How Can God Allow Suffering?

Is God all good and all powerful? If so why does He allow bad things to happen? Couldn't He stop them? These are the questions Tim Keller seeks to address in chapter 2 of The Reason For God.

His response is broken down in two parts.

First he says that the existence of evil does not disprove God and secondly that God Himself has experienced suffering in its most extreme form and understands perfectly what we go through.

Evil does not disprove that God is good.

To say that God cannot be good because He allows bad things to happen supposes that the bad things that happen do not have ultimately greater purposes. Basically Keller says, and so does the Bible and Christians have believed for two thousand years, that all of the bad things that happen, though we do not understand how, serve and are working toward a greater purpose.

Keller does not try to give any clear reason for suffering and I think that is wise. There are some things that belong to God that we cannot understand in this life. However he is clear that suffering serves a greater purpose. If we believe that God is powerful enough to prevent suffering then He is also powerful enough to have a purpose behind it.

Think about the opposite possibility to the existence of a good, all-powerful God. Nothing would have meaning. All of the pain and suffering that has ever happened would all have been completely useless and empty. There would be no comfort in any pain. There would be no assurance of gain in sacrifice. Life would be worthless. We know deep down that this isn't the case. Life has meaning. We are not accidents. We are made. There is purpose. God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him. There is comfort. God is the God of all comfort.

Keller goes on to say that existence of evil actually supports the argument for the existence of God. If God did not exist would there be such a thing as 'evil'? Why would we call it that? Surely it would just be 'instinct', the out working of evolution. If we are basically animals then what's wrong with killing other people? We don't call a lion who kills another animal 'evil' so why call a human that? The difference is that we are made in God's image and God forbids us from killing. Take God out of the picture and you are left with no moral standard with which to determine anything as evil or even good.

Hopefully we'll look at the second part of Keller's response in the not to distant future.