Why Is There So Much Evil, Pain, and Suffering in The World – Or More Specifically, How Can There Be a Loving God That Allows It To Continue, Especially Among Good People?

George Barna's research shows this is the #1 question believers would like to have answered by God. 

But, let’s examine that for a moment.  How can anyone realize good and evil, right from wrong without first acquiring a conscience for it?  If all creatures spawn from nothing, can measure for such a distinction exist?  If so, then by what standard?

If you score 90% on a test while others get 70% or 50%, how do you inherently know that you fared better?  Moreover, it presupposes that 100% is a perfect score.  Knowledge of difference is understood because there is a pre-defined scale.

Pain and suffering cannot be measured without recognition of invention and inventor.  Feelings, for example, are based in the tension of cause and effect.  Logically, what you feel has to have a starter source.  Can anyone possibly explain effect without cause?  What prompts you to feel remorse when a close loved one dies or a crushed romance eclipses your heart?  If you ask, why there is so much pain and evil, you only do so because internally you know the opposite exists as well.

I remember my uncle professing with pride at my Dad's memorial that his brother refused to bow down to the false superstitions of religion, that he died with his senses, returning to nothingness.  If it hadn’t been such a pathetic and empty statement, I would have burst out laughing.  Here’s a man with a pHD in science making such an odd, illogical comment.  .  If there is no god, no source of life, then there are no measures or values.  If there are no values then pain and suffering are meaningless, and so are our thoughts and time spent on earth or wherever we may be in an immeasurable nothingness.   His words and our purpose for gathering irrelevant, hormonal instinctual animals that we are because—in the end—they are just abstract, intangible, mirages.

Skip Heitzeg reflects that Peter penned his first letter in 64 A.D.  In Chapter 4, verse 12, he says this: “ Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.”  It was in this year that Nero torched Rome, so most people believed.  He had a quest to build, the city was old, and he was seen gleefully laughing as the majority of the city went up in flames.  But, he would never admit to it.  When people tried to put out those fires, Roman soldiers would stop them and start new ones. The population that had lost their homes, their personal goods, loved ones were in such furor that they turned against Caesar Nero with almost an all out revolt.  He knew he needed to do something to get the attention off of him.  He needed a scapegoat. Who do you think he chose?  First century Christians were thrown to the lions as they weren’t liked anyway.  So, Nero said that they started the fires.  To drive home the symbolism that they were at fault, while alive, he had them doused in pitch, tied them to poles, and set fire to them.  This persecution began and lasted for the next 200 years in Rome.  As Peter’s letter continued: “But (instead) rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”  

Rejoice? Really!  Peter takes suffering and elevates the honor in it.  Why?  Because if you suffer for the right reason, you suffer with Christ as he suffered on earth.  

When C.S. Lewis was asked, “why do the righteous suffer?”  He responded, “why not?”  They are the only ones who can take it.”  They will do it differently than somebody who doesn’t have that hope.

Right now, today, I feel great.  I am not suffering.  Is it because I am doing nice things, not upsetting quite so many people around me to attract good Karma?

As believers, we face these things: 1. Evil is real. It exists. We have had that ingrained into our hearts because we are one with Jesus’ indwelling adopted Spirit and experience on earth.  We do not have to conjure up good thoughts or ideas that wisp it away from our conscience as if evil, pain, suffering, hardship were all an illusion or bad juju.  Just as much, so is good, very good, and excellent. One needs the other to exist. To play some metaphysical game about it doesn’t help anybody. 2. God allows evil to exist, and he’s in absolute control of the universe that he made.   While suffering is hard and uncomfortable to think about, so is Sovereignty--surrender and knowledge that God will be absolutely fair about everything and every person that ever existed throughout all time. 3. God has a purpose in evil existing that can even be helpful.  Suffering can reveal and bring God glory (credit and revealed understanding) for events and purposes.  It enables us to love purely as well as puts to death many of the habits and ways of our past. 1 Peter 1:7 “so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ”  4. Suffering humbles us.  Paul had a thorn in his flesh, some deep wound, to keep him humble and not taken out by the great responsibility and endowment laid upon him.  God revealed heaven to Paul. In his life since the Damascus road encounter with the living God, he was shown many great things that dwarfed any riches the world had to offer by comparison.  His power and effectiveness came through his humility and the groundings of personal human afflictions.  5. Suffering keeps us dependent upon God like nothing else.  It grabs our attention.

When I visited Israel at 18, my last 4 ½ weeks spent there was the most agonizingly sick time I’ve experienced in my life up until now.  I could not fathom why I had a continuous high fever, exhaustion, and delirium—thousands of miles away from all that I knew and loved. Honestly, I did not know if I would ever recover from it and none of the doctors did either.  Shouting out to God from my bed in confusion, in angst, and much anger-- “why are you doing this to me?!” was almost a daily occurrence.   It was a record year for heat and there were no air conditioners anywhere.  I think I must have felt a little like Jonah when he lost the shade tree in the desert.  Just take me now (although I was too scared to say that).  I pleaded and prayed.  Eventually, as I ran out of time to collect a refund on my Eurail pass that I had planned to use after traveling through Israel (instead of being sick in bed), I decided to go home.  Still very sick with fever and some delirium, I rode the bus 45 minutes to book my reservation.  Leaving the travel agency with ticket in hand, I had an instant impression that I was healed!  So much so, I started to walk back toward the reservation office to cancel my ticket.  In those 20 feet, I recognized that somebody up there was trying to tell me something.  I turned back, instead boarding a bus to visit friends in two different cities.  Instead of my head blowing up as it always had, I raced around, had two meals, got home by 7 with a 98.6 degree temperature read from the thermometer.  My roommates and I had planned this trip together in 10 days.  “You can still cancel your tickets, one of them said.”  I know, I retorted.  But, I think somebody up there is trying to tell me something.  And there was great peace. Staying with the plan, I flew out in a couple of days. Once the plane was in the air, tremendous remorse hit me, in having made that decision.  I thought, I may never get this opportunity again.  Finally back at home, still remorseful, a month or so passed.  My great aunt came by to translate a letter written to her and to me.  My older cousin relayed this to my aunt, “You know, I’ve always been an atheist.  But if there ever was a time I was to believe in God it was knowing that Ralph was going to travel to the Red Sea with his roommates, Max and Gary.”  Apparently, they had followed up on our plans to travel, hitched a ride in a VW Bus.  On the way down to the Red Sea, on the two-lane highway, a large travel bus swerved to avoid hitting a camel crossing the road and collided head on into the VW Van, killing all people inside. 

Suffering and sacrifice saved my life.  I thought of myself as a good person that was cheated.  But, suffering yielded a broader plan beyond my personal comfort, and I have gotten to know so many more of you than I ever would have, had it not had its good effect upon my person.