It’s now two weeks after the worst earthquake to wreak havoc on southern Turkey and northwestern Syria in over 80 years. As of Monday another powerful temblor has struck the same region. Buildings collapsed. More lives were lost.
You’ve heard the argument. You’ve thought it too.
If God is all powerful and good, why does he allow for so many good people to suffer? Why would a good God let bad things happen in the world he made?
When we witness tragedy in our own lives, like the death of a loved one, or when we experience tragedy on a regional, national, or global scale—the existence of evil and suffering seem to outweigh the goodness of an all-powerful, benevolent God.
If he is good, then he sure isn’t powerful. And if he’s powerful, then God sure isn’t very good. In fact, he sounds a lot more like Disney’s Maleficent than he does a deity.
Or he’s a young child playing burning ants with a magnifying glass. What a maniac.
Based on these observations about our world, any reasonable person in this world should come to terms with the simple fact that God does not exist. But if God does not exist, then why should anyone have a problem with suffering and evil at all?
If God is not there, if he is nowhere, then why do we call something “good” or “evil” in the first place? If God is not there, isn’t suffering just a feeling—no more or less important than other experiences we live through?
But tragedy doesn't let God off the hook either. If God does exist, then the very existence of suffering and evil is a really big problem for Christians to make sense of. However, it’s an even greater problem for everyone else—because ultimately, evil and suffering have no one to report to in a world without God. They happen to us and we can’t control them, and there is no reason for it and there is no end to it. It just happens—or it doesn’t (if you’re “lucky”). Chance, or luck, meaningless whatever, governs human existence and some have it better off than others, I guess. How should I know?
If God does not exist, then does “survival of the fittest” govern reality? Is that what determines who lives and who dies? Evolutionary choice—the strong consume the weak? If that’s the case, why not make that the acceptable norm? Why have societies that punish criminals? Why try to have just societies and pursue peace if it’s all for nothing and no reason? Why try to play god if there is no heaven above or hell below? Maybe a MadMax world makes sense, with the powerful consuming the weak.
And if God’s not there, isn’t it just natural for people to live and die—some longer than others, but to no real end and with no purpose and with the stronger butchering the weak-minded and simple people?
What I’m challenging here is the notion that all of life is just random chance. If that’s the case, then no one should complain when bad things happen. If it’s a random, meaningless life, then we have nothing to object to, nothing to hold others accountable to, and nothing to live for. Stuff just happens because it happens.
When a person is unjustly murdered, we can’t respond with outrage because it just happens. Why should we care if someone dies, if it’s all just chance and there’s no one to report to?
I realize that this does not let God off the hook for all of the tragedy that happens in this world. God does not stop all evil and suffering from happening, and he hasn’t yet eliminated evil from existence. That’s true. But what’s so interesting about the Christian story is that God does not let himself off the hook either, in fact, he actually has decided to put himself on the “hook” of human suffering. God did this in the life and death of his son, Jesus.
Jesus entered into this world of evil and suffering, and he became a curse for us within it. He was afflicted, mistreated, imprisoned, beaten, mocked, and murdered. God in Christ knows human suffering, tragedy, evil, despair, fear, loneliness, grief, agony, deceit, frustration, and the rest. All of it.
God took evil and suffering so seriously that he allowed for his Son to experience evil and suffering to the fullest on the cross. God allowed for pain and death to swallow him up. He took death so seriously that he didn’t just face it head on, but he went down in the grave.
Because God in Jesus Christ did that, we can trust that he not only knows what our suffering is like—and he not only empathizes with us in our pain—but he also has a decisive plan to triumph over all evil and suffering. Death did not get the last word, he conquered the grave by rising up out of it. Because of that, his plan is set into motion and we can trust that he is going to put an end to evil and suffering forever.
Maybe not in our ideal timing, but eventually, it’s going to happen. Because when Jesus came out of that grave that he went into for us, he began this great work of putting an end to suffering, tragedy, and evil for good. He started to step on evil’s ugly head and has been crushing it once and for all ever since. It’s only a matter of time until we experience the new reality that Jesus has ushered in. And that’s a whole lot more than any other view of reality can say. There’s real hope. It’s a promise. That’s a fact.
