Dan first met Jack at the bowl of avocado dip after one of our Bible discussion parties. Within a few minutes he had learned three things about Jack: he was a medical doctor, he loved avocado dip, and he hated God.

"How did you like the discussion?" Dan inquired.

"Super," Jack mumbled, stuffing an avocado-smothered chip into his mouth. "But let me tell you something. If there is a God, I don't want anything to do with Him."

"Really? How come?"

"Because He made a world full of suffering. People around me hurt from diseases they didn't do anything to get. I see babies born with deformities and children neglected until they get sick or die. If God is so all-powerful and so all-fired good and loving, why did He create this mess, and why doesn't He do something about it?"

"Well," Dan said, "first, let's consider the obvious. Much, if not most, of the suffering in the world is directly caused by people who inflict it on themselves or on others--not by an act of God."

"Sure," Jack agreed, though his eyes expressed an inward dissatisfaction with Dan's answer. "People cause suffering! But that's only part of it. What about the disease and birth defects they don't cause? And what about natural disasters? And--"

"Wait a minute," Dan interrupted. "Let's take one thing at a time."

"All right," Jack agreed. "Let's start with this one--why doesn't God just wipe out all suffering right now?"

"If He did," Dan answered, "He would also have to wipe out the cause of suffering. And since all people cause some suffering, we would all have to be wiped out."

The guest trying to reach around them made it a bit embarrassing to monopolize the avocado dip any longer, so Dan and Jack made their way to the punch bowl as they talked.

"Why not just make us so we couldn't cause suffering?" Jack demanded. He poured himself a glass of what looked to Dan like orange sherbet floating in pink lemonade. Then, gesturing with the ladle, he made an offer to pour Dan some. Dan reluctantly held out a glass as he answered.

"You mean like a robot or a computer? You see, in order to keep us from being a source of suffering, God would have to remove our ability to choose. Then we would just be a machine that God manipulated."

"What's wrong with that?" Jack countered.

"Well, if we could not choose, we would not be able to love. The only way we can have a love relationship with someone is if that someone has a free choice not to love us. A computer cannot love because it cannot choose. We could get it to print out 'I love you' if we program it to say 'I love you,' but that's not love. Love requires choice."

Dan sketched this on a napkin:

"But," Jack persisted, "what about suffering from nature? At least God could remove things like death, sickness, and tragedies."

"The Bible says those things exist because the natural universe (including man) is cursed. God created it perfect--a Garden of Eden. But when Adam disobeyed, he took mankind down a path of suffering. If you choose to walk on a path that includes suffering, then, of course, you suffer the things on that path. The disease and the disasters of nature are a physical reflection of man's spiritual choice to take the path away from God."

"Why not just give Adam a place to live away from God?" Jack continued. "Why make the whole earth a place of suffering?"

"Well," Dan answered, "the Bible says, 'The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law' [Deuteronomy 29:29]. So I might not be able to tell you why God did what He did, but I can tell you why what He did seems reasonable."

"OK, shoot!"

The flow of bodies around the dining room table gradually backed them up to a leaning position against a wall. Dan nursed his sherbet-soaked lemonade as he answered.

"All choices have results. If the result of one choice isn't any different from the result of another choice, then the choice has no significance. If you come to a fork in the road, you have an opportunity to decide which path to take. Your choice to go a certain way is significant only if there really is a road that goes that way. I can't choose to take the dirt path that leads to the swimming hole if there is no dirt path that leads to the swimming hole. On the other hand, if there really is such a path, and I choose to take it to the swimming hole, then I will indeed have to walk on that path.

"Adam chose the path of disobedience and 'death,' which actually contained all the suffering we now observe. After heading down that path awhile, Adam and Eve had children who, of course, were born on that path of suffering. Then their children had children and so on until finally you and I were also born on that path of suffering."

"Now the point here is that in order for the choice Adam made to be significant, the result we now have (a suffering universe) must be real. If there was no result, then his choice would not have been significant. Choice and its results are inseparable."

Dan sketched this on a different napkin:

When they had moved from the punch bowl to the wall, Dan had stuffed the first napkin in his pocket. Now he got it out and put the two together.

"Remember, Jack," he continued, "we already agreed that love and choice are inseparable. Since choice requires results, love and results are also inseparable. If God is living, it would seem He would give Adam a choice to love Him or not. That would mean that the result of that choice must really be there."

"But why make the result so severe?" Jack asked.

"Well, the greater the love, the greater the choice, and the greater the result," Dan continued. "As we look back on thousands of years of suffering, we can see that the result of Adam's choice--contrasted with the Garden of Eden--was very great. So we now know that choice was also very great, and therefore the love God gave us the capacity to have is very great."

When Jack and Dan looked around, they discovered that most of the people had already left. They decided to go home and let the host and hostess go to bed. The next week they had another meeting of the Bible discussion group. Jack had an emergency case that made him miss the meeting, but he came afterward to talk more about suffering--and eat.

"I've been thinking over what you said," Jack began, as he generously piled a plate with sandwiches, brownies, cheese balls, potato chips, and a big gob of avocado dip. "And I've got some more questions. Why couldn't God put off the result of Adam's sin? That way, we wouldn't have to suffer."

"But," Dan answered, "if God put off the result of the first sin, then He'd have to put off the result of the second sin, and then the third, and so on--including yours and mine. If He kept on putting it off, then there would be no result. Then no choice, nor love, would be possible. If, on the other hand, God allowed the result at any time, then the suffering we now observe would follow."

"Well, then," Jack pleaded, "why did He create us at all? I mean, I never asked to be here, yet here I am in the midst of a world of suffering.

"Of course, God could have not bothered to create a being like man. He could have been satisfied with things that could not choose. But remember, that would mean He was satisfied to not see love in His creation. If He's going to have love in His creation, He has to allow choice, which means that rejection and its result must be available."

"Couldn't God just make everybody perfect and make the universe a place without suffering?"

"Well--"

"Wait! Let me guess," Jack interrupted as he answered his own question. "If He made us perfect, without our having anything to say about it, we would just be perfect robots without choice. Then we would not be able to love. Right?"

"Right!"

"But wait a minute," Jack continued. "Since we are born on this imperfect path of suffering, why couldn't God set before us a clear choice of perfection, and let us choose whether we wanted to stay on this suffering road or not? Then everybody who wanted it could be made perfect, get off this path, and have no suffering."

"Excellent idea," Dan marveled. "I think God would wholeheartedly agree!"

"You do? What makes you thing so?"

"Because that's exactly what He did!"

"He did?"

"Yes. God told Adam that if he chose to disobey Him, it would result in death. Looking back on thousands of years of history, we see that 'death' meant a lot of suffering. In the same way, God is telling us to obey Him and 'choose life in order that you may live' [Deuteronomy 30:19]. That life includes an eternal future where 'He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away' [Revelation 21:4]."

There are lots of reasons for suffering, but man himself is a major cause. People cause most of the agony we observe. In America the divorce rate continues to climb, the suicide and homicide rates are increasing, and the general crime rate is up in most areas. All that causes suffering, and it is all man-made.

In order for God to wipe out all suffering, He would also have to wipe out the cause of all suffering. Since all people cause some suffering, that solution would require that all people be wiped out.

To do that, God would have to make people unable to choose. But love requires choice. That solution would make a love relationship with God--or one another--impossible. A husband, wife, or friend can love you only if he or she has a completely free option to not love you. If the other person cannot choose not to love you, then real love is impossible.

Nature was originally created without suffering--a Garden of Eden. It was lowered to its present perverted state (Romans 8:20-22) to match the spiritually perverted state man placed himself in through sin. It is not that God makes us suffer. God provided us with the option of rejecting Him, and the consequences consistent with that choice included the perversion of nature.

If God is going to give man the real choice of following Him or not, then the results of the choice must also be real.

In order for us not to suffer because of Adam's sin, God would have to remove the results of that sin. If God removed the result of Adam's sin, then He would have to keep doing that for everybody's sin, including yours and mine, to keep suffering from starting. But if God kept removing the result of our choosing to sin, then of course there would be no result at all--and, as reasoned above, no choice or love would be possible.

Again, we cannot say why God did what He did; but what He did seems reasonable. Because God is the ultimate good, anything He does to display Himself is a good thing to do. (The only reason it is bad for man to display himself is because he is full of badness.) Part of God's goodness is that He is loving. As we described above, love requires choice. So if God is good, to display His love in His creation He must create someone who can choose. Without a being like man who could choose, there would be no loving relationship within God's creation.

The answer to "Why doesn't God make everyone perfect and the universe without suffering?" is, of course, the same as for the previous question. If God made us perfect without our choosing to be perfect, we would be robots without the ability to love.

That brings us logically to the final question:

The answer to "Why doesn't God let us choose to get out of this suffering?" is that He does. That is what the gospel says. God is begging us to choose Him by receiving Jesus Christ. The result of that decision will be an eternal life of nonsuffering that will be infinitely superior to the temporal pain we now know.

Basically, we have given two reasons for suffering: things people do to others or themselves and the cursed nature in which we live. In addition to those, there are many reasons why Christians suffer. A Christian may be under God's discipline or direction. We may be convicted of our own sin. We also suffer simply because we belong to Christ and are not part of this world system. The one who knows the power of sin is not the one who is living in sin, but the one who is attempting to be righteous. "If you think it's weak to be meek," it's been said, "try being meek for a week."

If you are riding a raft downstream, you never feel the strength of the current. Only when you get off and try to walk back against it do you realize its power. Walking against the flow of the stream causes suffering by the very nature of the fact that the stream is going the other way. So it is with a Christian living for God in a world system that pushes like a current in the opposite direction.

But all these valid causes of Christian suffering are inappropriate answers to give the nonbeliever struggling with the question. The fact is, the flow of this life contains some elements of suffering that will be there no matter which way you are going. They are part of the very nature of the stream. It is those things that are within the realm of the unbeliever's life experience, and those are the issues we have dealt with here.

Jack and Dan met together several times. One night after a discussion Jack stayed late. They talked until about 1:00 A.M. Jack realized his need for Jesus Christ and prayed with Dan, receiving Him as his personal God and Savior.

This book has been intentionally not copyrighted. Please feel free to use any portion of it for any purpose at any time.