If God is meant to be the good guy in the Bible and Satan the bad one, why do many blame God for pain and suffering in the world? Even devout Christians sometimes abandon their faith after tragedy—when you’d think such times would fuel anger toward Satan and strengthen their hope in God’s promise of a suffering-free world. The Bible claims God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving. Yet atheists and many hurting believers argue that if He existed, He’d prevent the suffering.
British comedian Stephen Fry articulated his trouble reconciling the concept of a loving biblical God and the existence of evil on the religious affairs program The Meaning of Life in 2015. When the host asked Fry what he would say if he met God in heaven, Fry didn’t hold back. “I’ll say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault! Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I’d say.”
Fry’s moral outrage seems like a reasonable conclusion when you consider the suffering we experience all around us. We all long for a world without suffering. The question is, why doesn’t that world exist if there really was a powerful God of love? While Fry’s fury at the concept of the biblical God creating a world with injustice and pain feels reasonable, there’s a critical error in his statement. The Bible states that God created this world perfect. It’s only in the third chapter of the Bible, and after God has finished creating, that Satan messes up perfection on earth. The blame is misdirected.
But we can’t merely shift all blame to Satan and call case closed on suffering’s origin. A response might be, “But didn’t God create Satan?” If we’re sticking with the Bible’s account, we can only answer, “Yes.”
why did God create Satan?
Satan, or “Lucifer” as he was originally named, was once the most glorious angel. But after he chose pride and rebellion over God’s law of love, he managed to deceive a third of heaven’s angels, and after having been cast down to Earth, brought his rebellion against God into our backyard. If the Bible’s claims that God knew this would happen are true, then why didn’t God just refrain from creating Lucifer all together?
If God is creating masses of beings in the universe, it’s statistically probable that if Lucifer was never created, over time another would be the first to rebel. So, if God knew Lucifer would choose to hate and thus chose not to create him at all, He would then have to choose not to create the next who would hate. And the next. If all these foreseen rebels were never created, soon the universe would be filled only with beings who love because God had weeded out anyone exercising free will not to love.
The answer for why a powerful, loving God would create Lucifer if He knew the trouble he’d cause? Love!
what’s love got to do with suffering?
True love requires free will, else it is not love. For example, which of these characteristics would you desire most in your children? Children who love you because:
They are genetically predetermined to love you and cannot choose not to.
They will love you so long as you give them everything they want.
They are afraid of what you will do to them if they don’t love you.
Someone told them to. They comply but haven’t thought about it themselves.
They genuinely understand and appreciate your love for them and because of that, they freely choose to love you back.
Most should agree the final option is the only genuine one. Like us, the biblical God desires heartfelt love from others. From a logical standpoint, to have genuine free-will love, you must have the option for free-will rejection, else you will have no free will at all.
Here we should note that the term “all powerful” when describing God does have a logical exception: God can’t make logical contradictions true. In other words, God cannot logically create a square circle, nor can He exist and not exist at the same time. Neither is it logically possible to have love in a universe without the free will option of hate—that is a logical contradiction that doesn’t need to be solved for God to be titled “all powerful”.
Now, if we are to pin all the blame on Lucifer exercising his mandatory free-will ability to hate, then we arrive at the next big question.
why doesn’t God kill Satan?
God must allow for potentially rebellious beings to have real love, but when one starts to cause suffering, why not just zap them and cleanse the universe of all trouble?
If God smote Lucifer after he threw untested accusations against God’s rulership style, it would have left the universe to rumours and musings. Like, “Maybe Lucifer was right. God is too controlling.” Or, “What is God hiding to so quickly execute someone who speaks against Him?”
Many in the universe would undesirably start to “love and obey” from fear of what God will do to them if they don’t. Some might convince themselves that Lucifer’s lies were truth. After all, they would have no evidence for what would have happened if Lucifer went through with his mutiny—only his word against God’s.
Instead, God allowed Lucifer his free will and has even let him demonstrate his desire of a life without God. This has created a living demonstration to the universe so that all can decide if Lucifer had a valid accusation against God, and whether we would all have better and freer lives without God’s laws of love holding us back. What we are living now is that living demonstration.
how long until it’s over?
Our suffering is great pain—but it is not in vain. As the accusations against God are proven false via real life (and death) examples, Satan will eventually be destroyed once enough is enough. The Bible says that all will be made new without the suffering, and those willing will be rewarded many times greater, for eternity, for having endured our short but intense suffering. Satan will be destroyed and suffering will be no more.
God cannot logically create a square circle, nor can He exist and not exist at the same time.
There’s been horrific suffering around the world for thousands of years now. If this is all some confined experiment for the universe to see that evil equals bad, the final big question is, “How much more of our pain and suffering does the universe have to see to be convinced Lucifer was wrong and God was right?” Surely the ultimate demonstration of Satan’s hatred and God’s love for us was when God sent His Son, Jesus, to the earth and Satan organised His execution? That was more than 2000 years ago—and we’re still suffering.
God has not shared a date the torment will end, but I trust a God, who knows infinitely more than you and I, to make the call of when enough is enough. If suffering developed once in a perfect environment, it might eventually happen again. Next time, we must have a comprehensive case study of exactly what happens to convince any free-will doubters that God really is love and is worth our love. While each of our short years on this earth hurt sometimes, according to the Bible, this traumatic time will be but a pixel in the trillions of years we have ahead, living in a new world free of suffering and death.
Until then, I invite you to look more into the love of the One who created the world originally perfect and promises to restore it again, and to support those around you who suffer for now.
