If God Exists, How Could He Allow (fill in the blank)?

            One of the greatest arguments against God, or at least the God of the Bible, is the existence of pain and suffering. The people who use this are usually in two groups (though the line is often blurry): 1) the hardened skeptic, 2) the individual who sincerely wants an answer. The former uses the “if God exists, how could He allow?” argument as a smokescreen. He or she doesn’t really care for an answer. The latter wants to believe that there is a loving, all-powerful Creator, but sees a contradiction between the supposedly fluffy Santa Clause God of Christianity and reality.

            I plan on writing many, many posts on this subject, but I’ll limit my answer to the atheistic skeptic. A quick note, there is not ONE answer to this argument. There are several factors that go into how to answer this question. 1) Is the skeptic an atheist? 2) If not, what exactly does the skeptic believe? 3) Is the person asking it going through personal pain and suffering? For the purpose of this post, I am answering the atheistic skeptic.

            The atheistic skeptic believes in evolution. We are the result of chance. There is no purpose in life beyond eating, drinking, sleeping, procreating, and making sure our offspring survive to repeat the cycle. There is no supernatural anything.

            The problem with an atheist asking the question “God can’t exist because we see pain and suffering” is that there is an easy rebuttal. A Christian should ask, “do you think pain and suffering is bad?” The majority of atheists, if they have any heart, will say that yes, it is bad. The Christian could then respond, “Why is pain and suffering bad?” The atheist has no logical answer.

            By admitting that pain and suffering is bad, the atheist is admitting that there is morality. There is an absolute standard of right and wrong. Murder, rape, and theft are wrong, while caring, helping, and serving are right.

            But morality as humans know it, in the sense of the dictionary definition, is completely opposite of their worldview. Remember, in an evolutionary world, we got here by murdering those who were unfit, raping those who could produce desirable offspring, and stealing things we needed to survive. There is no right or wrong. There is just survival, pain, and death.

            So if evolution is true, we would not be any more moral than animals. But we are more moral than animals, which means evolution is not true. If evolution is not true, than the Bible is. Only Christianity can account for God giving us morality. So whenever the atheist says, “God can’t exist because He wouldn’t allow…” he is saying that he is moral, which only makes sense if God exists. If God didn’t exist, we would never complain about pain and suffering. Those two things would just be our reality; we wouldn’t know anything else.

            But because God ingrained the truth in us, we know there is a better life. We look at our crazy world and know that things shouldn’t be like this. We know that there has to be something better.

Where can we find answers? The Bible. Yeah, that book that everyone loves to bash (but loves to watch for some reason). Check it out. It’s fascinating.

P.S. Whole books have been written on this subject. This is just touching the surface of an ocean of answers. All this post was trying to do was show that, by asking why pain and suffering exist, there has to be a standard for right and wrong. Who gave us that standard? Not evolution, I can tell you that.