Why Does God Allow Suffering?

The phone call came, or the test result, or the news about someone you love. And a question you had heard your whole life stopped being a topic and became yours. Why would God let this happen?

This page will not settle it. No page does. What it can do is tell you what Christians have said, be honest about where each answer stops, and show you where the Bible itself sits with the question instead of explaining it.

Asking this is not a failure of faith

Many people ask this question quietly, as if the asking itself were a kind of leaving. It is not. The Bible asks it out loud, more than once, and it does not hide the pages where it does.

The writer of Psalm 88 prays, “Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?” (Psalm 88:14, NIV). Job asks for a hearing with God for most of his book. These are prayers. They were written down, kept, and handed on to us as Scripture.

You are also in a great deal of company. Pew Research Center surveyed 6,485 U.S. adults in September 2021 about exactly this. Few blamed God, and fewer than one in five were believers who said they often or sometimes get angry with God over it. People carry this question and keep believing. Both can be true in the same week.

Four answers Christians give, and where each runs out

Christians have given this question a great deal of thought. Four answers come up again and again. Here is each one stated fairly, with the place where it stops helping.

1. People are free, and people do harm

A world where love is real is a world where people can choose, and people choose badly. Much of the suffering on earth is something one person did to another. This is the answer most Americans reach for first. In the Pew survey, 80% of U.S. adults were believers who said most of the suffering in the world comes from people rather than from God.

Where it runs out: it does not explain the illness nobody caused, the storm, or the child born sick.

2. The whole creation is not as it should be

The second answer says the world itself is broken, and that the damage is wider than any one person’s choices. In a sermon published by The Gospel Coalition, D. A. Carson traces suffering back to humanity’s rebellion against God, which Christians call the fall. That is a Reformed way of putting it, and other traditions describe the fall with different emphases. Paul says something close in Romans 8: the whole creation “has been groaning.”

Where it runs out: it explains why there is suffering at all. It does not explain why this happened to you and not to the house next door.

3. Suffering can form a person

The third answer says hardship can grow things in us that ease does not. Many believers hold this. In the same Pew survey, 61% of U.S. adults said suffering exists “to provide an opportunity for people to come out stronger,” and 56% of believers said God chooses not to stop suffering because it is part of a larger plan.

Where it runs out: some suffering crushes people and teaches nothing. And it is a cruel thing to say to someone in the first week of a loss. Job’s friends tried a version of it. It did not help him.

4. God did not stay out of it

The fourth is less an explanation than a fact Christians point to. God did not answer suffering from a distance. In Jesus, He entered it and died on a cross. Carson says in that same sermon that when he cannot understand a loss, he goes “back to the cross.”

Where it runs out: it does not tell you why. It tells you who is with you. For many people that turns out to be the answer they needed more. But it is fair to notice that it is a different one.

We are app builders, not pastors. Each tradition weighs these four differently, and the hard questions underneath them belong in a conversation with a pastor who knows you. If you do not have one, the BlessUp church finder lists churches by city.

What Job teaches by never giving the reason

If any book of the Bible was going to explain suffering, it would be Job. It is 42 chapters long and it is about nothing else. A good man loses his children, his wealth and his health. Three friends come to sit with him.

For seven days they say nothing, and that is the best thing they do. Then they start explaining. Their main answer, in the words of Luther Seminary’s Enter the Bible, “is to blame him, saying that he must have sinned in order to deserve such suffering.” The same guide puts the book’s reply in one line: “Sin does lead to suffering, but not all suffering is the result of sin.”

Then, in chapter 38, God speaks. He does not explain. He asks: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand” (Job 38:4, NIV). For four chapters He shows Job the sea, the stars, the wild animals. He never mentions the reason the reader was told in chapter 1.

Enter the Bible’s summary of Job says it plainly: “Questions about why good people like Job suffer are left unanswered, but Job’s relationship with God is renewed.” And at the end, it is the friends God corrects, for not speaking rightly about Him. Job, who argued and wept and demanded a hearing, is not corrected for asking.

That is worth sitting with. The longest treatment of suffering in the Bible ends with God present and the question still open.

Lament: Psalm 88 and Lamentations 3

The Bible has a name for honest prayer in pain. It is called lament. Enter the Bible describes it as “the honest expression to God of one’s frailty, questions, grief, and anger,” and calls it “a faithful form of prayer.”

Psalm 88 is the plainest example. Most laments turn toward hope before they end. This one does not. Its last line is “darkness is my closest friend” (NIV). There is no lift at the end, and the psalm was kept anyway. If you want more of these, we have a guide to how to read the Psalms, and a page of Bible verses about grief and loss.

Lamentations 3 holds grief and hope in one chapter. The writer says, “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.” Two verses later: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:19, 22–23, NIV).

The famous line about new mercies was not written on a good day. It sits in the middle of a poem about a ruined city, with 66 verses of sorrow around it. The hope did not replace the grief. It was said from inside it.

Romans 8 and the cross

Paul does not explain suffering in Romans 8 either. He places it. “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us,” he writes. Then he says the whole creation “has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth,” and that we groan with it while we wait (Romans 8:18, 22–23, NIV).

He adds something for the days when prayer will not come: “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” If words have left you, that verse says you are still being prayed for. We wrote more about those days in praying when you don’t feel it.

Verse 28 says that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Traditions read that verse differently, and it is often quoted too quickly to people in pain. It says God works in all things. It does not say all things are good.

The chapter ends with a promise, and it still gives no reason. Paul is convinced that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The ground under that sentence is the cross: a God who, as Christians confess, has suffered.

A reading path for a hard season

Most answers to this question are arguments. The Bible’s own answer is mostly books you read slowly. Here is a path through four of them, with what each one costs in time.

The word counts come from The Gospel Coalition Canada’s count of every book. We did not find a count we could check for the single chapters, so those cells give verses and no minute figure.

A few plain suggestions for reading in a hard season:

• Start with the shortest. Psalm 88 asks nothing of you. Read it once and close the book.
• Read Job at one chapter a day. The average chapter is about 300 words. The middle of the book is long speeches by the friends, and it is fine to find them tiring. They are meant to be.
• Do not make up missed days. A week you could not read is a week you could not read. Open to where you stopped.
• Read with someone if you can. A pastor, a friend, a small group. Job’s friends were at their best when they sat with him.

Whatever you use, the idea is the same, and it is why we argue that a missed day should never reset anything. A small portion, most days, with room for the days you cannot. Job waited 37 chapters to hear God speak. You are allowed to go slowly.

Frequently asked questions

Is it a sin to ask God why?

The Bible does not treat it as one. Psalm 88 asks God, "Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?" and Job asks for a hearing through most of his book. At the end, God corrects Job's friends for how they spoke, not Job for asking. Lament, honest prayer in pain, is a form of prayer Scripture itself models. If the question is weighing on you, bring it to a pastor too.

Does God cause suffering or just allow it?

Christians answer this differently, and the traditions use different language for it. In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey of 6,485 U.S. adults, 80% were believers who said most suffering comes from people rather than from God, while 56% of believers said God chooses not to stop suffering because it is part of a larger plan. The book of Job calls God's rule mysterious and never gives Job the reason. This is a question to take to your own pastor or church.

What does the Bible say about why bad things happen to good people?

The book of Job is the Bible's longest answer, and it refuses the simple one. Job's friends say he must have sinned to deserve his suffering, and God corrects them. As Luther Seminary's Enter the Bible puts it, sin does lead to suffering, but not all suffering is the result of sin. The book leaves the why unanswered and ends with Job's relationship with God renewed.

What book of the Bible should I read when I am suffering?

Start short. Psalm 88 is 18 verses and prays in the dark without a tidy ending. Lamentations 3 holds grief and hope in one chapter. Job is 42 chapters, about 58 minutes of reading in total, or six weeks at a chapter a day. Romans 8:18-39 ends with the promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God.