A suffering and patient God
May I venture another response to Eric Hunt’s question “what does God think?” One answer is: Who am I to speak for God? Read the book of Job and ask Him yourself.
Christians, however, have is an obligation to proclaim “good news”. So let me try.
First, we proclaim that creation is good. This cannot mean the absence of pain. But if you had the power to switch off the universe with its good and evil, would you do it? Neither does God, mercifully.
Second, we acknowledge that God sees the pain and experiences it. This is the meaning of Jesus’s life. Belief in the resurrection affirms the ultimate triumph of love over pain and evil.
So why does He not remove evils, especially those undeserved? One answer is that the power to do good or evil is inherent in the nature of things, which we recognise is, on balance, good. Another is that “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”. A third is that God patiently waits for us to choose goodness and love, which is good of Him to do and is the road to fulfillment.
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