This question has been asked for centuries, yet many of us continue to ask it today. I wonder if it's not time we had a different take on why does God allow suffering?
We can look at it from two perspectives, because this question has two major dimensions:
- A personal dimension where suffering is seen as a personal experience and the individual going through it is puzzled how a good God has prepared for them such an amount of pain.
- A universal dimension where suffering is seen as part of life in general, even a foundation of it and we're asking how could a good God have created a world that is based on pain.
Suffering as a personal experience
The answer here is very simple to give, but more difficult to follow inasmuch as it's directly related to the strength of our individual faith.
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. —John 16:33
This verse is powerful because it acknowledges that tribulation (external suffering) exists, but in Christ, believers possess an inner peace so profound that worldly suffering cannot ultimately harm them. Christ's victory over the world is shared with the faithful, effectively transcending suffering even now.
So the answer is simply provided to us by Jesus himself and it's that our faith shields us from suffering. Fully allowing Christ into our hearts will remove suffering. If we think, how can anyone really taste pain when their trust is placed completely with God? In this way, the Kingdom of Heaven is already here.
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you." —Luke 17:20-21
For his Kingdom is wherever he is and when he is in your heart, that's also where the Kingdom is, in this life and the next.
This is not just an abstract demonstration of how suffering cannot affect the faithful, it has concrete manifestations in the everyday life. At times, the earth has sipped with the blood of the martyrs, nowhere more so than in ancient Rome, under the emperor Nero. Without faith, Christianity itself wouldn't have survived, yet the martyrs endured all the torture and death with the infinite courage of those who abandon themselves completely in the hands of God.
[...]Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. [...]Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. —Tacitus, Annals XV.44
Nowhere else is it clearer that faith can utterly transform physical suffering—even the most torturous pain seemed, at times, to be embraced by the martyrs as a form of worship, a profound witness to the limitless power of God. This inner peace was not theoretical—it was lived. The early martyrs like Ignatius of Antioch, who longed to be "God's wheat" ground by wild beasts, or Polycarp, who calmly faced the flames after declaring, "Eighty and six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong," showed that faith in God could make even the cruelest death into a moment of praise. Their courage was not the absence of pain, but the presence of something greater—a trust so complete that fear dissolved into glory.
Of course, this is not meant to minimise the pain some may be going through at this very moment, nor to make anyone feel unworthy for their faith not being strong enough to overcome their suffering. Faith is a journey and we need a lifetime to hone it, but I think it's very comforting to know that suffering is neither imminent nor permanent.
When going through some difficult times in our lives, the last thing we should do is blame God for making us suffer. It's truly the opposite, we should thank him for providing the means to escape the pain through him; and for not just telling us how to do it, but by leading by example, by coming down on earth and showing us exactly how.
Suffering as a universal pattern
The more complicated question is why God allows suffering at all? Why should anyone suffer, even those who don't have faith in him? Even animals? Why does suffering exist? Could a God who allows this be good? Can we even demonstrate the absurdity of the idea of God by showing that an inherently good God could never have created a universe in which the notion of suffering would exist?
All these questions are leading questions, there is a major bias in them as we're presuming suffering is a bad thing in itself. That's because we perceive it as such, but by making deeper observations about our world, we can see that it's not quite like that.
The moment we don't take suffering personally anymore is the moment we realise the entire biological life is based on it. That, in fact, pain is simply a mechanism to guide the growth, survival, adaptation and evolution of all forms of life. If it were not painful it would not be effective.
Our world is not one where suffering is selective, where individuals who sin are punished and the righteous are blessed with a happy life. Although some people would believe it were so, a simple look around would clearly demonstrate the opposite. Pain is constant and predictive, like the laws of physics, not the result of God directly intervening in each life, but more like gravity—built into creation for a clear and essential purpose. Pain and suffering are necessary feedback mechanisms that guide individuals of all species to adapt to the environment, to develop further and thrive in an ever changing world. It's the struggle from which great things occur.
Pain is an evolutionary adaptation that is instructive in that it alerts us to injury, and without pain feedback, humans would likely be incapable of surviving. —Kimberly A. Plomp, Palaeopathology and Evolutionary Medicine
The basis of life on earth, even of evolution itself, is pain and its avoidance. Adaptation to the environment happens by leveraging some kind of suffering. We can see the nature of life on earth is like that, it's based on pain to such an extent that it's its foundation. When we look at it like that, devoid of emotional charge (as obviously nobody likes pain and suffering), it doesn't look like a bad thing anymore, it looks simply like a mechanism, one that is necessary for change to be possible.
How can a good Good create a world where suffering is allowed?
Just like plants and animals adapt and evolve based on their struggles with the changes in the environment, in the same way we require suffering to prompt us to better ourselves spiritually. We are naturally curious and intelligent, but how should these gifts be used? How would we set a goal for ourselves to look to Christ and take his example if nothing prompted us to do anything?
Just as biological pain shapes the body to survive, spiritual suffering shapes the soul to transcend. There is clearly a need for a struggle in order to hone the soul and prepare it for the Kingdom of Heaven. Simply placing it in the Garden of Eden and telling it what to do doesn't work. There needs to be a learning process. This is the human nature and, in fact, the entire nature, the entire world.
How many children learn from their parents and do exactly what they are told? Isn't there a drive in them to go out and try things for themselves despite being told otherwise? It's frustrating to watch them repeat mistakes, but those mistakes often become the very path through which they discover truth for themselves.
We can say the only way to transcend this world is to put faith in God and deny its earthly foundation. Because life outside the Kingdom of Heaven is crude and based on primary instincts so suffering must be its underlying structure, but the life inside the Kingdom of Heaven is spiritual and goes beyond the primary instincts, even beyond reason itself and this is what we should attain, pushed by all our fears and limping towards salvation.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not an angelic state somewhere in the fluffy clouds, its a state of mind that begins right here on earth where we have the opportunity to learn how to be part of it even on this spiritually rugged environment and make ourselves ready for the eternal life.
We need a transformative experience to really understand and pain is transformative.
Suffering as a pattern of the divine
Suffering is a pattern (one of the patterns of the divine). It sits at the basis of biological life on earth and all forms of life seem to be prone to it because it stems from the very engine that God used to create this world.
This is not a world with selective pain it's one that was built on it. Life lives because of pain, this is what evolution and adaptation use to make sure forms of life are adapted to the environment. It's an entire pattern applied here to make sure life is honed the way it is and humans won't be any different.
What we often call "unnecessary suffering" may simply reflect our limited perspective—glimpses taken out of the broader context of creation and spiritual evolution.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. —Romans 8:28
Suffering is not selective, it's universal because the world is built on this principle. The reason it's done like this is so that we may learn from it and transcend it—or not.
Suffering is not God's failure, it's his instrument and one of his patterns. And through faith, we are not merely freed from it, but refined by it, prepared for the eternal Kingdom already within us. Otherwise, we'd be eating the forbidden fruit forever—full of knowledge, but empty of understanding.