If God is good, why let even children suffer?

🔥A child asks: “With wars and disease and earthquakes, can you still say God is love?”

🛡️The answer: This question has no short answer that reveals the reason for all suffering. Anyone who claims to know why a particular child fell ill or was wounded in a war should be careful. It is not because of that child's sin or lack of faith, and no one should say, “God made them hurt on purpose, to make them stronger.”

Violence committed by people can be explained, up to a point, as the result of freedom used for evil. Natural suffering such as earthquakes and disease is not explained by freedom alone. In a material world that moves by regular laws, embodied life can be injured and fall ill, but even this fact does not fully explain why one child's suffering was permitted.

Catholic faith does not say that God regards evil as good or takes pleasure in it. It admits that there are times when we do not know why God did not prevent this particular suffering. At the same time it believes that Jesus wept with those who suffer, underwent suffering and death on the cross, and by his resurrection promised that evil and death are not the final outcome. This hope is not a call to watch suffering while merely explaining it, but a command to care for the sick and to stand against war and injustice.

✨Briefly: “I'll be honest and say I don't know why this suffering was allowed either. But I won't carelessly claim that God enjoys pain or hands it out as punishment. Because I believe God hurts with us in Jesus and in the end defeats evil and death, right now we have to act to reduce suffering.”