Why Does God Allow Suffering?

A man set out to make a list of all the pain and suffering he saw in the world.

The more he wrote, the less he understood. By the hundredth page, the pen ran dry, but reminders of suffering didn’t stop.

So, he turned to his phone.

Headlines of war, missing children, natural disasters, local shootings, funerals, and families in need revealed that the pain was no longer confined to the ink.

It had faces and names.

He scrolled until his eyes grew tired. Then the screen went black.

His phone had died. But the suffering had not.

As the man sat and pondered his reflection in the dark phone screen, he thought to himself:

How could God save me from all of this suffering, and why would He save me at all?

This man was burdened by the question and did not know where to begin. Is that where you find yourself?

Why Is There Suffering?

He needed to look at something else—anything else.

Across the room, a sliver of moonlight rested on a dusty book.

He felt drawn to this book, not because he expected an answer, but because he needed a distraction.

He took a deep breath, blew the dust off the cover, and returned to his chair.

He opened to the beginning.

There, he read that God created the heavens and the earth. This narrative did not begin with cancer, grief, hospital rooms, or broken families.

It began with goodness.

“God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Humanity was created to live in peace with God, with one another, and with the world He had made.

Then brokenness entered the world.

Humanity chose its own way over God’s.

With that brokenness came:

And with it came immediate consequences:

• Shame
• Death
• Pain
• Suffering

What was supposed to distract his mind from suffering began to make sense of it instead.

Could That Brokenness Be in Me, Too?

The man began to understand that suffering was not part of God’s original design. It was the result of a world that had gone wrong. The world was not the way it was meant to be.

He had spent so much time looking at suffering out in the world that he had stopped noticing the suffering in his own life—in his own heart.

He was a husband and father trying to keep up with work, family needs, birthday parties, yard work, health, and the pressure to hold everything together. Somewhere under all of it, he began to wonder whether anyone sees what he is carrying.

Suffering was in him, too.

Maybe this man feels familiar. Maybe he looks a little too much like real life.

How Can I Be Saved?

At first, the man grew discouraged.

As he read, the book not only showed him a broken world, but it showed him his own heart. He saw times he had been short with his wife, absent with his children, and overwhelmed by the pressure of bills, work, and responsibilities. He saw how often fear and personal desires had shaped his choices. The more he read, the more he realized that the brokenness he longed to understand was also in him. He not only needed comfort; he needed rescue.

As he kept reading, hope emerged. From the beginning, the book pointed forward to a Savior.

That Savior’s name is Jesus.

Jesus entered the suffering world. He knew grief, rejection, betrayal, physical pain, and death. He went to the cross, not because suffering was good, but because humanity needed to be saved from sin, death, and separation from God.

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteem him not. … But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:3,5).

Jesus did not come simply to explain suffering; He came to be the living hope.

Why Would God Save Me?

More than halfway through the book this man came to a verse he had heard, but never truly understood.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

He read it again. And again.

If God loved the world this much, then the answer to suffering was … love.

• God saves because He loves.
• God saves because the world is broken.
• God saves to bring people back to Himself.
• God saves so people can overcome suffering and death.
• God saves through Jesus.

A list, a phone, and a dusty book. In the end, the man didn’t find words and pictures of suffering, but of the God who has been here all along.

The true question was never if suffering was real or why it even exists. It was whether a broken world—broken people—could ever be made whole again.

The answer he found was not a conspiracy. It was Jesus. The only One who can take our suffering and make us whole.

If suffering has raised questions for you, do not ponder them alone. Click below to start a conversation with us today!

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