QUESTION: Why Does God Allow Innocent People To Suffer So Much?

ANSWER: This is one of the heaviest questions a human being can ask.

Why does God allow innocent people to suffer so much?

In order to answer that question, we have to take a really big step back and get a kind of panoramic view of the story that Scripture tells.

We have to understand a handful of unbelievably important things, because without understanding these things, not only can we not answer this question, but we can’t understand the gospel.

We can’t understand the story the Bible tells at the most basic level.

Before anything else, we need to understand that our world is fallen and radically broken, and the result is that suffering is an inescapable part of life in this world.

This is central to understanding the story God’s Word tells.

Our world is fallen and radically broken, and the result is that suffering is an inescapable part of life in this world.

To put it another way, our world doesn’t work the way God created it to.

Our world doesn’t work the way God originally made it to work.

Our world is like if you have an iPhone. That is a beautifully designed piece of equipment, right? And when you look at your iPhone, you can see how beautifully and wonderfully it was designed.

But if you drop it, what happens?

The screen shatters, and if it shatters bad enough, the screen doesn’t work quite the way it’s supposed to.

It may still kind of work, but not to its full extent.

It might mess up the battery too. So the battery starts overheating way more often than it should.

It might shake some of the stuff inside loose, so you’ll lose internet connection sometimes for seemingly no reason.

Your calls will drop more often.

You’ve got this beautifully designed piece of equipment, and yet it’s broken and it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

That’s what our world is like.

We see that at the very beginning of the story, in Genesis 3.

After Adam and Eve rebel against God in the garden, it breaks the world.

When humanity rebelled against God in the beginning, it threw the world off balance. It plunged the world into chaos.

Our world is fallen. It’s broken.

Everything about our world is radically broken and disordered.

Our world does not work the way it’s supposed to.

And the result is that suffering is unavoidable.

To the point that in Romans 8, Paul uses this really colorful language. He says creation has been subjected to futility. Creation is groaning. Creation is experiencing labor pains.

Paul writes:

> For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.
Romans 8:18–22, WEB



Our world is fallen and radically broken, and the result is that suffering is an inescapable part of life in this world, even for innocent people, even for good people, even for children.

That is the nauseatingly bad news that the entire story of Scripture is built on.

And yet, into this nauseatingly bad news about our radically broken world that makes suffering inescapable, God’s Word brings the really radically good news that one day this suffering will be done away with forever.

Revelation 21 says that all of history is headed for a day when the Lord will wipe away our tears. It’s headed for a day when He will wash away our grief. It’s headed for a day when He will make all of this suffering come to an end.

John writes:

> I heard a loud voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with people; and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. The first things have passed away.”

He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
Revelation 21:3–5, WEB



He will make all things new.

He will dwell with us and we with Him.

There will be no more grief, no more crying, no more pain, no more suffering.

And He has guaranteed this promise through the cross.

One day this suffering will be done away with forever.

And until that day comes, the Lord does three things.

First, God’s Word says that the Lord joins in our suffering and suffers with us.

There’s this really shocking story in John 11, where Jesus goes to the funeral of one of His closest friends, a guy named Lazarus.

John says:

> When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?”

They told him, “Lord, come and see.”

Jesus wept.

The Jews therefore said, “See how much affection he had for him!”
John 11:33–36, WEB



Take a step back and think about what’s happening here.

The God of the universe goes to the grave of Lazarus and He weeps.

The death of Lazarus makes the God of the universe sad.

The suffering of his relatives makes the God of all creation grieve.

He weeps with those who weep.

God mourns with those who mourn.

He suffers with those who suffer.

We see that same thing in Isaiah 63.

Isaiah says:

> In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.
Isaiah 63:9, WEB



God doesn’t just callously watch our suffering from a distance. He experiences our suffering with us.

Here’s the really strange reality: God’s Word tells us that God experiences our grief more deeply than we do.

God experiences our mourning more deeply than we do.

God is more deeply wounded by our suffering even than we are.

The Lord joins us in our suffering and suffers with us.

And in the process, He comforts us.

In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul says that God is the Father of mercies. He is the God of all comfort. He’s the God who comforts us in our affliction.

Paul writes:

> Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
2 Corinthians 1:3–4, WEB



His comfort overflows into us.

He nurses the wounds that life deals us.

He pours out His peace onto us.

He fills us with a stillness amidst suffering that nothing else can provide.

He comforts us amidst our suffering.

And then He even uses us to comfort others.

And throughout all of this, He somehow turns our suffering for good.

Between now and the day that all suffering comes to an end, the Lord somehow turns our suffering for good.

This is a difficult pill to swallow.

It’s a hard concept to wrap our heads around.

But the Lord goes beyond simply sharing our suffering.

He goes beyond simply comforting us in our suffering.

He goes all the way to somehow turning our suffering for good.

Paul puts it this way:

> We also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope. And hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Romans 5:3–5, WEB



Listen to that.

The Lord turns suffering into hope.

Not just by taking suffering away, but by transforming it.

I don’t know how to explain this. I don’t know how to put it into words, but the Lord transforms our suffering.

He makes our suffering into something new.

The world dishes out suffering in order to harm us, and the Lord turns it into something that helps us, into something that gives us life.

He turns something that is meant to be life-stealing into something that is life-giving, into something that produces hope.

In some unsearchable and indescribable way, God takes the curse that is the inescapable suffering of our fallen and radically broken world, and He turns even that for our ultimate good, if we’ll let Him.