If God is Good, Why Do People Suffer?

Disclaimer: This blog post provides one potential interpretation of sin and suffering from a Christian lens. Although we don’t recommend sharing this post with those in the midst of tragedy or crisis, we hope it will serve as a helpful guide in your spiritual exploration.

Amidst a host of theological quandaries that have been raised throughout the centuries, one question rises to the surface time and again: If God is good, why does he allow suffering? There is no simple answer to this question–if there were, the brightest minds would have long since solved it. However, there are ways that we as Christians can think about sin and suffering that can help us gain a more cohesive view of the world, our faith, and our own pain.

According to the Christian bible, although people were created good (Genesis 1:31), we quickly fell prey to sin and selfish desires, each man going his own way (Isaiah 53:6. However, the Greek word hamartia, used liberally for “sin” in the New Testament, literally translates to a “missing the mark” of God’s righteousness. 

But how exactly does this more flexible definition of sin interact with contemporary protestant views? 

While the contemporary American church puts a significant emphasis on man’s evil nature and fleshly weakness, it can be argued that people have essentially good, God-given desires that they sometimes pursue in evil ways. Our core desires as humans—to be acceptable, loved, and worthy—are simply manifestations of our “panting for God as a deer pants for water” (Psalm 42:1). Simply put, our souls crave God’s adoration and love. However, we often do not still our souls sufficiently to truly receive God; as a result of this perceived emptiness, we pursue worldly means of achieving wholeness.

Enter sin and suffering into the human landscape. Whether it be through addiction, sexual promiscuity, compulsive productivity, or a host of other destructive behaviors, we tragically wander further from the will of God when all we desire is closeness. Soon enough, we find ourselves in a tangle of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that only take us deeper into anxiety, anguish, and isolation. Just like a hedge maze, we have lost sight of both the entrance and exit. We have missed the mark.

In addition to the pitfalls of individual sin, corporate sin can also send us ever further into the abyss, examples of which include war, racism, materialism, totalitarianism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and more. It would take a series of encyclopedias to name all of the ways in which humankind has failed one another in search of ungodly aims such as power, control, and material fulfillment. As if these tragedies were not sufficient, many forms of human suffering apart from sin also plague us, including but not limited to illness, death, natural disaster, and poverty. 

We face these torments on a regular basis, some communities to a larger and more ubiquitous extent than others. At face value, these adversities appear utterly absurd and meaningless; in fact, the skepticism of suffering in the face of a “good” God remains the most prominent critique of Christianity. 

So we are faced again with the question: why? From the Christian perspective, we know that suffering refines us as fire does precious metal (Malachi 3:2-3). We know that suffering helps us to resemble and know Jesus at an intimate level, one that is not possible to attain any other way (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). We know that God’s final redemption will conquer suffering once and for all—that suffering will not destroy us in the end (2 Corinthians 4:8-9). We know that through a miraculous paradox, suffering gives way to life (2 Corinthians 4:12).

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).