God "Allows" Pain and Suffering in the World

What it Doesn’t Mean that “God is in Control”, Part III

As a young adult and newly married, I remember reading a line in M. Scott Peck’s best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, that described life as a series of problems waiting to be solved. Peck, a psychiatrist, suggested that the sooner we accept this fact, the better off we’ll be. To me, this felt like a dismal perspective—a bleak way to think about one’s life and a viewpoint I wasn’t ready to embrace. Nonetheless, it obviously left an impression.

At the time, I was still trying to work the angles. And I felt fairly sure that if I did, if I figured out the formula for making life work in my favor, then my life would be different from the one Peck described. God would smile down upon me, bless me, and protect me from all manner of problems, including pain and needless suffering. I would find my way to the “good life” and hunker down there with my young, dashing husband to live happily ever after. 

Yes, this does sound like the optimistic outlook of youth, and not that of a particularly mature person. And it didn’t take long before I discovered the fault lines in my theory. It took even longer, however, to accept, as Peck suggested, that this, indeed, is the nature of life—that the sooner I embraced this reality, the better off I would be, the more prepared to live life as an adult in a world fraught with challenges, hardship, pain, and even evil.

There have been periods of my life when the conflict between a good God and agonizing loss and hardship felt irresolvable; when the hurt of life kept me under its thumb—angry, resentful, and dismayed—all the while searching for God’s goodness and tenderness toward me. I’ve experienced a miscarriage, serious marital conflict, the death of a parent from cancer, financial challenges, and resignation from a job I loved, in part, due to brazen political maneuvering.

The fact is, I’ve had lots of conversations over the years with people, like me, whose trust in God has been ruptured because of some harm they or a loved one has suffered. Clearly, we humans rightly struggle to reconcile that God can be loving and good toward us while also “allowing” avoidable misery to riddle our lives, let alone the entire arc of human history.

So you might wonder if writing a single reflection on this topic—one for which countless volumes have been written— is an exercise in futility. (I might wonder the same.) And yet at this juncture in both my personal and our collective history, I feel compelled to engage this topic because it is more necessary than ever to consider carefully “what it means and doesn’t mean that God is in control.” If God is in control, how do we understand, let alone accept, all of the cruel suffering that happens around the world under God’s watch? Or can we?

I acknowledge that this is a BIG question, and I realize that my own responses will not satisfy everyone. I’m okay if that’s the case. I don’t believe there is only one way to come to terms with such a hefty dilemma. My desire and hope is that by sharing my wrestling with this paradox, you will be nudged to find your place to land. And if you happen to be one of those sensitive fellow travelers who has experienced a rupture in your relationship with God because of some tragedy, may you feel no judgment—only empathy—from me regarding where you find yourself with God today.  

Let me begin by stating two propositions that I’ve come to believe describe reality:

●      God is wholly good and persistently loving.

●      Unnecessary pain, suffering, and evil are a thing.

These two statements describe the very air we breathe, air that is both rich in oxygen and laced with deadly pollutants. While we are rarely aware of it, we continue to live our days inhaling both life-giving and contaminated air. In the same way, we are never for a moment deprived of the love and goodness of God. Yet simultaneously, we witness the awful and unnecessary suffering that humans inflict upon one another and our planet.

Consider images from a single day’s news: the decimation of Ukraine and starving children in Gaza; devastation and loss of life from flooding in Texas; human cages in detention centers and neighbors seized off the streets by ICE agents; police brutally murdering young black people and getting off free; and wealthy, powerful men grooming adolescent girls for sex.   

These two realities coexist simultaneously, and they never cancel each other out. This approach isn’t providing an airtight explanation that reconciles, once and for all, the goodness of God with the problem of evil. Instead, it’s an invitation to consider two statements that simply describe reality. (You may recall in my first post how I described the importance of a genuine and resilient spirituality that is able to confront reality.)  Let me say a bit more about each statement and what it means to me. 

I’ll begin with a quote from John Sanders, author of the excellent book, The God Who Risks. Sanders explains that the starting point in any reflection on the nature of God and the problem of evil must begin with God’s original and unflinching intentions for the type and quality of relationship God desires to have with us. That makes sense to me. 

“Throughout this study the problem of evil has been discussed in light of the divine project in which God desired to create beings capable of entering into genuine give-and-take relationships of love with him and with one another. Unfortunately, the problem of evil, like the divine attributes, is often discussed without concern for the type of relationship God desires.... This [considering the type of relationship God desires] enables us to see the difficulties raised by evil and suffering within the context of personal relationships and trust rather than simply attempting to reconcile evil with the abstract concepts of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence.”

I greatly appreciate this starting point. Before we can address how a good God can allow unwarranted pain and suffering in the world, we need to begin with what kind of relationship God had in mind when God conceived of human beings. Clearly, God granted us the freedom to choose good or evil, right or wrong, love or estrangement—toward God, one another, and our planet. This was an act of vulnerability on God’s part. God took the risk to set up the systems of our world (the divine project), knowing full well that we might reject God and all that God desires for this world.

In other words, God “allowed” for the possibility of wrongdoing and evil because of God’s primary desire for mutual love. For love to be genuine, to come from a sincere intent, it must be possible to not love, but instead to resist, reject, or even hate. That is the nature of the relationship for which God designed us, the desire God has for us: to enter into a reciprocal relationship with our Creator. This is ground zero.

Is it then accurate to say that God “allows” all particular acts of pain, suffering, and evil? That God “allows” a child to be molested by her grandfather? A wife to cheat on her husband? A woman to be raped and murdered by intruders? That God “allows” ICE agents to use brute force and violence to apprehend documented and undocumented immigrants? To “allow” is to suggest that one could stop what is happening but chooses not to. I personally don’t think that represents what’s going on.

In Part II of this series, I quoted the arresting statement by Thomas J. Oord that “God’s love is inherently uncontrolling.” If God’s primary attribute is love, and the nature of God’s love is intrinsically uncontrolling, non-manipulative, non-coercive, then God isn’t to blame for the particular acts of evil that we humans commit. If God is to “blame” for anything, it’s the fact that God desires so deeply and earnestly a reciprocating love relationship with us that God left the door open for us to say “No.” To resist, to reject, to despise God and scorn the ways of God.

I want to be clear that any form of evil that does harm to life is evil to God! Some believe (hyper-Calvinists) that there is no such thing as excess evil—meaning, there is no experience of evil that God didn’t intend for God’s purposes. Seriously? Did God intend the holocaust? Did God intend for us to destroy our planet through our unbridled consumption of fossil fuels? Did God “intend" for a man to be elected our president who would upend our government and curtail the good we had been doing in the world? Besides being incredibly offensive, this point of view makes no sense! God opposes all evil, and in solidarity with God, so should we.

But here's the most astounding truth in our experience of evil: God meets us intimately, vulnerably in our pain and suffering. In fact, it is often through experiences of difficulty and pain that we seek God earnestly and find God to be “a very present help in time of trouble” (Psalm 46:1). Yet simply because God is present to us when we suffer doesn’t suggest that God ordained or allowed that suffering or evil (meaning God could have stopped it)! God’s uncontrolling love compels God to seek every way possible to redirect the evil coming toward us and our planet. Yet as free agents, we must cooperate.

I’m grateful that, over the years, I have experienced God’s episodic overtures of love and desire for a relationship. I cannot deny that the Divine and mysterious Other whom I call God has addressed me through a myriad of means—honest prayer, scripture, questioning, studying, a friend, a timely word, a chance encounter in nature—with the apparent intent to establish connection. Even when I’ve suffered loss, been in the pit of despair, blamed and cursed God, I’ve discovered deep inside me a fierce desire for this One whom my heart knows; the One who loves me and desires me.

So when I turn to the second proposition that “unnecessary pain, suffering, and evil is a thing,” I acknowledge it from the basis of my history with this God who loves me. It’s been said that suffering and evil are the bedrock of atheism. If that’s true, then perhaps recognizing our history with a loving God is the bedrock of belief.

Thanks for reading (a long post!) and wrestling with me:)

Warmly, Beth Booram