Brent Pollard
Type it into any search engine, and the question appears predictably: if God exists, why does He permit pain? The skeptic asks it as a checkmate. The grieving parent whispers it through tears. The college sophomore hurls it like a stone. The believer wonders it himself in the small hours, when the house is quiet, and the news will not stop.
Yet this is a loaded question—one whose phrasing smuggles in conclusions before any response can be given. If we answer it as posed, we risk losing the conversation at the outset.
The Hidden Assumptions Behind the Challenge
Notice what the question quietly assumes. It assumes God must love as we do. It assumes good means avoiding all discomfort. It assumes that freedom and goodness go together, and that a loving Creator must protect His creatures from harm, as if wrapping them in cotton. The question has already decided what God must be before it asks whether He is.
Given this, the honest seeker should pause before answering too quickly. To engage well, he must instead reframe the prompt and unwrap its hidden parcels, one by one.
The Moral Standard Behind the Outrage
Press the skeptic for a moment. To call something evil, we must have a fixed measure of right and wrong. A bent stick can only be named bent because we know what a straight one looks like. Where does that straight stick come from?
If morality is shifting group opinion, then evil is only what most people dislike this decade. But if it is more written on the conscience itself, we have stumbled into the very God the question denies. Paul says those without the Law “show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness” (Romans 2.15). The protest against evil is an unwitting prayer.
Free Will and Its Frightful Cost
God did not make us machines. He made us in His image. We can love, but we can also refuse. A robot does not love. A puppet does not worship. True devotion needs the real chance of rebellion.
This is the high cost of being human. The freedom that lets a mother cradle her child also lets a tyrant order a massacre. The same tongue that sings can also slander. Without the risk of cruelty, there could be no real love. God, in His wisdom, judged a world with true sons and daughters to be worth the risk of true sin.
Suffering as the School of the Soul
Suffering is not an unexpected flaw in the divine plan. Scripture calls it a workshop where God shapes character. James says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (James 1.2-3).
A surgeon’s scalpel is terrible in an enemy’s hand but merciful in a healer’s. The same cut changes depending on who holds the blade. The question is not if we will bleed, but whose hands will hold us when we do. Paul promises, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8.28). This is not just a verse for coffee mugs. It is a fortress for the soul.
The Serpent We Often Forget
Notice how often people debate as if Satan did not exist. The Word will not let us forget him. Jesus called him “a murderer from the beginning” and “the father of lies” (John 8.44).
Here is the dark whisper in many tragedies. He does not force; he flatters. He does not command; he hints. He coaxed Eve while in the garden. He coaxes us in the supermarket, the boardroom, and the bedroom. Every war begins in someone’s heart. Every malice is first a thought. The blood is human, but the poison behind it is ancient.
Yet Satan is not a rival god. He is a creature on a leash, allowed to snarl only within the boundaries God has set. In Job, he asks permission. He does not seize power. He is real, deadly, and on a chain.
The God Who Entered Our Suffering
Here, the Christian answer stands apart. God not only explains suffering from above. He comes down and bears it. The cross is not a footnote to the problem of evil. It is its center.
Peter writes, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Peter 2.24). Think about that. The One who could end all suffering with a word chose to take it into His own flesh. He did not excuse Himself from the world He made. He entered it, suffered in it, died in it, and rose to redeem it.
A Conclusion Worth Standing On
The skeptic’s question does not destroy faith. It shows that we are not framing the conversation well. Suffering does not refute God’s existence, for even the idea of evil borrows from His moral light. His goodness endures pain, for He has given purpose to our wounds and faced worse than we ever will.
Until the day when “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be mourning, or crying, or pain” (Revelation 21.4), we live by faith. It is not a faith that denies the dark, but a faith that sees Light moving through it. Lean on the One who is good, even when life is not.
The Preacher Pollard Blog 