Why does a good God allow evil?

What the Bible says

Let us state the question honestly. If God is good and almighty, why are children sick, why do wars and abuse happen, and why does he let them? Someone reading this may have just buried a person they love. The Bible is not embarrassed by the question. The Psalms and Job put it in the mouths of believers.

The first thing Scripture says is that the world was not always like this.

And God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good.

Gen 1:31

Evil does not appear among the things God made. Genesis 3 tells how humans turned from God's word, and how the ground was cursed and toil and death entered (Gen 3:17-19). Paul says that the whole creation groans under decay (Rom 8:19-22). Human beings were made in God's image, able to love and to choose (Gen 1:27), and the Bible's account is that when that choice went wrong, the damage spread far beyond one person. Christians differ about how much of this to put down to human freedom and how much to God's governing hand, as discussed in Is God in control?.

Scripture also says that God works within evil without making light of what the victims suffer. Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery. Years later he said to them:

As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good, in order to accomplish a day like this— to preserve the lives of many people.

Gen 50:20

His brothers' act was still evil, and Joseph does not call it good. He says that God carried out his purpose through it. Romans 8:28 can be read the same way: "God works all things together for the good of those who love Him" (Rom 8:28). That does not say that everything is good in itself. It promises that those who love God will find that he wastes nothing.

The longest answer in the Bible is the book of Job. Job loses everything for no reason he can see, and he demands to know why. The LORD answers from the storm, but the answer is not an explanation.

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Job 38:4

God never tells Job why. Yet Job ends with this:

My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You.

Job 42:5

Job did not receive an answer. He met God. And God rebukes the friends who had been explaining Job's suffering to him (Job 42:7). At the least, this warns us against claiming to know the reason for another's pain.

In the New Testament God does something larger than explain. He does not watch suffering from a distance but enters it. Isaiah describes the coming servant:

Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows

Isa 53:4

Jesus wept at Lazarus's grave (John 11:35), and on the cross he went down into the deepest place evil can reach. And the Bible says the story does not end there.

and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.

Rev 21:4

The church's witness

The church has long tried to understand where evil comes from. Augustine held that evil is not a "thing" God made but a lack of good, a good that is missing where it ought to be. He also taught that because God is almighty and good, he allows evil to exist only because he can bring good even out of evil Augustine, Enchiridion 11. It is a way to say that evil is real without making God its author. Few theologians would claim that it fully explains why evil exists.

East and West alike confess God as "maker of heaven and earth" The Nicene Creed, and also confess him as good. On how evil became possible there are two broad streams. One says that love is only real if it can be refused, and that God chose to risk giving such freedom. The other says that God is sovereign over all things, that even the fall lies within his wise purpose, and that God is still not the author of sin. Both agree that God is good and that he will overcome evil.

Matthew Henry, on Paul's thorn in the flesh, writes: "God often brings this good out of evil" Matthew Henry. He understands the thorn as sent by Satan for evil, yet designed and overruled by God for good. On Revelation 21 he describes the last day: "no signs, no remembrance of former sorrows shall remain" Matthew Henry.

In the original languages

Two Hebrew words stand face to face in Genesis 50:20. One is ra (רַע), "evil." It can mean both moral wrong and calamity, so the wrong people do and the pain people suffer fit within a single word. The other is the verb chashav (חָשַׁב), "to devise" or "to plan," translated "intended."

In the Hebrew the verb is used twice in the one sentence. The brothers "devised" evil, and God "devised" it for good. Two plans lay over the same event. The brothers' plan was evil, and the responsibility is theirs. But a larger plan was being carried out above it. Scripture does not explain how the two fit together. It testifies that they did.

Common objections

"A good and almighty God and the existence of evil are logically incompatible." The argument has force. If God can prevent evil and wishes to, there should be none. But it needs a further premise, that God could have no good reason to allow evil. Many philosophers today, believers and unbelievers alike, judge that this premise cannot be shown, so the strictly logical form of the argument does not succeed, and the debate has moved to the evidential form below. This answers only one form of the question, and not the hardest.

"Some suffering is too great and too pointless. What good purpose could justify it?" This is the harder question. In front of a child's agony or a massacre, ‘for a greater good’ can sound like an insult, and sometimes it is one. What a Christian can honestly say is this: we do not know the reason for every sorrow, and we do not claim to. The God of the Bible did not give Job a reason either. We can say that God is not indifferent to this evil, because he sent his Son to bear it in his own body. That does not remove every difficulty, but it matters that God is one who has suffered with us.

"If God is truly good, why not end evil right now?" The Bible promises that God will end it, and it rests the promise on the cross and resurrection that have already happened. Why he waits, Scripture explains only in part. Peter says it is because of his patience (2 Pet 3:9), but we should admit that this may not comfort someone in the middle of suffering. That is why the Bible keeps room for the prayers of those who wait and cry out.

Going further

The most honest answer may be a short one. We do not know everything, but we can know that God is good and that he has entered our suffering. And he will wipe away every tear. This answer will not lift every pain today. That is all right. Scripture does not scold those who ask from inside their pain.

You might ask yourself some questions. Am I asking this out of an intellectual puzzle or out of a wound? The two need different answers. If God never explains, do I still want to meet him? And when a neighbour suffers, am I trying to give a reason, or to be there?

To read further, see Does suffering have meaning? and Why did Jesus have to die?. Reading Psalms 22 and 88 slowly is also a good place to start.