The Problem of Evil and Suffering #4

If God is all-powerful and perfectly good, why does He allow suffering, disease, and evil to exist? This objection, sometimes traced to Epicurus, is widely regarded as the most emotionally and philosophically serious challenge to belief in God, and Scripture does not dodge it — the book of Job is an extended wrestling with exactly this question, ending not with a tidy explanation but with God’s own response to Job (Job 38:1-4).

The Argument

Philosophers distinguish the logical problem of evil (that God and evil’s existence are strictly incompatible) from the evidential problem (that the amount and kind of suffering makes God’s existence improbable). Most contemporary philosophers, including many atheist ones, now regard the logical version as answered: it is not a contradiction for God to allow evil if He has morally sufficient reasons to permit it, such as preserving genuine free will (the “free will defense”) or the greater goods that can come from a world where character, courage, and love are possible. The evidential problem is harder to fully answer, since it turns on our ability to judge what reasons an infinite God might have — an argument called “skeptical theism” holds that our inability to see a reason for a particular evil is weak evidence there is none. Scripture offers Joseph’s own summary of this logic: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

Common Objections

The strongest objection is that these responses, even if logically valid, can feel cold or insufficient in the face of specific, horrific suffering — the death of a child is not comforted by an abstract argument. Christians themselves differ on emphasis here: some stress free will, others the necessity of a “soul-making” world, others simply the mystery acknowledged in Job. The Bible’s own answer is less a philosophical argument than a promise of final restoration, where God himself will “wipe away every tear” (Revelation 21:4), and a person — the crucified Christ — who entered suffering rather than merely explaining it.