One problem many people have with believing in God is that there is so much pain in the world. Either God exists, and he is a bad/weak god, or he does not exist. Otherwise, he would keep people from suffering.
Let’s talk about different types of suffering individually: disease and heartache, persecution by others, and natural disasters.
Many forms of disease, we bring on ourselves. Smoking, overeating, and having unprotected intercourse are some ways to become unhealthy. God provides us with free will, and we can use it to engage in actions that lead to health, or actions that lead to death. He has to allow us to make this choice if we are to have free will.
Persecution is man’s inhumanity to man. Again, God has to allow this sort of thing if we want to have free will. Some, if given the chance, will choose to hurt others.
But how about natural disasters? There is more than one way to look at this. Though natural disasters such as floods, famine, and earthquakes cause suffering and death, they do help keep the population under control. According to ecology, without intervention, an animal population will continue to grow until it reaches the point where the land cannot support any more animals. This is called the carrying capacity. If humans reach this number on Earth, the world could get to be a pretty uncomfortable place.
Another way to look at it is that this world is not perfect. Though God created it perfect, now sin and death have entered the world, through the bad choices of human beings. Our irresponsibility affects the world, even on a disastrous level.
One might ask the following question about pain: Is pain always bad? Working out with weights is painful, however, it improves your physique. Getting a vaccination hurts, but it keeps you from getting a potentially life-threatening disease. My young son knows that when I take him to the doctor, they frequently give him a shot. Those shots hurt. However, even though he doesn’t understand the causes of disease, my son never stops trusting me, because he can see that I generally try to protect him from bad things. He could decide to lose his love for me because I let him experience pain. Do you think that I can be a good parent and still allow my son to experience this pain?
Another question: Is death always bad? As Christians, we believe that Jesus’ death brought life. There are many situations in history in which death is seen as a positive thing: an end to suffering, a sacrifice for others, or part of the cycle of life in nature.
How can God allow evil to exist? To answer this in short: If people have free will, there will always be evil. To prove this, think of the following. What if everyone on earth died tonight? Where would evil be tomorrow morning? So, we can easily pinpoint the source of evil on earth: even if the earth and God still existed, evil would be hard to find if not for people’s evil hearts.
If you still choose to believe that God cannot exist because of evil, then you have a problem. In the absence of God, there is no right or wrong, because there is nobody to appeal to. So, the judgment you have just made about God’s morality is invalid.
If there is no higher power to appeal to, there can be no absolute morality. If there is no absolute morality, then anything can be considered good under the right circumstances. For example, if a famine is over a certain part of a country, is the death of a child good or bad? If you are the child’s parent, then it is very bad. But if you are the parent of a different child, then you can see this as a good thing: There is now slightly more food available for your child, because of another child’s death.
By removing God from the picture, we ironically remove our reason for condemning him out of existence.