If a good God is real, why do bad things happen? So many people ask this question and use their answer, or lack of one, as a reason not to believe. I'm not going to attempt to answer that question. Instead, I want to share my heart and perspective. My goal isn't to convince you. Rather, I hope you'll walk away with a slightly different perspective and maybe a few more questions to take to God.
I was only ten years old when they carried my mother out on a stretcher and rushed her to the ER for what would be the last time.
She had battled cancer for years, enduring relentless pain and sickness. After a brief remission, the cancer returned more aggressively than before. In 1986, a bone marrow transplant was still a relatively new and uncertain procedure, but it represented one final hope for eliminating the lymphoma. While it may have helped combat the cancer cells, her body could never fully recover. Her red blood cell count remained dangerously low, and ultimately, she suffered internal bleeding.
Many things have happened in my life that I couldn't understand or control. The loss of my mom at such a young age, and in such a painful way, stands out as one of the biggest. Many of those who loved her struggled to understand how someone so loving, so faithful, and so devoted to God could endure so much suffering, only for her story to end the way it did.
Or so it seemed.
The apostle Paul knew hardship intimately. He suffered again and again in pursuit of a life devoted to Jesus. Yet instead of writing words of hopelessness, he points us toward a deeper truth:
"Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, 'For your sake we are being killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.') No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us."
Romans 8:35-37 (NLT)
Wait a minute, friends. Is Paul actually suggesting that there can be joy in suffering? In a way, he is.
The Holy Spirit shapes Christians into people who live and love more like Jesus, not only through seasons of blessing but also through seasons of suffering. Those difficult seasons invite us into Jesus' story. They teach us dependence. They strengthen our faith and remind us to trust God's promise that life is not defeated by death. For the believer, death is not the end of the story. Resurrection is.
In his book A Grace Disguised, Jerry Sittser writes:
"The experience of loss does not have to be the defining moment in our lives. Instead, the defining moment can be our response to the loss. It is not what happens to us that matters so much as what happens in us."
Those words resonate deeply with me because I know firsthand that every season of growth in my life has come through trusting and following God wherever He leads, even when that path includes loss.
Not long ago, a realization struck me, and I wondered why I hadn't seen it sooner.
We often ask why a good God allows bad things to happen. Yet when God chose to save humanity, He chose suffering as the means. He didn't have to send His only Son. He didn't have to allow Jesus to enter our broken world, experience rejection, endure unimaginable pain, and die a brutal death on a cross. Yet He did.
The very God we question because of suffering is the God who willingly entered suffering for us.
Because He loved us, He chose the agony of watching His Son die so that we could be redeemed. The cross reminds us that God is not distant from pain. He is not indifferent to suffering. He understands it more deeply than we ever could. He chose suffering for us.
I don't remember the moment my mother passed away, but my aunt shared a beautiful story about it.
My mom had been in a coma for three days and was unable to communicate. Yet just before her heart stopped beating, she smiled and opened her arms, almost as if she were being welcomed. Into death? Or into life?
I don't remember that moment, but I do remember the faith my mother had. I remember the love she showed our family, a kind of love that only Jesus could have taught her. Even during what were likely her most difficult days on earth, she radiated grace.
She was human, of course. But there was also something supernatural about her faith, and that's what I remember most. In fact, if she could speak to us today, I think she'd insist that it wasn't her strength at all. It was God working through her.
So, friends, I could choose to look at her suffering and death as a reason to abandon my faith or conclude that God is not good. Instead, I see something different.
I see a woman whose suffering revealed a faith that outlasted pain.
I see a God who remained faithful when circumstances seemed unbearable.
And perhaps, rather than being evidence against God's goodness, her suffering became one of the clearest demonstrations of it.
Not because suffering itself is good. But because even in suffering, God was there.
And He still is.
-Kristin Engler