Why Does Suffering Exist If God Is All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and Perfectly Good?

For thousands of years, one question has haunted philosophers, theologians, and ordinary people alike: If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, why does the world contain so much evil and suffering? Children die of cancer. Natural disasters obliterate entire communities. Wars and genocides inflict unimaginable horrors on the innocent. This stark contradiction, formally known as the problem of evil, challenges the coherence of classical theism, asking whether belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly benevolent deity can survive the reality of human and animal pain.

The dilemma traces its roots to ancient Greece. Epicurus (341-270 BCE) captured it in what is now called the Epicurean paradox: God either wishes to eliminate evil but cannot (and is therefore not omnipotent); or can but does not wish to (and is therefore not benevolent); or neither can nor wishes to (and is therefore neither). The remaining possibility, that God both can and wishes to remove evil, appears contradicted by the evident suffering all around us.

In the modern era, philosophers have sharpened the argument into two primary forms.

The logical problem of evil asserts that the existence of any evil whatsoever is strictly incompatible with the existence of God. As J. L. Mackie argued in his 1955 paper “Evil and Omnipotence,” the statements “God is omnipotent,” “God is wholly good,” “God is omniscient,” and “Evil exists” cannot all be true at once. A wholly good being would want to eliminate evil insofar as it could; an omnipotent and omniscient being could do so. Therefore, Mackie concluded, the traditional God cannot exist.

The evidential problem of evil takes a less absolute but still powerful approach. Philosophers such as William Rowe concede that God and evil might logically coexist yet argue that the sheer amount, intensity, and apparent gratuitousness of suffering in the world render God’s existence improbable. Rowe’s well-known example is a fawn trapped in a forest fire, suffering agonizingly for days before dying, with no discernible benefit to itself or anyone else. When such seemingly pointless evils are multiplied across history (childhood leukemia) they suggest that no adequate justifying reason is likely to exist.

Theists have offered various theodicies, explanations of how God and evil can coexist.

The most influential response to moral evil (suffering caused by human actions) is the free will defense, most fully developed by Alvin Plantinga. Genuine love, moral goodness, and virtue require free choice. God could have created beings programmed only to do good, but they would lack true moral significance. A world with free creatures capable of choosing rightly is more valuable than one without freedom, even if freedom makes wrongdoing possible. Plantinga further argues that it may be logically impossible for God to create free beings who always freely choose the good, owing to what he calls “transworld depravity.”

Natural evils, such as diseases, earthquakes, and predation, present a tougher challenge, since they do not arise from human choices. Some theists link them indirectly to free will, suggesting that fallen angels or original human sin disrupted the natural order. Another prominent approach is the soul-making (or Irenaean) theodicy, inspired by the early Christian thinker Irenaeus. Rather than viewing the world as fallen from original perfection, this perspective sees creation as deliberately imperfect, a challenging environment for spiritual growth. Humans are made in God’s image but must grow into God’s likeness through struggle. Virtues such as courage, compassion, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice emerge only in response to adversity. A world without risk or pain would produce shallow, stunted souls.

Closely related is the greater-good theodicy: certain higher-order goods are logically tied to evils. Pain warns of bodily harm; heroism requires danger; sympathy presupposes suffering.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz famously argued that this is the “best possible world” God could create, maximizing goodness while respecting necessary trade-offs. Skeptical theism adds that finite human minds cannot confidently declare any suffering gratuitous, any more than a child can fully grasp a parent’s reasons for allowing pain.

Critics

Critics find these responses insufficient. Freewill may explain moral evil but leaves natural evil largely unaccounted for. Soul-making theodicies struggle to justify suffering inflicted on animals (who presumably lack souls to develop or free will to exercise) or on humans whose pain seems excessive or pointless. Evidential arguments emphasize horrors whose scale and distribution appear to defy plausible justification.

The biblical Book of Job confronts the problem with unflinching honesty, ultimately affirming divine wisdom while leaving human questions unanswered. Contemporary thinkers continue the debate, some proposing limited divine power (open theism) or a God who persuades rather than controls (process theology).

The problem of evil has no settled resolution. For some it tests faith to the breaking point; for others it confirms skepticism. Yet it also compels deeper empathy with suffering and a stronger commitment to alleviate it, whatever one’s ultimate metaphysical conclusions.