The suffering in the world can be inconceivable whether past or present. Humanity’s capacity for cruelty is hard to grasp, yet they happen. Where is God? Why would He allow this? Does He even exist? These are very difficult and agonising questions but questions that we do ask ourselves. I know I’m not alone in my bewilderment but unfortunately I’ve fallen for the self-destructing lies of the enemy multiple times when trying to answer these questions myself. 

The Bible reiterates that the reasons for suffering can be mysterious and confusing, and from our viewpoint, incomprehensible. In the opening scene of the book of Job, for instance, we are taken into heaven and are witnesses to a dialogue between Satan and God. We realise from their interchange that there is much more happening in suffering than any of us can see, for sure in Job’s life but also in ours (Ephesians 6:12). God has His purposes, which are for both our good and His glory, though we may not understand them until heaven. Until then, we live with a seeming paradox: that God is both sovereign and good and yet His people can still suffer unthinkable loss, even when they are faithfully trusting Him.

Ultimately, we do not know the reasons for what God allows. His ways and thoughts are infinitely higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). His sovereign plan takes in the whole scope of history, past, present, and future, encompassing every possible course of action, every cause and effect, every potentiality, and every contingency. There is no way we could possibly fathom the intricacies of His design. By faith, we trust that His plan is the best plan possible for restoring fallen humanity and a cursed world to righteousness and blessing.

I know from my own experience; It can be so easy to blame or become angry at God for the suffering we go through, But we can understand this: God’s permission is not the same as His approval. God allowed Adam to eat of the forbidden tree, but He did not approve of the action. In the same way, God’s allowing of evil and suffering in no way suggests His approval of it. God is grieved by the sinfulness of man and the hardness of his heart. (Genesis 6:6; Mark 3:5).

Many people have told me that the existence of evil is proof that the all loving and all powerful God of the Bible cannot exist. I completely understand this way of thinking, I’ve believed it myself! But this is not something the Bible leaves unaddressed. Scripture not only refers to the problem of evil, but it offers several solutions to it. According to the Bible, the experience of evil is something God understands and acknowledges. God’s willingness to grant us the freedom of making our own choices also allows for the possibility of moral evil. Moral evil leads to physical evil and the fact that we live in fallen world is also reflected all throughout nature through the most devastating natural disasters and disease. Even so, God has always acted to soften the blows that evil and suffering land on humanity although this usually goes unnoticed through the human eye.
Due to the fact that God gave us free will, people willingly chose to do evil. God is not to blame.

So the follow-up question is, if God knew all the evil things that people would choose to do, why would He give us free will? Well, for love to be real, it must not be coerced. If we did not have the ability to reject God, then neither would we have the ability to truly love Him, human freedom is the highest good and that even God will not violate it.

Satan and his demons wreak havoc in the world, but they are only allowed a certain amount of freedom. We also know that God has planned everything from the beginning of time to the end. Nothing can thwart His plans, and things are proceeding exactly on schedule. “The LORD of hosts has sworn: ‘As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand” (Isaiah 14:24). So the next question would be, if God knew satan would rebel, why would He create satan in the first place? We know from scripture that God is “perfect in knowledge”; “his understanding has no limit”; “he knows everything”- it is clear that God’s knowledge is not merely greater than our own, but it is infinitely greater. He knows all things in totality. If God’s knowledge is not perfect, then there is a deficiency in His nature. But not God, He’s not lacking in anything, otherwise He wouldn’t be God. His light is unsurpassed, incomparable in power, eminent in His authority.

In trying to understand why God created Satan, knowing he would rebel, we should also consider: 

1) Lucifer had a good and perfect purpose before his fall. Lucifer’s rebellion does not change God’s original intent from something good to something bad. 

2) if God had ‘zapped’ Satan after he sinned, the other angels would instantly be obeying God out of fear, not love. 

3)God’s sovereignty extends to Satan, even in his fallen condition. God is able to use Satan’s evil actions to ultimately bring about God’s holy plan (see 1 Timothy 1:20 and 1 Corinthians 5:5). 

4) God’s plan of salvation was ordained from eternity past (Revelation 13:8); salvation requires something to be saved from, and so God allowed Satan’s rebellion and the spread of sin. 

5) The suffering that Satan brought into the world actually became the means by which Jesus, in His humanity, was made the complete and perfect Saviour of mankind: “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered” (Hebrews 2:10).

Finally-6) From the very beginning, God’s plan in Christ included the destruction of Satan’s work (see 1 John 3:8).
Ultimately, we cannot know for sure why God created Satan, knowing he would rebel. It’s tempting to assume that things would be “better” if Satan had never been created or to declare that God should have done differently. But such assumptions and declarations are unwise. In fact, to claim we know better than God how to run the universe is to fall into the devil’s own sin of promoting himself above the Most High (Isaiah 14:13–14).

We often associate the times of abundance and success with God’s favour, but in reality God’s love is as strong as ever when we are facing despair and even death whether we believe it or not. In psalm 44, the psalmist mourned that God had rejected and crushed them, implying that God was against them, but in Romans 8:31-39, Paul states:

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭31‬-‭39‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Paul reminds us that even in our darkest moments especially in our darkest moments, God is working for our good. We may live with lingering questions about our suffering. Many questions may go unanswered, particularly the haunting question of Why? We can trust that God has reasons, although we may not see or understand many of them in this life.

While we may see only in part now, we can trust that all that God does is out of his incomparable and unfathomable love for us.
The psalmist concludes by directly asking God for help, saying, “Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself!” (Psalm 44:23). When Jesus was asleep in a boat amidst a perilous storm, the disciples wondered if he cared about them. After Jesus calmed the storm, he asked them why they’d been afraid (Mark 4:35– 41). Jesus knew exactly what was happening. But like the disciples, when God isn’t acting, we may wonder if he doesn’t know or doesn’t care, both of which are impossible, but still, we can feel the agony of the psalmist on behalf of those who feel abandoned, lying prostrate in the
dust. The reassuring truth is that God can never forget his people, for they are carved on the palms of his hands (Isaiah 49:16).

God does not leave us to suffer pointlessly. Yes, the innocent suffer (see Job 1–2), but God can redeem that suffering. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”John 16:33). In Christ we have an anchor that holds fast in all the storms of life, but, if we never sail into those storms, how would we know that? It is in times of despair and sorrow that we reach out to Him, and, if we are His children, we always find Him there waiting to comfort and uphold us through it all. In this way, God proves His faithfulness to us and ensures that we will stay close to Him. An added benefit is that as we experience God’s comfort through trials, we are then able to comfort others in the same way (2 Corinthians 1:4). This world and all that is in it will pass away; the kingdom of God is eternal. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), those who follow Him know that the end of this world on earth is NOT the end of the story. Even the sufferings we endure, as terrible as they can be, “are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

For all reading this, perhaps you find yourself in a dark tunnel, feeling lost, rejected, broken, mistreated, whatever it is God sees you, nothing is too hard for Him. Hear me out…YOU are of inestimable value to God, because of the price He paid for YOU.
Genesis 1:26-27 says we are made in His image, the very image of God. Psalm 139:13-16 says we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and all the days of our lives were written in God’s book before we were ever born, confirming God’s prior knowledge and plan for our lives. Ephesians 1:4 says God chose His children before the foundations of the earth were ever formed, and in Ephesians 1:13-14 we’re told we are God’s own possession, chosen for the praise of His glory, and that we have an inheritance in heaven with Him as His children. These are things done to us, for us by God. These are not things we have done for ourselves, nor have we earned or deserved them. We are, in fact, merely the recipients.
The Bible tells us that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). In fact, we “were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). What worth is there in dead things? None. God imputed to us His own righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21) not because we were worthy of it, but because we were unworthy, unlovable, and unable to make ourselves worthy in any way. But and here’s the miracle He actually loved us in spite of our condition (John 3:16), and because He did, we now have infinite worth. We are not our circumstances, failings or anything that people tell us about ourselves; the one, true authority on our self-worth is Jesus Christ, and since He gave His own life up for us by dying on a cross, that should tell us just how valuable YOU really are.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16-17