Why does God allow suffering in our lives?

This question refers more to severe and never ending suffering, such as an infant born with a disability, or severe mental health issues, or the extreme tragedies of war. 

Deacon Doug McManaman

This is the great question, and I deal with this all the time in my ministry to the sick, and there is no simple and straightforward answer. There are two levels on which to deal with this question: on the concrete level, and on a more abstract level. The more abstract the level of discourse, the greater the certainty we possess. As we move to the concrete level of everyday life and individual persons, the less certainty we possess.

So, when I have a person in front of me who is suffering from PTSD as a result of a tragic event (i.e., vehicle accident that ended in the death of a young child), or a person who has been battling depression all her life and has suffered terrible abuse throughout her life, and I am asked: “Why does God allow all this suffering in my life”, my answer is: “I don’t know”. And I’d be a fool to attempt to answer her question, for “Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?” (Is 40, 13; and quoted by Paul in Romans 11, 34). On this level, things are buried in mystery, and mystery has to be revered, not solved.

But, let’s move to a more general level. This is what we can be certain of: First, the God we worship is all-powerful, which means he can do whatever he wills–nothing limits his power. Secondly, God is Love (1 Jn 4, 7), which means he wants your greatest happiness. 

If God was all-powerful, but not pure Goodness Itself (Love Itself), then God could very well bring about your greatest happiness, but he would not necessarily desire it (because God does not necessarily love you, that is, will what is absolutely the best for you). If, on the other hand, God is Love, but he is not all-powerful, then he wills your greatest happiness, but he simply does not have the power to bring it about. Parents typically know this feeling–we want the best for our children, but we are so limited in what we can do for them. However, the God we worship is both all powerful and absolute Love. This implies that whatever God chooses to allow to happen to you and to me in this life, he allows it ultimately for our greatest happiness. That is a conclusion that follows necessarily, but on a very abstract and general level. 

However, why he allowed you to suffer this or that particular trauma, or why he allowed this child to be born with a severe disability, is entirely, completely, and utterly beyond my ken. I have no idea, and because I have no idea, I should not attempt an answer. But I can say that you and I will understand at some point, when we stand before God at the end of time. In fact, we can often look at our own past (retrospection) and discern something of the truth of this, for example, I often look back at my life and notice that my greatest disappointments in life have turned out to be my greatest blessings. I didn’t see that at the time, but I see it now. And so, it is important for us to remember these moments, especially during times of present day disappointments. God is all powerful and he can draw greater good out of the evils that plague us than had these evils never occurred. We know this is true in the case of our redemption. God became flesh in the Person of Christ; God the Son dwelt among us, and we crucified the Son of God. The tragedy of Good Friday was our salvation. As we hear during the singing of the Easter Vigil: “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”

It’s just not possible for me to know all the factors involved in God’s decision to allow this or that to have happened in this or that person’s life. Human knowledge is profoundly limited. We can’t predict the future, and even trained meteorologists are unable to predict the weather beyond 7 days; the weather is a chaotic system, and so is life (a chaotic system is ordered, but too complex for us to grasp in all its details). 

There is another angle from which we can look at this question, and this is more theological. Christ did not redeem us from sin through his preaching, i.e., his sermon on the Mount, nor did he redeem us through his miracles. He redeemed humanity through his suffering and death (the Paschal Mystery). The greatest gift he gives us is the gift of faith, which is the gift by which we are given the capacity to believe him, to know him, to surrender to him, to follow him, and following him is always a sharing in his “way of the cross”. So the greatest gift we can be given is to share in his saving work; we participate in his “saving of the world” through our sufferings. This is hard to explain to people–impossible to explain to those who have little or no faith. But consider the life of any saint in the history of the Church–their lives are filled with suffering, frustrations, set backs, obstacles, and in many cases, the suffering is the result of the actions of the Church–this is true of St. Padre Pio and the sufferings he underwent as a result of the clerical envy of his brother priests of the surrounding diocese of Foggia, who should have known better, or as a result of opposition from the Vatican, who were often misinformed about Padre Pio. He, like other saints, shared in the saving of souls, and he did so to a certain degree through his words and his miracles, but primarily through his sharing in the sufferings of Christ. There are people among us who suffer, and we often know nothing about it, and there is great prosperity in parts of the world, and it is very possible that this prosperity is the fruit of their sufferings, at least in part. Some priests from Africa have said to me that they believe certain African nations, torn by war and constant civil strife, have been chosen to share, in a unique way, in the redemption of the world today. To see this and embrace this requires faith, however. 

The sufferings of this world are all rooted in human sin, i.e., selfishness, the desire for power, hatred, unforgiveness, anger, the inordinate desire for pleasure and ease, indifference to those who are without, individualism, indifference to injustice, etc. So we are the cause of suffering in the world, but as Mother Teresa pointed out, there are innocent sufferers. That’s what sin does, it afflicts the innocent who get swept away in the tide caused by human sin, i.e., children who suffer sexual or emotional abuse from parents or relatives, who in turn abuse because they were abused by their own relatives who suffered from stress related illnesses, and so on and so forth, children born in poverty, children caught in the crossfire, etc. Man is the source of suffering, but God is the source of redemption and healing, and God is “in history”, he acts in history, and God is in control of history’s movement, and we know from the resurrection, which is Christ’s definitive victory over death, that suffering and death do not have the final word over your life and my life. Christ was victorious over evil, sin, and death, and his victory is universal. So, although it seems that evil is victorious here and there, we know through the light of faith, that these are just moments in a larger movement and that in the end, life, grace, and the unimaginable joy of victory will be ours.