AT SOME time in your life, you may have asked: 'If there is a God who really cares about us, why does he permit so much suffering?' All of us have experienced suffering or have known someone who has.
Indeed, throughout history people have suffered pain and heartache from war, cruelty, crime, injustice, poverty, sickness, and the death of loved ones. In our 20th century alone, wars have killed over 100 million people. Hundreds of millions of others have been injured or have lost homes and possessions. Ever so many horrible things have happened in our time, resulting in great sorrow, many tears, and a sense of hopelessness on the part of countless numbers of people.
Some become embittered and feel that if there is a God, he does not really care about us. Or they may even feel that there is no God. For instance, a man who suffered from ethnic persecution that caused the death of friends and family in World War I asked: "Where was God when we needed him?" Another, who survived the murder of millions by the Nazis in World War II, was so grieved by the suffering he saw that he said: "If you could lick my heart, it would poison you."
Thus, many people cannot understand why a good God would allow bad things to happen. They question whether he really cares about us or whether he exists at all. And many of them feel that suffering will always be a part of human existence.
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