#34 Why Does God Permit Suffering to Continue?

Dr. craig’s response

These are, indeed, thought-provoking passages, which I reproduce here, not so much in order to comment on them, as to share them with our readers, who may find them a stimulus to thinking biblically about the questions you raise.

I agree whole-heartedly with your take on the parable by Jesus. We cannot consider the problem of evil and suffering apart from purposes of the establishment of the Kingdom of God. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has rightly said,

It may well be the case that natural and moral evils are part of the means God uses to draw people freely into His Kingdom. Take a look at a missions handbook such as Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World. You’ll find that it is precisely in countries that have endured severe suffering that evangelical Christianity is growing at its greatest rates, while growth curves in the indulgent West are nearly flat.

Take China, for example. The growth of the church in China in recent decades has been without parallel in history. Johnstone believes that Communism actually prepared China for the reception of Christianity by stripping away Buddhist and Confucian presuppositions from the culture. One can imagine people wondering during the dark days of Mao why God allowed the weeds of Communism to grow and devastate the field. God had longer range purposes in view.

When you think about it, the history of mankind has been a history of suffering and war. Yet it has also been a history of the advance of the Kingdom of God. A chart released in 1990 by the U.S. Center for World Mission documents the growth in evangelical Christianity over the centuries by plotting the number of evangelical Christians per non-Christians in the world. (These figures don’t include under either category people who are just nominal Christians.) In the year 100 there were around 360 non-Christians for every evangelical Christian in the world. By the year 1000, there were 220 non-Christians for every evangelical in the world. By the year 1900, there were only 27 non-Christians per evangelical Christian. By 1950 that number had shrunk to 21 non-Christians per evangelical Christian. And—get this—in the year 2000 there were only 7 non-Christians for every evangelical believer in the world! Even if you add in all the nominal Christians as well as legitimate subjects of evangelization, that still means there are only about 9 unbelievers to be evangelized for every believer.

According to Johnstone, “We are living in the time of the largest ingathering of people into the Kingdom of God that the world has ever seen.” (p. 25). It’s not at all improbable that this astonishing growth in God’s Kingdom is due in part to the presence of natural and moral evils in the world.

So when people ask, “Why doesn’t God just remove all the suffering from the world?”, they really have no idea what they’re asking for or what the consequences might be. The brutal murder of an innocent man or a child’s dying of leukemia could send a ripple effect through history so that God’s reason for permitting it might not emerge until centuries later or perhaps in another country. Only an omniscient mind could grasp the complexities of directing a world of free persons toward one’s pre-visioned goals. You have only to think of the innumerable, incalculable contingencies involved in arriving at a single historical event, say, the Allied victory at D-day, in order to appreciate the point. We have no idea of the natural and moral evils that might be involved in order for God to arrange the circumstances and free agents in them necessary for some intended purpose, nor can we discern what reasons God might have in mind for permitting some instance of suffering to enter our lives. But He will have good reasons in light of the purposes of His Kingdom.

The parable also reminds me of people who ask why, if God knew who would believe in Him and who would not, He would not just refrain from creating those persons who would reject Him. Jesus says tearing out the weeds may also tear up the wheat as well. In other words, if God were to refrain from creating those who He knew would not believe, then we would have in the place of this world a whole new possible world, and people who are saved in the actual world might turn out to be unbelievers in the new world! You can’t just pluck people out of a possible world to improve things because in so doing you are now dealing with an entirely different possible world, in which the people may act completely differently than they do in the first world. (The philosophically initiated will recognize that I’m talking here about God’s middle knowledge and which worlds are feasible for Him to create.)

As for the passage from Amos, it reminds us powerfully, as C. S. Lewis put it, that Aslan is not a tame lion. People often say that God doesn’t send suffering into our lives but merely allows it. The passage you cite explodes that fairy tale! The ancient Israelites didn’t understand that the calamities that befell them were in fact a severe mercy sent by God for their own well-being, but their intransigence short-circuited the good purpose that God had in mind (cf. Revelation 16. 9, 11, 21). The author of Hebrews in the New Testament reminds us that God disciplines every son whom He receives. Even though it is painful rather than pleasant, God “disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness” (Hebrews 12.18).

You’re right that non-Christians, used to a Santa Claus God, won’t understand this sort of tough love. But it’s not really difficult to grasp when you reflect that any finite amount of suffering is worth enduring in order to gain eternal joy and to avoid eternal ruin. Paul says, “ For this slight, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look, not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). Paul understood that the length of this life, being finite, is literally infinitesimal in comparison with the eternal life we’ll spend with God. The longer we spend in eternity, the more the sufferings of this life will shrink by comparison toward an infinitesimal moment. That is why Paul could call the sufferings of this life a “slight, momentary affliction”: he wasn’t being insensitive to the plight of those who suffer horribly in this life—on the contrary, he was one of them—but he saw that those sufferings are simply overwhelmed by the ocean of everlasting joy and glory which God will give to those who trust Him.

So our reaction in times of suffering should be, as you say, to turn to God in faith and dependence on His strength to get through. When God asks us to undergo suffering that seems unmerited, pointless, and unnecessary, meditation upon the cross of Christ and his innocent suffering for our sake can help to give us the strength and courage needed to bear the cross that we are asked to carry.