Why God Allows Suffering

 Christian philosopher David Wood points out that our definition of "good" is something that maximizes our happiness and minimizes our pain (Responding to the Argument of Evil in "Evidence for God, p.40). David Wood tells us that we treat God as a cosmic thermostat who would keep the universe just the way we like it, and for that reason when we are confronted with evil our belief in a good God is rattled. But God sometimes likes to turn up or turn down the heat to our utter discomfort for a reason. In Rom 1:24 we read that God gave sinners who refused to honor God up to the consequences of their sins. It is like when we decide  not to obey God and play with sexual immorality God gives us up to sexually transmitted diseases, divorce and lawsuits. And he does so for a reason. According to Chrysostom, this is designed to awaken us to the awful seriousness of our situation. This is what Phillip Yancey refers to as the gift of pain. In his book Where is God when it Hurts Yancey describes pain in life a gift from God that no one wants. He describes pain as something necessary for life, because pain serves as a warning signal that something is wrong. Without pain we will not know when we cut ourselves. Without pain we might bleed ourselves to death. Philip Yancey urges us to listen to our pains. In jail I see so many inmates want to get baptized and be right with God. God uses their pain and suffering as a means to speak to them. Therefore, presence of evil that produces pain does not mean that God does not exist or that he is not all powerful and all good, but it means that he allows us to suffer evil in order to warn us of our problem of living without God and living in disobedience to God so that we would turn to God.