Why bad things happen to "good" people

Photo by Chenny Compuesto

One of the most significant objections to the idea of God is that if there is a good God, he wouldn't allow suffering. Jesus completely upends that, though.

The argument goes like this: If there is a good God, he wouldn't allow suffering. There is suffering in the world. God must not exist.

It makes sense in a superficial way. Let me throw a couple of things into the hopper, though, to complicate this argument.

First of all, God has an enemy. The devil is a real being. He is the personification of evil. And one of his biggest acts after being an angel who rebelled against God was leading humans into rebellion. This is at the very beginning of the Bible, on about page 3. All the thousand+ pages that follow are flowing out of this rebellion.

There is suffering in the world because an angel named Satan rebelled against God. Then, when God created people, Satan led us into rebellion against God. This rebellion ushered suffering into the world. We're in the middle of a heavenly war, and there is suffering in war.

On page 3 (or so) of the Bible, though, God promises Satan that he will send Jesus to solve this problem. He also alludes to Jesus' suffering:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel.

Jesus comes thousands of years later as a human descendant of this woman (Eve). Jesus endured suffering the whole day of his death, experiencing extreme torture. Then he was crucified with nails going through his wrists and his feet ("heel").

Jesus enters our suffering. He is not immune to it. He suffered on our behalf, taking on the punishment we deserve as our human representative for our rebellion. He did this to redeem us.

And Jesus is God. Remember that the argument goes like this: If there is a good God, he wouldn't allow suffering. There is suffering in the world. God must not exist.

But there is a good God, and not only did he allow suffering to happen, but he also entered into it to save us. He has suffered as a human in a more extreme way than any of us will ever experience by bearing the burden of every human's sin at the time of his death. The suffering wasn't just physical. It was also emotional, spiritual, and relational.

This fact of Jesus being born to die completely turns everything upside down. So yes, if there is a good God, he wouldn't allow suffering. There is suffering in the world. God must not exist. Unless we don't understand the whole story. Maybe there is a good God who doesn't want suffering. But he allowed it because he has an enemy who brought suffering into the world. And then that God suffered for us to save us from the rebellion.