#31 The Problem of Evil and Suffering

The Problem of Evil Has Already Been Answered

For millennia, skeptics and biblical thinkers alike have debated what is known as “The Problem of Evil.” Libraries have been filled with philosophical systems attempting to reconcile suffering, death, calamity, and judgment with the existence of God. Yet after centuries of debate, no universal consensus has been reached.

But perhaps the reason is simple: the debate often begins with false presuppositions and either ignores the answer already given by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, or didn’t even know He addressed it in the first place.

I. The First Presupposition: Putting God Under Judgment

When unbelievers raise the problem of evil, they almost always begin by assuming themselves competent judges over God. They place the Creator beneath His own creation and attempt to summon Him before a moral tribunal.

The common examples are familiar:

• ““Why did God command Israel to destroy entire nations like the Canaanites?”

• “Why does God permit mass suffering, war, disease, and disaster?”

• “Why do people die in ways that seem undeserved or unjust?”

Though there is nothing inherently wrong with genuine inquiry, these questions are rarely neutral. They already assume that God’s judgments are morally suspect.

The Canaanite question especially reveals the inconsistency. Scripture explicitly states that God delayed judgment upon the Amorites for centuries:

“For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Genesis 15:16).

God endured their wickedness for over four hundred years before judgment finally came.

Yet this creates an impossible dilemma for the skeptic:

• If God delays judgment, they accuse Him of tolerating evil.

• If God executes judgment, they accuse Him of cruelty.

But these accusations collapse under their own weight. If God were to immediately eradicate all evil from the earth, He would eradicate every sinner alive—perhaps beginning with you and me. The same people demanding immediate justice against others simultaneously presuppose unmerited mercy for themselves.

Thus, fallen man condemns both divine patience and divine judgment at the same time.

Wisdom truly “is justified of all her children” (Luke 7:35). The contradiction is not in God’s ways, but in man’s rebellion.

II. God Is Not Merely Permitting Life — He Is Actively Sustaining It

One of the greatest errors in modern thinking is the assumption that life is self-existent and owed to man by default.

Scripture presents the exact opposite.

God is not merely a distant observer permitting the universe to continue operating on its own. He is actively sustaining all things at every moment. Every breath, heartbeat, thought, and moment of continued existence depends entirely upon Him.

Acts 17 says:

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being.”

The unbeliever often speaks as though God owes him continued life while simultaneously hating the God who gives it.

But consider the absurdity of the situation.

Man is essentially demanding that God continue sustaining him while using that very life to rebel against Him. Yet he also speaks as though God is not allowed to have enemies, even while he himself makes the Creator his enemy with every faculty of his being.

Anthropomorphically speaking, fallen man is internally telling God:

“Do not turn Your back on me for even one moment.”

Because if God were to withdraw His sustaining power entirely, man would instantly perish. The sinner’s existence itself is an act of divine mercy.

And yet, externally, at the same time, he says:

“I want nothing to do with You.”

This is why divine judgment is categorically different from human murder. God is not merely another being within creation taking life unlawfully. He is the giver and sustainer of life itself. The One who continually upholds existence has authority over the existence He upholds.

The real question is not why some die.

The real question is why any sinner is still alive at all.

III. The Modern Mind Does Not Recognize Divine Judgment

Another problem is that people imagine judgment only in cinematic or supernatural terms. But Scripture presents God’s judgments differently.

God governs history providentially through what Ezekiel calls His “four sore judgments”:

• the sword,

• famine,

• pestilence,

• and noisome beasts (Ezekiel 14:21).

The sovereign God judges nations and individuals every day through war, disease, calamity, death, and countless other means.

The unbeliever says:

“Why doesn’t God judge evil?”

While simultaneously living in a world overflowing with divine judgments.

The issue is not absence of judgment, but blindness to it.

IV. The Problem of Suffering

It has been said that the “problem of evil” is emotional rather than logical.

Strictly speaking, suffering does not logically disprove God’s existence. One cannot demonstrate a formal contradiction between:

• “God exists” and

• “suffering exists.”

The real objection is usually personal: either “I do not like a world in which suffering exists,” or “I do not believe a loving God would allow suffering.”

But dislike and subjective reasoning are not disproof.

Scripture never pretends suffering is pleasant. Death is called an enemy. Creation groans under the curse. Humanity suffers because humanity is fallen.

The Christian worldview actually explains suffering coherently:

• God created the world good.

• Man rebelled.

• Death entered through sin. (cf. Rom. 5:12)

• Judgment comes to those not under the Blood of the Lamb. (cf. Ex. 12:1-14 & 1 Cor. 5:7)

Though it is common for people to hear of mankind’s proclivity to sin and commit the hasty generalization fallacy by immediately appealing to free will, an honest examination of Scripture, anthropology, and psychology will demonstrate the bondage of sin in which man is held—a bondage that both governs and influences his choices.

V. The Hiddenness of God Has Also Been Answered

Another common objection is the so-called “hiddenness of God.”

People ask:

“If God exists, why does He seem to be hidden?”

But Scripture has already answered this as well.

The fundamental problem is not that God is absent. The problem is that sin separates man from God.

Isaiah says:

“Your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:2; cf. Isaiah 59:1–21).

Man complains that God feels distant while refusing repentance (a change of mind and turning from sin) and reconciliation through Jesus Christ His Son. He demands communion with the very God against whom he is in rebellion.

The issue is spiritual before it is intellectual, and intellectual before it is emotional.

Scripture does not present man as a neutral seeker desperately trying to find God while God hides Himself arbitrarily. Rather, fallen man suppresses truth, loves darkness rather than light, and refuses to come to the light lest his deeds be exposed.

We have no grounds to accuse God of distance while clinging to the very sin that separates us from God.

And yet even here, the God whom man accuses is the same God who sent His own Son into the world to reconcile sinners unto Himself (cf. Rom. 5:8-11).

The issue is therefore not lack of revelation, but refusal of repentance.

VI. The Lord’s Answer to the Question

The clearest answer to the problem of evil came from Jesus Himself in Luke 13.

Christ addressed both:

• moral evil, and

• natural evil.

First, He addresses the question of moral evil:

Pilate slaughtering Galileans.

Then He mentions natural evil:

the tower of Siloam collapsing and killing eighteen people.

These correspond remarkably to the categories people still debate today:

• evil caused by human actions,

• and suffering caused by disasters.

And what was Christ’s conclusion?

Not a philosophical lecture.

Not an abstract theodicy.

Not an apology for God.

Instead:

“Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

This is the answer modern discussions refuse to hear.

Jesus shifts the focus away from:

“Why did they die?”

to:

“Why are you still alive?”

The existence of judgment should not produce self-righteous accusations against God, but trembling self-examination before Him.

The real issue is not why some perish.

The real astonishment is why God has not already judged us all.

VII. The Conclusion

The problem of evil is often framed as though God is the one on trial.

But Holy Scripture reverses the courtroom.

Man is the rebel.

Man is the sinner.

Man is the one suppressing truth.

Man is the one under sentence of death.

The gospel itself proves this.

At Calvary, humanity crucified the only truly innocent Man who ever lived—and did so while claiming moral superiority. Yet it was there that God the Son, in flesh, laid down His life for sinners and was raised for our justification.

That is the clearest revelation of human nature in history.

The problem of evil is therefore not merely philosophical. It is theological. It is moral. And it is a matter of the heart.

The question is not:

“How can God coexist with evil?”

The question is:

“How can evil men stand before a holy God?”

And Christ’s answer remains unchanged from when He came, saying: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” (Mark 1:15).