I’m writing this in response to a question on many minds these days. As my friend reminds me, it is the perennial question of humanity affected by suffering. I am thinking of Israelis and Palestinians whose worlds have been devastated. And children who are dying every day.

Why does God allow this, permit this, ‘will’ this suffering? Many who have suffered ask this question. Some have even given up their faith.

This is what I want to suggest. GOD DID NOT WILL THIS. GOD DOES NOT WILL SUCH SUFFERING. GOD DOESN’T EVEN ALLOW IT. 

We see God clearly in Jesus Christ. God as we see in Christ is love, self-sacrificing love. Healing love. There is no hatred in Christ. Christ was against suffering. He healed people. He cast out demons. He worked against evil.

God cannot stop this suffering because of God’s own being and design of this world and the creatures who inhabit it. God did not want Hamas to kill Israelis and terrorize a nation. God doesn’t want bombs to rain down on the Palestinians. God is against such horror, always has been. 

God is moving in the hearts and minds of all people through his powerful love and it will be when people open themselves to such a God that God will be able to stop this madness. God cannot singlehandedly affect what is going on. 

There are evil powers at work in this world. There is chaos. Read the book of Job. This world is complicated as Job found out. 

God wants us to live, to love, to flourish and God is moving to make that happen. But evil and free will are at work to oppose God, who chooses to work by the essence of his being which is love. 

Every day I think and pray about this question of suffering. And the closest I come to any comfort at all is to believe this: GOD IS EXPERIENCING THIS PAIN THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. 

Christ knows terror, abandonment, torture, and death. Through Christ, God is in his creation, enduring by love everything that causes pain and agony in the humanity of this world. God feels it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote from his prison cell in Germany, “Only a suffering God can help us now.”

God wants it to end. Yes, we know that one day there will be a new heaven and earth. But God wants his will to be done on this earth as it is in God’s Kingdom. Now. God wants us to live. Every life is made in the image of God and matters deeply to God. 

According to what I know in Christ and read in God’s word, God is doing all he can to work good out of this mess, this unspeakable horror on all sides. It’s not happening soon enough for us or for God. Keep the faith. Work hard against evil and suffering. Pray. Love one another.