Why Would A Good God Allow Suffering (Part 1 Of 4)
Part 1: The Question Behind the Pain
Why would a good God, a loving God, allow suffering to exist in this world?
That question takes on a whole different weight when you’re the one suffering. When it’s not a hypothetical or theological debate, but your actual life, your pain, your story.
Maybe you’re there right now. Or maybe someone close to you is, and you’re trying to make sense of it all.
I’ve wrestled with this question personally, and I’ve sat with more people than I can count who have asked it in moments of heartbreak. It’s one thing to talk about suffering in theory; it’s another to experience it in your body, your home, your soul.
And in those moments, simple answers don’t cut it.
This post is part of the “God in the Pain” series:
When Answers Make It Worse
One of the hardest things about suffering is that the answers we’re often given make it worse. Well-meaning people try to comfort us, but what we hear is:
- “You just need to believe more.”
- “God is testing you.”
- “You’re suffering because of sin in your life.”
- “If you had more faith, this wouldn’t be happening.”
- “Everything happens for a reason.”
But here’s the problem: those answers aren’t just unhelpful. Often, they aren’t even biblical.
The Bible doesn’t promise that followers of Jesus will be spared from suffering. In fact, it promises the opposite (John 16:33). And nowhere does it say we’ll always understand why suffering happens.
In The Question That Never Goes Away, Philip Yancey (HIGHLY recommend) writes: “Virtually every passage on suffering in the New Testament deflects the emphasis from cause to response… Although we cannot grasp the master plan of the universe, we can nevertheless respond in two important ways. First, we can find meaning in the midst of suffering. Second, we can offer real and practical help to those in need.”
So instead of offering neat answers, I want to walk with you through this. I want to explore what the Bible actually says, what others wiser than me have learned, and—most importantly—what kind of God would allow this kind of world.
Because if we can’t trust God in our suffering, we’ll never fully trust Him at all.
The Question That Won’t Go Away
Suffering forces the question to the surface: Does God care? Is He good? Is He even real?
It’s not a new question. It’s been asked for centuries. C.S. Lewis put it bluntly: “If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.”
That’s the problem of pain in a nutshell.
Lewis himself wrote The Problem of Pain as a philosopher. But later, after losing his wife, he wrote A Grief Observed as a broken man. The logic gave way to grief. And that’s where many of us live, not in the logic, but in the ache.
So let’s start here: God is not afraid of your questions. And the Bible never condemns those who bring their pain and their doubts before Him.
In fact, some of the most faithful people in Scripture were brutally honest with God:
- David cries out, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1)
- Job accuses God of being silent and distant.
- Even Jesus, on the cross, screams out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
God doesn’t shut down those cries. He enters into them.
Suffering and the Center of the Universe
Part of our struggle with this question comes down to perspective.
When we ask, “Why does God allow suffering?” we’re often starting from the assumption that the world should revolve around us. That if we were God, we wouldn’t allow this.
And yet C.S. Lewis challenges that idea with one of the most important insights I’ve ever read:
“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word ‘love’, and look on things as if man were the centre of them… Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake… We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us.”
That one hurts a little. Because it means maybe God’s purposes are bigger than just our comfort.
That doesn’t mean He’s distant or cold. Far from it. But it does mean we have to rethink the question. Not “Why doesn’t God stop all suffering?” but “Could God be doing something even in this that I don’t yet understand?”
We Only See in Part
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.”
In other words, you and I don’t see the full picture yet. We live with limited sight. But God doesn’t. And maybe—just maybe—He’s doing something right now that we wouldn’t understand even if He explained it.
That’s not a cop-out. That’s the definition of faith: trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.
I think about my kids, I have two young boys. There are times that I have to force them to do things they don’t want to do. School, doctors’ visits, and other things that disrupt their fun. Sometimes I’ll even like the dentist poke around in their mouth…
From their perspective, they don’t understand the purpose of this. It just feels uncomfortable and sometimes painful. But I love them enough to make them endure it for their benefit.
It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it’s a glimpse. God doesn’t delight in our pain. But He sees more than we can.
A God Who Enters In
This is what sets Christianity apart from every other belief system.
God doesn’t stay far off, removed from our suffering. He doesn’t simply send down rules or offer advice from a distance. He steps into the story. Into the pain. Into the mess.
He becomes Emmanuel, God with us.
That name shows up a lot around Christmas, but it’s not just seasonal theology. It’s a foundational truth of the Gospel. When Jesus was born, Matthew quoted the prophet Isaiah:
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (meaning ‘God with us’).” —Matthew 1:23
That’s the kind of God we follow. Not one who watches from above, but one who draws close, into the brokenness, the betrayal, and the grief.
As Eugene Peterson paraphrased John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”
And not just any neighborhood. Jesus was born into a land ruled by a tyrant king. He entered a world of Roman oppression, religious corruption, and brutal suffering. A place with a broken past, a grieving present, and an uncertain future. He was born under a government that ordered the massacre of babies. That’s the neighborhood He chose.
Maybe you can relate. Maybe your “neighborhood” right now feels heavy. Like you’re surrounded by anxiety, loss, depression, or trauma. Maybe it feels like God couldn’t possibly want to be there.
But that’s where Emmanuel enters. Not in sanitized perfection, but in suffering.
As Philip Yancey writes: “For whatever reason, God has chosen to respond to the human predicament not by waving a magic wand to make evil and suffering disappear but by absorbing it in person… In the face of suffering, words do not suffice. We need something more: the Word made flesh, actual living proof that God has not abandoned us. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, ‘Only a suffering God can help.’”
That’s what Emmanuel means. God didn’t send a memo—He sent Himself.
He didn’t stay distant—He moved in.
He didn’t ignore the pain—He entered it.
And He still does.
That’s the hope we hold onto in suffering. Not that we’ll always get an explanation, but that we are never alone in it.
Jesus understands what it’s like to be abandoned, misunderstood, betrayed, and crushed. He’s not unfamiliar with grief; He wept. He’s not a stranger to agony; He sweat drops of blood. He didn’t just teach about suffering from a distance; He took it upon Himself.
So when we cry out in pain, we’re not met with silence. We’re met with a Savior who says, “Me too.”
This is why Immanuel matters so much, because it means your pain is not ignored, not overlooked, not meaningless. It’s seen. It’s understood. And it’s shared.
He is God with us. Still. Even now.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I know we haven’t fully answered the question yet, Why does God allow suffering? Honestly, we may never completely understand the answer on this side of eternity.
But maybe that’s not the point.
Maybe the real comfort isn’t found in an explanation, but in a Person.
Not in a resolution, but in a relationship.
Not in understanding all the reasons, but in knowing you’re not alone.
This is the message of Emmanuel: God with us. Not just during the easy, polished moments, but in the hardest, darkest, messiest seasons of life.
God didn’t stay distant. He moved in. He didn’t explain away pain. He entered into it. And when we suffer, He suffers with us. He is present. He is near. And He is not leaving.
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
So maybe your pain is not the end of your story. Maybe it’s the beginning of something new, a deeper faith, a greater dependence, a more honest walk with God.
In the next part of this series, we’ll look at what the Bible actually says (and doesn’t say) about suffering, because it might surprise you. But for now, if you’re hurting, let this be your anchor:
You are not abandoned.
You are not forgotten.
God is with you. Right now. Right here.
And sometimes… that’s exactly what we need most.
Still wrestling with suffering?
God in the Pain is a free 7-day devotional I wrote to help you keep processing what you’re going through—with Scripture, honest reflection, and real hope.
If this post spoke to you, this devotional is your next step.
Download it free and let God meet you in the middle of the pain.
