The One Right Answer to the Problem of Pain

Over the many years that I’ve listened to people share their struggles and questions about faith, the problem of pain is the objection most frequently raised. That makes sense. It’s a disturbing and ever-present problem.

Often the problem of pain is raised as an accusation against people of faith. “How can you believe in God in a world with so much evil and suffering?” The implication seems to be that Christians, Jews, Muslims, and adherents of other religions face an insurmountable incongruity between their reverent faith and unavoidable pain.

But pain is also a problem for atheists, agnostics, “nones,” and “dones”—those who once identified with a religion but now feel as if they’re “finished with that.” Whoever we are, we need both perspective and power to face suffering and pain: perspective to make sense of the suffering and power to handle it.

Weigh the Options

With this in mind, let’s evaluate five views of suffering, looking for answers to both the why and the how questions.

1. Moralistic View

This view is that suffering comes as a consequence of someone’s actions. It’s caused by people, and therefore it could have been avoided. This is a common view, and perhaps the oldest one.

It’s the perspective offered by Job’s friends. Job must have committed some sin, they tell him, and that’s why his children died, his property was destroyed, and his body is afflicted with disease (see Job 4:8). In the Hindu tradition, current suffering may even be the result of karma for a person’s actions in a previous life.

We should acknowledge that some suffering comes to people because of foolish choices they make. If you decide to drink a lot of alcohol and then drive a car, you may have an accident and get hurt or hurt someone else. When we experience pain and suffering, it’s worth asking if there’s something we could have done differently to avoid the mess we’re in.

Whoever we are, we need both perspective and power to face suffering and pain—perspective to make sense of the suffering and power to handle it.

But if we always apply this perspective to every form of suffering, we’ve offered an overly simplistic answer to a complex problem. The moralistic view fails to address disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes. It fails to account for the seemingly random ways one person suffers while another doesn’t. Some people are healed and others die of the same disease, though they’ve taken the same treatment, offered prayers to the same God, thought the same positive thoughts, or channeled the same sources of cosmic energy.

When suffering people are told it’s their fault, this can pile guilt on already difficult circumstances. Such insensitivity can trigger anger that drains them of energy they need to spend in more helpful ways. The moralistic view falls terribly short of providing meaningful perspective or helpful power to handle suffering.

2. Reframing View

This view says we must think about suffering and pain differently. When we do, this will alleviate our pain. The reframing view takes many forms, from religious to completely secular. M. Scott Peck articulated a Buddhist version of the reframing perspective in The Road Less Traveled:

Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult.

With Peck, we must admit the way we think about suffering can make a tremendous difference in how we handle it. Those who suffer need to carefully examine their default modes of thinking and change unhealthy or unproductive messages that may dominate their minds.

But a change in thinking can only go so far. Some suffering is bad no matter how we perceive it. And some efforts to change our thinking lead to harmful denials of reality. Peck’s endorsement of the fact that “life is difficult” is helpful. It’s naive to go further and insist that “once we truly know that life is difficult . . . then life is no longer difficult.”

3. Healing View

This view admits we don’t know why there’s so much suffering in the world but that we can work to alleviate it. Advocates for the healing view spend little energy on philosophical or theological discussions about why the world is broken. They say this may not matter. Instead, they want to spend their energies fixing what’s broken.

It’s hard to find fault with people who want to make the world better by alleviating suffering. Who could complain about people feeding starving children, providing medical care, or fighting against sex trafficking? But some people do find fault.

Christopher Hitchens labeled Mother Teresa “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.” One can imagine someone from a Hindu perspective wanting Mother Teresa to stop rescuing people from dying in the streets because it could mess up the process of karma. It’s naive to think everyone will agree on what’s “good” or “harmful.”

Even so, the healing view has a lot going for it. It involves taking suffering seriously, recognizing the difficulties in fighting against it, and working diligently to improve people’s circumstances. But the healing view is weak on the why question. It offers few answers—and this causes a bigger problem. Without a larger, overarching perspective, the healing view provides less-than-adequate resources to compel perseverance in the fight against suffering, sickness, and death. Without a metanarrative, it’s easier and easier for people to lose enthusiasm in the fight.

4. Secular View

This view says the reality of evil and suffering is one of the strongest arguments (if not the strongest argument) against a belief in God. Richard Dawkins expresses the harsh evolutionary perspective on pain and suffering this way: “In a universe of blind forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.”

Whether this view is held rigorously by thorough-thinking philosophers or in less intellectual ways by people who try to avoid the subject, the secular view is made attractive because of the pain and suffering around us. It may seem to offer a better explanation than religious beliefs. Many people I talk to about their rejection of faith point to suffering as the cause. Anger provides an appearance of strength for some who abandon God.

But in the realm of how questions, the secular view fails catastrophically. It offers few resources to help people handle disease, disaster, or death.

Many have observed that Western culture, which is more secular than previous eras, is the most surprised by and therefore the least prepared for suffering. Our world has enough distractions to keep anyone far from serious contemplation—about anything, especially difficult topics like pain. That leaves people ill-equipped to support others going through trials or to find inner strength for themselves to resist despair when facing the harsh realities of suffering.

5. Redemptive View

The Judeo-Christian view is that the world isn’t as it’s supposed to be, that suffering is an outrage, but that it can also be redemptive. This view points to an afterlife when pain and suffering will finally be defeated.

The Hebrew Scriptures teach that a personal God created the world and pronounced all his creation (including people) “good.” He gave people the dignity of choice to obey his commands or reject them. The first people (and all people since then) chose, to some degree, disobedience and rebellion against God. And the world has been out of whack ever since.

But the Bible also teaches that God has begun a work of redemption that can extend to individual people for all eternity. While this life may include great suffering, an eternal afterlife free from pain is offered for those who trust in God’s plan of salvation.

The secular view leaves people ill-equipped to support others going through trials or to find inner strength for themselves to resist despair.

This is the view I hold, and I want you to consider (or reconsider) it carefully. It offers a better, more comprehensive answer to the why question than any other perspective.

A good God created our good world with good gifts for us to enjoy. But we damaged the good world with our bad choices. While it may seem difficult to comprehend, human rebellion against God damages not only us but all creation. Thus the reality we observe around us shows us the original creation’s goodness (delightful sunsets, beautiful flowers, and magnificent landscapes) and gives us painful reminders of a fallen, broken world (natural disasters, disease, death, and crime).

Not Without Difficulties but the Best Explanation of Real Life

The redemptive view isn’t without its difficulties. I find variances in suffering to be deeply troubling. Some people suffer their entire lives while others hardly seem to experience a drop of pain. Some die young after battles against constant pain while others die peacefully in their sleep in their 90s. A tornado rips through a town, leveling houses and killing hundreds while in a nearby town houses and lives are untouched.

These inconsistencies disturb me greatly, and though my theology tells me all creation suffers the consequences of sin, I still struggle with the ever-real, inadequately labeled problem of pain.

Despite these challenges, the redemptive view offers the best resources for the how questions because it’s founded on a historical event, not just a philosophical concept. Christians’ entire belief system rests on Jesus’s resurrection. This establishes our hope in the afterlife on fact, not mere theory.

If the resurrection is a fairy tale or a lie, all of Christianity crumbles. But if it happened, the Christian message points us to a world that will be recreated and a reality where pain and suffering will pass away. It provides joy and hope amid great suffering today and a certain future tomorrow.