 the life span was declining. Some lived to be 500, some 400, then some 200. Abraham lived to be 175, but no one after Genesis 12 lived over 200 years. The human body had lost some of its vitality. About 400 years after Abraham, even Moses, who lived to be 120, said in Psalm 90 verse 10 that the average person lives into his seventies and some because of a strong constitution live into their eighties. In the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, the Bible talks about what happens to us as we age and says what we all know is coming: the dust our bodies are made of returns to the dust. We are frail and mortal. We are suspect to injury. We get sick. We have long, painful battles with all kinds of illnesses that finally take our life. And why does that happen? Why do we have this thing called death? Because of sin. Because our first parents sinned. Paul wrote, “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (First Corinthians 15 verses 21 and 22).
It doesn’t do much good to complain, “But why do we have to suffer all this because of what they did?” And do we really think we would have done any different? Are we so sure that we would have never disobeyed God if we had been in the Garden? We have disobeyed Him in some way or another—by things we did, things we shouldn’t have said, by things in our heart. We sometimes disobey Him now. What makes us think we’re better and wiser than Adam and Eve? So, yes, we suffer indirectly because of what others did—namely, in this case, Adam and Eve. But don’t we suffer because of what others do now? Of course we do. People all around us make their own choices. Those decisions affect our lives—for good or for bad. We benefit and we suffer because of how other people use their free will. People steal and we pay the price. People lie and we bear the consequences. People who are drunk and on drugs wreck on the highways and kill people. Governments oppress and use people. Young people live a wild life and worry their parents to death. Parents abuse their children and make their lives miserable. There is no way to escape this. It’s the nature of this life. We live in a world where we all have free will. Even Jesus suffered because of others. Of course He suffered and died for all of our sins, but He also suffered because of what others did to Him. Now Jesus was God. He was deity. He had the power to strike people dead. But He allowed them to torment Him. He allowed the Jews to mock Him. He allowed the Roman soldiers to spit on Him, slap Him, beat Him with whips, and nail Him to a wooden cross to die. So when we ask, “Why does God allow evil and suffering?” we need to ask, “Why did God allow Himself to suffer?”
And maybe we need to ask more often, “Who am I to ask why God allows evil and suffering when I’ve caused suffering in the lives of other people by my sins?” You may not have killed anyone. You may not have caused the pain that some have brought on others. But you’ve said or done or left undone things that hurt or even harmed others. And yet God allowed you to live. God allowed you to live even though He knew you’d make other mistakes and bring pain on others. Instead of asking “Why does God allow evil and suffering?”, maybe we need to ask, “Why does God allow me to have evil thoughts? Why does God allow me to fail to help others like I know I should?” (That’s evil too, you know).
And here’s another part of this. We suffer directly because of our sins. We bring some of our troubles on ourselves—maybe more than we want to admit. It’s easy to see how others suffer for their sins. They drink and carouse and pay for their sins. They lie and steal and bear the consequences of what they do. They use and abuse others and end up being lonely and betrayed themselves. The Bible says in Galatians 6 verse 7, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” Proverbs 13 verse 15 says that “the way of transgressors is hard.” But it doesn’t have to be one of the more outward sins that bring us trouble. Pride in the heart will bring a man low—very low. A loose tongue will cause a lot of trouble in a person’s life. A person with a critical spirit will be criticized by others. That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you” (Matthew 7 verses 1 and 2).
Now there’s only one way God can prevent this. There’s only one thing He can do to stop us and the whole human race from doing bad things. He would have to take away our free will. Every time anyone started to say the wrong thing, God would have to intervene and stop that person from saying it. Every time a person reached forth his hand to steal, God would have to pull his hand back. Every time a person was about to have pride or hate or lust in his heart, God would have to prevent it. And what would that make us? We wouldn’t have free will. We wouldn’t be any different from animals. We would be like robots without free will. That is why we all need to remember, and we need to remind others that ask this question, that when we ask why God allows evil and suffering, what we’re really asking is why God allows us to choose. And that, friends, is a question that is above us in the fullest sense, because we’re asking why God made us and made us the way He did.
Another reason God allows us to live in a world of sin and suffering is given in Deuteronomy 13. God is speaking through Moses to the people of Israel. They were still in the desert. They had come out of Egypt. As a nation, the Israelites had lived in this desert for forty years. Now they’re about to enter their new home—the land of promise, the land of Canaan. Here is what God told them. “And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you” (Deuteronomy 8 verses 2 through 5). Why does God allow us to suffer? Look at what God said. First, He led them through the desert forty years. That’s a long time. Their journey was full of trials and troubles. Why did God do this? The first thing God says is this: God said He did it “to humble you.” Pride is one of the greatest enemies we have. It gets into us and we don’t even see it. We don’t realize how proud we are until trouble comes.
Do you remember the story of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter 4? He was king of the most powerful and wealthy nation on earth—the Babylonian Empire. One night he had a dream that bothered him. He dreamed about a great tree that was cut down, but the stump was left. Daniel told him what the dream meant. Nebuchadnezzar was the tree in the dream. He was about to lose the throne. That’s not all he lost. He was about to lose his mind and live in the fields like an animal. But there was a chance he could have avoided this. Daniel told him to “break off your sins by being righteous, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your prosperity” (Daniel 4 verse 27). But the king didn’t listen. He eventually went right back to his prideful ways. A year later he was walking in his luxurious palace and looking at the great city of Babylon he built. Then he boasted, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?” (Daniel 4 verse 30). He was saying, “All this is mine! I built all this!” But verse 31 says, “While the word was still in the king’s mouth, a voice fell from heaven: ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you! And they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen; and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses.’ That very hour the word was fulfilled concerning Nebuchadnezzar; he was driven from men and ate grass like oxen; his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws.”
Who would have thought something like this would happen to a king? When he was in power and good health, everybody looked up to him. Everybody bowed to him. But now he’s lost his mind and nobody wants anything to do with him. He’s so disgusting they just want him out of their sight. They didn’t put him in a home where he could be taken care of. They just threw him out of the palace into the fields to fend for himself. Life can change quickly for any one of us. Solomon said, “I have seen servants on horses, while princes walk on the ground like servants” (Ecclesiastes 10 verse 7). It was normally the other way around. But sometimes life turns upside down and puts people at the top on the bottom and people at the bottom on top. In Nebuchadnezzar’s case, a man couldn’t get any lower. He couldn’t have been more humiliated. We don’t know how long this lasted. The Bible says seven times passed over him. Some think that means seven years, and it could have been. What we do know is that the number seven in the Bible is often a symbolic number. It’s not so much an amount as an idea. It means completion. It means that something has run its full course. Nebuchadnezzar suffered long enough to get the message. If he had suffered like this just for a few minutes, it probably wouldn’t have changed his attitude. But God let him go through this long enough for the experience to have its full effect. We need to remember this. We want the pain and heartache to be over quickly. But that’s not best.
For Nebuchadnezzar, things took a dramatic change for the better. He regained his mind and his position. This time, he didn’t brag about what he accomplished. He didn’t give himself the credit for all the power and glory he had. He praised God this time. He learned his lesson, but it took a lot of pain to get there. Sound familiar? In Daniel 4 verses 36 and 37 he said, “And at the end of the time I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me; and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever: For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’ At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my honor and splendor returned to me. My counselors and nobles resorted to me, I was restored to my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all of whose works are truth, and His ways justice. And those who walk in pride He is able to put down.” It’s common for man to lift himself up, but God can take him down.
That’s what God told the Israelites. They needed to be humbled. But they weren’t kings like Nebuchadnezzar. They had been slaves! You don’t have to be rich or powerful to be proud. A poor man can be as arrogant as a rich man. An ignorant man can be as proud as a smart man. These Israelites had very little in Egypt. The Egyptians beat them and worked them like animals and made their lives miserable. That’s when they cried out to God. And, that is exactly the same thing that happens today. When we’re down on our luck, as we say, we get down on our knees. But when we get back up on our feet, we forget about God. These Israelites begged God for mercy when they were slaves. But when God set them free, they complained and rebelled. That’s why God told them in Deuteronomy 8 that their trip through the desert was not designed to be a pleasure cruise. It was a journey through the school of hard knocks. Some of them learned their lesson. Others didn’t.
God gave another reason in Deuteronomy 8. God said He sent them through this time of trial to “test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.” Why does God allow us to go through pain and heartache? To test us. Now, that’s not for Him. God doesn’t toy or play games with us. And, here’s something else we need to remember. God doesn’t test us so that He can see what we’re made of. He doesn’t test us because that’s the only way He can know if we’re sincere. He already sees that. So what does this mean? It means God allows us to be in situations, or, He puts us in situations, that bring to the surface what is inside us. The hardships of life bring out what is within us. With some people, the troubles of life bring out the worst. We sometimes say that the burdens and pains of life can make us bitter and hateful and can even make us hate God. But those hardships don’t make a person hate God. They just bring out what was already there. And the same thing is true in a good way. We say that trials in life make us better, that they bring out the best in some people. But that’s because, like people who are prideful and selfish inside, they choose to be better. Pain in life brings out strength and potential a person never knew he or she had. But it takes a great amount of pressure and stress and pain to pull these things out. The Bible describes it like a refining fire. Fire not only tested metals in Bible days; it also separated the good from the bad and made the precious metals stand out. In Isaiah 48 verse ten God said, “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”
Notice what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 8 verse 3. It says “He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna.” God allowed them to be hungry. Why? To teach them. To humble them. To make them better. To help them appreciate the food they ate. And, to teach them that there is more to life than eating. That’s why Jesus quoted those very words to the devil in Matthew chapter 4. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” How many of us would ever really learn these things without going through hard times?
There is something else in the words of Deuteronomy 8 we need to remember when we hear people ask why God allows evil and suffering. It’s in verse 5: “You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you.” Discipline is part of raising a child. Children need discipline. There is a part of them that resents it and a part of them that craves it. But discipline is good for a child. It teaches him to respect authority. It teaches him self-control. It teaches him that he can’t have everything he wants. It teaches him humility. The Bible says that children of God need chastening. Chastening is more specific. Discipline means telling a child what to do. It means telling him what not to do. It means getting on to that child when he needs it. It’s a broader word than the word chasten. To chasten means to cause pain to get a child’s attention. The Bible is very clear about this. Proverbs 22 verse 15 says, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of correction will drive it far from him.” It also says that “The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother” (Proverbs 29 verse 15). Proverbs 29 verse 17 says, “Correct your son, and he will give you rest; Yes, he will give delight to your soul.”
In Deuteronomy 8 verse 5, Moses said God chastens His people just like a Mom or Dad chastens a child. And, remember how God did this with the Israelites. He chastened them by letting them see what it was like to feel hungry. He didn’t let them starve to death. He let them go without eating for a while. That was good for them. And, He chastened them in different ways in that desert. Now the Bible says that God chastens Christians today. Here’s the fascinating passage in the book of Hebrews on this. These Christians were being persecuted. This book was written to encourage them. In the last part of chapter 10, the writer told them to remember that they had been through trials before. They endured those trials. God was with them and guided them through the storm. Then in chapter 11 he reminded them of what the people of God went through in the Old Testament. They suffered.They endured. Then in chapter twelve he points us to the greatest example of enduring hard times in life—Jesus Christ.“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.” That’s verses 1 through 3. Life for a Christian is like a race that we run. Sometimes it’s hard. We get tired. We grow discouraged. This passage say we need to look to Jesus in times like these. He says to think about what Jesus endured when He died on the cross and compare your burdens to His. Then he told these Christians that even though they were persecuted by wicked people, at least they were still alive. At least their enemies hadn’t killed them. That’s what he says in verse 4: “You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.”
Then this book tells us to remember something else about hard times in the Christian life. Sometimes these trials are chastening from the hand of God the Father. Verses 5 through 11 read, “And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: ‘My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.’ If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” That is one of the most remarkable passages in the Bible on the subject of Christian suffering. It’s also one of the most overlooked. How many times do we think about this when trials come? Many times the first thing we think about is why all this is happening and what good can come from it and why it would be better for it to end and end quickly. Sounds like a little child doesn’t it? And that’s the point. As Christians, we are children—children of God. And we don’t know what we need. We think we do but we don’t. Sometimes we don’t need the easy life we think is best. We need hard times as well as good times. God does not spoil His children. He doesn’t abuse them, but He does discipline them. That’s one of the reasons there is pain and suffering in this life. If God stopped the pain every time you asked Him to and as soon as you asked Him, you would never learn what you should. You would never grow like you should. Like a spoiled child or a neglected child, you would never mature.
The Bible says in James 1 verses 2 and 3, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.”
Thank you for listening to My God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Study at your level. Aim higher and get in touch with us today.