Why Does God Allow Suffering? Understanding Evil, Freedom, and Divine Love
This is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask. If God is truly good and all-powerful, why does God allow suffering? Why does evil exist? These questions have troubled believers and skeptics alike for centuries. This page explores how serious Christians answer this fundamental challenge—not with platitudes, but with genuine philosophical reasoning.
You're not alone in asking. The ancient philosopher Epicurus framed the problem this way: if God is omnipotent (all-powerful), he can eliminate evil. If he is omnibenevolent (all-good), he would want to. Since evil exists, either God lacks power or lacks goodness—or doesn't exist at all. This argument still shapes how many people think about the problem of evil today.
The Classical Challenge
The problem of evil claims it is logically impossible for both an all-powerful, all-good God and evil to coexist. This sounds airtight. But the argument rests on two hidden assumptions—and both are false.
Two Hidden Assumptions That Collapse the Argument
Assumption #1: An All-Powerful God Can Do Literally Anything
This seems obvious, but it's not. An all-powerful God can do anything that is logically possible—but some things are logically impossible even for an omnipotent being. For instance, God cannot make a square circle. That's not a limit on God's power; it's a feature of what "power" and "logic" mean.
Here's the key insight: God cannot create a being with genuine free will who is metaphysically incapable of sinning. Why? Because forcing someone to freely choose one option eliminates free choice by definition. Free will and compulsion are contradictory. You cannot combine them, just as you cannot combine "bachelor" and "married."
Think about it: if God wanted creatures who would freely love him, obey him, and build genuine relationships with him, they would need real freedom—the ability to choose otherwise. That means they could sin. The capacity for sin is the price of authentic freedom.
The crucial point: Combining maximal power with maximal love places limits on what God can do. A loving God who respects human freedom cannot create a world where everyone freely chooses good and evil never occurs.
Assumption #2: An All-Loving God Would Prefer a World Without Any Suffering
This also seems self-evident. Wouldn't a perfectly loving God eliminate all pain? But we routinely permit suffering for morally acceptable reasons—and we recognize this as compatible with love.
A father permits his child to undergo chemotherapy, though it causes terrible suffering, because he loves her and wants her to live. A surgeon causes pain during an operation because healing requires it. A coach pushes an athlete through grueling training because growth demands it. In each case, suffering is permitted by someone who genuinely cares—because something of greater value depends on it.
The point is not that we understand God's exact reasons for allowing pain and suffering in this world. The point is much simpler: it is clearly possible that God has morally acceptable reasons for permitting suffering—just as the father, surgeon, and coach do. Since this is possible, Epicurus's logical argument fails. He has not shown that God and evil cannot coexist; he has only assumed it.
Why the "Probability" Version Fails Too
Some philosophers try a softer version: even if God and evil can logically coexist, doesn't the existence of evil make God's existence improbable? Doesn't it count against belief in God?
No—for the same reason. To show that evil makes God's existence improbable, you would first have to show that there are no morally acceptable reasons God might permit suffering. But the argument cannot do this. It cannot eliminate the possibility that a loving, all-powerful God has sound reasons we may not fully understand. And if that possibility exists, then evil's existence does not make God's existence improbable. The burden of proof remains on the skeptic.
What This Answer Does and Doesn't Claim
It's important to be honest about the limits of this response. We are not claiming to know exactly why God permits each instance of suffering. We are not claiming that suffering serves an obvious purpose or that "everything happens for a reason" in a way that always makes sense. We are not pretending that understanding the logic makes the pain less real.
What we are claiming is this: the existence of evil does not logically disprove God, nor does it make his existence improbable—because it is entirely possible that an all-powerful, all-good God has morally sound reasons for allowing the world to unfold as it does. That's all the Christian needs to show to answer Epicurus. And it is demonstrably true.
Beyond the intellectual argument, faith in God during suffering often rests on something deeper: the testimony of those who have encountered God's presence in their darkest moments, who have seen him work good through pain, and who trust his character even when his purposes remain hidden. That is the lived dimension of faith that logic alone cannot capture—but logic can clear the ground, showing that faith is not irrational.
Finding Community in Your Search
Questions about why God allows evil, why there is pain in the world, and how to reconcile the problem of evil with faith in God are not sideline issues. They sit at the heart of what it means to believe. And they are best explored not alone, but in community—with others who are wrestling with the same questions, with pastors and teachers who have spent years thinking through these problems, and with people whose lives have been transformed by faith despite (and sometimes through) deep suffering.
At Riverview Church in Anoka, Minnesota, we believe honest questions deserve serious engagement. We don't pretend suffering is easy to explain, and we don't ask you to check your mind at the door. Instead, we create space for thoughtful people to explore faith deeply, to bring their doubts, and to discover that God is not threatened by hard questions
We understand the deep questions many wrestle with, like if god is good why is there evil, and we find that exploring god and pain together in community can bring comfort and clarity. Our church welcomes you to join us as we seek answers to life's hardest questions and discover how faith sustains us through every season.