If God is good why does he permit suffering?

This has always been the toughest nut for any believer in God to crack, a question that has been around for thousands of years. It is tough, not because there aren’t valid answers, but because when we or someone close to us actually suffers, no answer seems adequate.

The poet T.S. Eliot summed up the way this difficulty is experienced with special force today:

The trouble of the modern age is not merely the inability to believe certain truths about God which our forefathers believed, but the inability to feel towards God and man as they did.

.In an age before modern medicine, when everybody suffered a great deal, but strongly believed that heaven was just round the corner, it was easier to imagine a God who permitted brief suffering here on earth in order to fit us for the everlasting joys of heaven, but that is not how most people today picture the world.

In the film Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis is depicted sitting in the pub, smoking his pipe, and calmly pointing out to his friends that it is quite logical of God to permit suffering, since we are all terribly egoistic, while suffering purifies us of that, and so makes us more able to love, both on earth and ultimately in heaven. Later in the film, however, he himself falls in love and marries late in life, only to discover that his beloved wife is struck down with cancer. All his arguments suddenly seem paper thin….

With all that in mind, we can make the following statements about Catholic belief, recognising their inadequacy in the face of suffering as we experience it:

1. Catholics believe that God does not will suffering to take place.

God created the world as an earthly paradise, in a beautiful variety and harmony. All creation is ruled by a glance from his eyes, and remains in harmony so long as it obeys him. But the most precious gift of all was given to human beings, the ability to love, and this cannot be given without the ability to choose freely. Humankind abused this gift to turn away from God, and with this action, which Catholics refer to as sin, suffering entered the world because its harmony was lost.

2. Catholics believe that God “answers” suffering by sharing it himself.

For Catholics our central symbol is the crucifix, a permanent reminder that God’s Son suffered in a cruel way least year’s film, The Passion of the Christ, made real for many people. Since God himself is eternally blessed and cannot suffer, he took a human body in an act Catholics call the Incarnation, joining himself to the human nature of Jesus. His suffering on the Cross was given infinite power to overcome evil by the utterly pure love with which he bore it. This power was manifested externally by the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead three days later.

3. Catholics believe that suffering can have a redemptive value.

From the time of the Cross and Resurrection onwards, anyone who suffers can know that the evil inherent in suffering has been conquered. We can share in that victory by an act of total entrustment to Jesus Christ which Catholics call Faith. Faith is like a door opening onto the world of God where evil has been overcome, not by escaping it but by entering into it with love and trust. For the time being we continue to suffer, but we know that the evil hidden in suffering cannot harm us, and we can even make our suffering work positively for others by lovingly sharing it with Jesus Christ. This “redemptive value of suffering” is the theme of many well-known books, plays and films, in which, for example, the hero or heroine has to die or go into exile in order to bring new life to others.

4. Catholics believe suffering will one day be wiped away for ever.