I recently read an article about the Pope’s visit to a children’s hospital in Poland during his trip to World Youth Day where when asked by a young child why God allows children to suffer, he could only tell them that “there’s no easy answer to suffering”.

Maybe it’s only me, but it seems that wherever I look, I can’t help but see suffering in one form or another. A neighbors young child suffering before finally dying from a brain tumor, a friend whose own body is attacking her with an auto immune disease that doctors can do nothing about, another friend with Parkinson’s, another with cancer and others suffering from this or that. We have entire countries where the people are fleeing for their lives taking only the few possessions they can carry with them and other countries, even our own, telling them to stay away, that we don’t want them because we are more concerned with ourselves. We have countless other people in our world, our own country and even in our own communities with no place to live, hardly anything to eat, little or no medical care and limited hope for the future. Women and children around the world are being forced into slavery and prostitution. There are wars going on it seems everywhere, though I guess so it won’t seem so bad we no longer call them wars. And how many people are dying and even killing themselves because they have lost hope—they no longer have anything to live for. And the list goes on—and on.

Why does a loving and all-powerful God allow these things to happen—to anyone, but especially to those who love him? And what about the innocent—what about the young children who have never done anything wrong?  I’ve read often that this question is the biggest reason people have chosen not to believe in God and also the biggest reason so many have turned away from their faith.

A lot of people have tried to figure out suffering for a very long time. They say the book of Job, may be the first written work to look at the suffering of the innocent, was probably written over 2,500 years ago. There are many, many books containing  thought-provoking and profound insights into suffering. But ultimately, like the Pope says, there is no easy answer.

I came across something recently though that has helped me maybe not so much to understand suffering  or even to just accept it, but maybe, to actually embrace it—and I’d like to share it with you. It’s from a book by Peter Kreeft called The God Who Loves You. It’s entitled “In everything God works for good with those who love him”.

“A third shattering realization was that Romans 8:28 is literally true: ‘in everything God works for good with those who love him.’ This is surely the most astonishing verse in the Bible. For it certainly does not look as if all things work for good. What awful things our lives contain! But if God, the all-powerful Creator and Designer and Provider of our lives, is 100% love, then it necessarily follows, as the night the day that everything in His world, from birth to death, from kisses to slaps, from candy to cancer comes to us out of God’s active or permissive love.

It is incredibly simple and perfectly reasonable. It is only our complexity that makes it look murky. Here is the shining simplicity: if God is total love, then everything He wills for me must come from his love and be for my good. For that is what love is, the willing of the beloved’s good. And if this God of sheer love is also omnipotent and can do anything He wills, then it follows that all things must work together for my ultimate good.

Not necessarily for my immediate good, for short-range harm may be the necessary road to long-range good. And not necessarily for my apparent good, for appearances may be deceiving. Thus suffering does not seem good. But it can always work for my real and ultimate good. Even the bad things I and others do, though they do not come from God, are allowed by God because they are included in His plan. You cannot checkmate, corner, surprise, or beat Him. “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” And He’s got my whole life in His hands too. He could take away any evil—natural, human, or demonic—like swatting a fly. He allows it only because it works out for our greater good in the end, just as it did with Job.

In fact, every atom in the universe moves exactly as it does only because omnipotent Love designed it so.

I had always believed in God’s love and God’s omnipotence. But once I put the two ideas together, saw the unavoidable logical conclusion (Rom 8:28) and applied this truth to my life, I could never again see the world the same way. If God is great (omnipotent) and God is good (loving), then everything that happens is our spiritual food; and we should thank Him for it.”         -Peter Kreeft