common objection to God’s existence is that there is suffering in the world. People also say that God cannot be loving if He allows terrible suffering on this earth. David Hume posed the argument against God because of evil and he said; “Epicurus’ (341-270BC) old questions are yet unanswered: IS God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Why then is there evil?”

This view was famously articulated recently by the actor and presenter, Stephen Fry. He believes that if God exists, He must be evil, because He allows human beings to suffer terribly. Secularism says, “the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing, but pitiless indifference.” Richard Dawkins.

We might look at things this way, but when bad things happen to us; that’s not our reaction. We in fact, feel wronged and we don’t think things should be this way. ‘The question of suffering assumes the reality of the God it is trying to disprove.’ Amy Orr-Ewing.

The writer C.S Lewis, who had disbelieved in God due to suffering, later realised that this concept of unfairness of suffering showed that God actually existed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” We only recognize evil and suffering as wrong, because God exists. The problem answers itself.

I write a response to this question as someone who has suffered. I grew up with a father who had untreated bipolar disorder and an alcohol problem. By the age of 7, all my grandparents were dead. By the age of 23, I had lost my Dad to suicide and was later hospitalised for 8 months in a terrible mental hospital as a result of a breakdown which was caused by the trauma I had suffered.

By the age of 30 I had lost my Mum to cancer, and even watched her die in a hospice. I was there when she took her last breath, after watching her skin turn yellow as cancer ate up her liver. My beloved uncle died just two days after my mother of a heart attack. Since then, I have lost a close friend to suicide, one to cancer and have experienced suicidal depression.

Jesus was born a refugee. Herod tried to kill him. He began His ministry in His early 30’s and gave up His life a few years later on a cross. He did this to take the guilt and punishment for sin that all people deserve, including me. He was abandoned by His heavenly father and was separated from God as He cried out from the cross; ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.’ In that moment, He was rejected by God who He had always known intimately as His father.

He allowed Himself to be executed on a cross. The cross was the most cruel way the Roman empire had invented to execute people. He had nails driven through both hands, and both feet. He was then suspended from the cross where He bled, and was slowly asphyxiated as His lungs stopped functioning. He experienced a broken heart, as He took not only the punishment for all human sin, but felt the weight of the guilt of it.

Before He was crucified, He was humiliated, tortured, and whipped with a lead tipped whip until His back was lacerated and cut to pieces.

But that wasn’t the end!! Jesus rose from the dead 2 days later on Sunday. He defeated death. He defeated sin. He made a way for people that would believe in Him, to rise from the dead, and to live in eternity with Him.

Many people blame God for suffering that He did not cause. For example, a lot of suffering is caused by human beings when they choose to sin.

Murder, rape, child sex abuse, domestic violence, street fights, assault, human trafficking, road accidents………. All these things are caused by humans making moral choices that are sinful and wrong.

So much human suffering is caused by human beings. God has not made robots. When He created human beings, He gave them free will.

He cannot force humans to love Him and obey Him. He gives us choice and if we did not have choice, we would be robotic in our emotional response to God. God gives us a choice, to love and obey Him or to rebel against Him.

The first and most important commandment, is ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself.’ If all human beings did this, the world would be a completely different place.

Suffering and sin were not God’s original intention. He made the world perfect, and the original citizens of the earth were perfect. But they had a choice: to obey God and live in blissful peace with Him, or to rebel against Him.

Sadly, they chose to rebel and the whole of humanity and the earth itself has suffered as a result of humanity’s rebellion against God. Sin and death entered the world when humans bucked against God’s loving authority and chose to rebel against Him instead.

Isaiah wrote in his prophecy of Jesus’ life, that

I worship a Saviour that not only sympathises with my suffering but empathises with it. He suffered horrifically so that I will one day be in a place where there is no suffering, no sin, no sickness and no death. Philip Yancey wrote that “Anyone who wonders how God feels about the suffering on this groaning planet need only look at the face of Jesus. Jesus gives God a face; and that face is streaked with tears. No matter what I suffer in this life, I can never doubt His love for me. His self-sacrifice speaks to me of His love for me in all seasons of my soul and in times of both joy and sorrow.