Why Doesn’t God Fix Pain?

Whether asked in doubt, curiosity, grief, or wonder, the question ‘Is God Real?’ keeps returning. 

In a previous article we introduced three of the most influential families of arguments in philosophy of religion: the cosmological, teleological and moral arguments. By introducing each of these, we asked the important question; is there good reason to think that God is real?  

In this article we face one of the most powerful challenges to belief in God: the reality of suffering.

If God does exist, then why doesn’t he do something about it? 

Is God real? – The problem of suffering 

The Christian claim is that the God whose power the cosmological argument highlights, whose intelligence the teleological argument explores, and whose goodness the moral argument demands, did not remain at a distance. He made himself fully known to us in Jesus.   

We however now have a challenge to address. The arguments in ‘Is God real?’ show that there’s good reason to think that God does exist, but there is a powerful counter-consideration: the reality of suffering.  

When a journalist asked Stephen Fry in 2015 what he would say if confronted with God upon his death, his reply was forceful[1]. Bone cancer in children? How dare you create a world of such misery? He concluded that God, if he exists, would be monstrous. Fry puts words to a problem wrestled with for centuries. If God exists, is he good?  

The logical problem of evil holds that three claims cannot all be true: 

1. God is all-powerful 

1. God is all-loving 

1. Evil Exists  

Set out plainly by the philosopher Epicurus; “Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able to? Then is he impotent? Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent? Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”[2] 

The logical problem of evil is commonly regarded as not as convincing as it was first set out to be. Even leading atheist philosophers of religion like William Rowe admit that the logical problem overreaches.[3] This argument requires that an all-powerful, all-loving God would eliminate every single instance of suffering, which does seem unlikely if we are to value other virtues such as freedom.  

The evidential problem of evil is considered the greater challenge. Some suffering may be compatible with a good God, but the sheer volume of apparently needless suffering makes God’s existence highly unlikely.  

Theodicies: Possible reasons for suffering

These questions don’t just live in lecture halls. The problem of suffering is deeply felt, and heart-cries will rarely be satisfied by ideas alone. Here we explore some philosophical and theological responses – theodicies. A theodicy is neither a pastoral response, nor a definitive answer; it is an attempt to show reasons that an all-powerful, all-loving God may have for allowing the world to be as it is. 

C.S. Lewis, writing after his wife’s death, captured the challenge, he said that it is “not that I am… in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.”[4] 

Theodicies help us to wrestle with that question: given the state of the world, is God even a God we would want to believe in?  

The ‘free-will’ theodicy

The free will theodicy explains much human-caused suffering as a consequence of genuine freedom. A world with free moral agents is more valuable than one without, since it allows people to love authentically and take moral responsibility. Forced love is no love at all. If I were to programme a computer to love me, to tell me that it enjoys spending time with me and likes talking to me, the love and encouragement that I receive wouldn’t be truly satisfying. It wouldn’t be genuine, as the programme would have no other way that it could respond. For love to be real, there has to be freedom. In Christian understanding, humanity’s choice to turn from God sows into the world the consequences of that separation, producing brokenness between human beings and the created order. 

Yet free will only takes us so far. It may explain why humans hurt each other, but it does not obviously explain bone cancer, or earthquakes – what philosophers call natural evil. Some theologians point to a deeper cosmic disorder. Before Adam and Eve sin, there seems to be a kind of cosmic rebellion at play as well. The role of humanity was to partner with God in restoring the world, and yet we too chose rebellion. This doesn’t answer every question about natural suffering, but it takes seriously the disorder we see. 

The ‘soul-making’ theodicy

The ‘soul making’ theodicy, introduced by 2nd-century bishop, Irenaeus and later developed by philosopher and theologian John Hick[5] holds that virtues such as courage, perseverance, or compassion can only arise in conditions where suffering is possible. Suffering is not intrinsically good but may be a necessary feature of a universe that allows for mature moral agents. This theodicy does face an obvious and serious objection – that some suffering seems simply too extreme and disproportionate, to be accounted for by character formation. Hick himself recognises this problem and responds to it in a number of ways. One suggestion is that an element of the incomprehensibility of suffering itself also allows for deeper virtue formation.  

Philosopher, Eleanore Stump, refines the theodicy to account for this objection.[6]  The deeper good isn’t just character formation but relationship. Suffering can strip away self-sufficiency and open us to a deeper union with God that comfort rarely produces.

The question shifts from “what is this suffering for?” to “who is present with me in it?”

In the Bible we see the story of Job, who undergoes immense suffering. His friends arrive with explanations, and God rebukes them. Job doesn’t receive an answer but an encounter with God’s presence. Whilst virtue may be gained along the way, this is not the endpoint.  

A sceptical theist’s response

We could also consider a sceptical theist response. As a novice chess player, imagine I were to play a game against Magnus Carlsen, chess grand master and world champion. If Carlsen were to make a move early on, like sacrificing his Queen that I think is ludicrous, should I think that Carlsen has no good reason to make that move? No, his ability to see the whole game is far greater than mine as a novice player. It is naïve for me to assume I should be able to understand every move he makes.[7] 

Sceptical theists will take much the same stance with respect to our understanding of God’s reasons for allowing evil. In the Bible, God says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, …  as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”[8] This this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a reason for suffering, rather that God’s mind is so much beyond ours that it is not unreasonable to say that we are unlikely to be able to comprehend the reason.  

A God who enters into suffering

Each of these approaches shows that belief in a good God in a world of real suffering, is not intellectually incoherent. Christianity’s answer goes further than a philosophical defence. Not a distant God who explains suffering, but a God who enters it. 

In the Christian faith, Jesus is described as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief”[9] Jesus – God become man – shows us what God is like, and this God has scars. As he dies Jesus experiences physical torture, public shame, legal injustice, and relational betrayal. There is no category of human suffering that stands outside what Jesus endured. When he cries from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”[10] it is a question not unlike Fry’s, asked from inside the suffering, not from outside it.  

Edward Shillito, a minister serving as a chaplain during the first world war, wrote a poem to bring comfort to those afflicted by the horrors of war. He wrote:

“but to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, and not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.”[11] In Jesus we see a God who has scars.  

The cross is not only solidarity. Jesus rising from the dead declares that death does not have the final word. Jesus’ healings and miracles are signs of what is coming: a new creation in which all that is broken is restored. Jesus in his earthly life cares deeply about the hurting and the broken. The Bible promises that “every tear will be wiped away, and the old order of pain and death will pass away.”[12] 

This is not a philosophical answer to every instance of suffering. It offers something the theodicies alone cannot: a God who understands and who promises that the world will one day be made whole.  

When we face the deepest challenge to the belief that God could be real, we find not a distant God offering explanations, but one who has been inside the suffering himself. 

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”[13] 

References 

1. RTÉ – Ireland’s national public service media, Stephen Fry on God The Meaning of Life, RTE one, [online video], YouTube, 28/01/2015, [Accessed 07/05/2026] 
2. Quote attributed to Epicurus by David Hume: David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, London: Penguin Books, 1990 [1779], p. 63 
3. William L. Rowe, ‘The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 16.4, 1979 
4. C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, Faber and Faber, 1961, p.9 
5. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Macmillan, 1966 
6. Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010 
7. Michael Bergmann, ‘Skeptical Theism and the Problem of Evil’, in Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 374–99. 
8. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV) 
9. Isaiah 53:3 
10. Matthew 27:46 
11. Edward Shillito, ‘Jesus of the Scars’ (1919), The Jesus Question, 28 October 2013, [accessed 05/06/2026] 
12. Revelation 21:4 
13. John 1:14