THEOLOGY · By Will Wright
The Mystery of Human Suffering
An encounter with grief, the problem of evil, and the hope found in Christ’s Cross.
Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
St. Thomas Aquinas when answering the question of whether God exists brings forward two objections. The second objection says that everything we see in the natural world can be explained by nature or by human reason; therefore, we do not need to suppose God’s existence. To this objection, St. Thomas says that we can trace back what is done in nature back to the first cause, which must be an immovable and self-necessary first principle, which we call God. He then references his Five Ways which are converging and convincing arguments to demonstrate God’s existence.
I would like to focus on the first objection that St. Thomas raises to God’s existence. If you are unfamiliar with the disputed question format used by St. Thomas in the Summa and in many other scholastic works, it goes like this. There are objections posed, then a section where a brief response is given beginning with “on the contrary.” Then the main teaching is delivered in the “I answer that” section and is followed by the specific responses given for the objection posed at the beginning of the article.
For the first objection to God’s existence, St. Thomas puts it this way:
“It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word ‘God’ means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist (ST I, q.2, a.3).”
Of course, this is an argument, not a slam dunk. God does exist and He is goodness itself. But can you feel the weight of the argument? If God is infinitely good, then why is there evil? In other words, why do bad things happen to good people?
A philosophical answer does not, by itself, resolve the grief of the person who suffers. We see evil happen and sometimes the human suffering which results is so extreme that no justice seems to ever come to fruition. Or perhaps it is not moral evil but physical evil. Why do children develop horrifically painful diseases? Why do mothers and fathers lose their children to miscarriage and stillbirth? In the goodness of creation, why are there devastating natural disasters that cause widespread death, destruction, and catastrophe?
The Problem of Evil
The problem of evil has occupied philosophers and theologians for centuries. Its logical form asks whether the existence of evil is compatible with an all-good, all-powerful God. Its evidential form asks whether the kinds and extent of suffering we encounter count against belief in such a God. Both are serious intellectual questions. Alongside them stands the intensely personal question of how to live through grief without losing hope.
The natural human response to suffering, pain, blatant evil, and injustice is repulsion. We have a visceral, subconscious reaction to the evil that we encounter. And we wonder: how could God allow this? People respond to trauma in different ways; the question can emerge as doubt, anger, lament, or a prayer with no words.
I want to share a time of suffering in my own life to begin to show how we can handle inevitable sufferings when they come. My wife and I suffered a miscarriage, and I did not know how to process it. I did not allow myself to recognize and feel my feelings. And after a few months, I realized that I was very angry with God and was depressed and despairing. How could He do this to me and to my wife? What did I do wrong? It was horrendous. I still have a profoundly vivid memory of lowering my son Gabriel’s little casket into a hole in the ground. It was truly awful and unnatural. My wife and I desired Baptism for him. We entrust him to God’s mercy, with the hope for salvation that the Church offers for children who die without Baptism (Catechism, no. 1261). But I wanted to hold him. I wanted to get to know him here on Earth and watch him grow like my other boys. Yet, it was not to be.
Since then, we suffered another miscarriage but this time I felt my feelings a bit more intentionally. I talked about the experience with friends and my priest. I grieved. I wept. I prayed. But I did not despair this time. What was different? In that experience, I felt the same emotions but I recognized and gave them over to Jesus, as best as I could muster. I aimed to unite my suffering with His Cross in a more profound way than before. The suffering was deeply present, but by grace I was able to abandon myself more to Providence, I suppose. My response of faith and abandonment to Divine Providence was not perfect but I am positive that I grew through these experiences.
So, when suffering, pain, and evil come, and they will, and we ask “how could God allow this?”, what is our response? Before we get more into the response to the problem of evil, I want to look at what evil actually is. That way, we can better recognize it and even avoid it, to some extent.
What Is Evil?
In the classical Christian account, evil is a privation: the absence of a good that ought to be present. This does not mean that suffering is imaginary. A wound is a real injury, even though we describe it in terms of the integrity a body has lost. Moral evil is the disorder of a free act that turns away from the good; physical suffering concerns the harms endured by creatures.
It is also important not to confuse the limits of a created being with sin. A creature is not God, and finitude is not itself a moral fault. The processes of the natural world sustain life, but they can also expose living beings to injury and death.
God’s Providence and the Permission of Evil
Christian faith distinguishes between the good God wills and the evil He permits. These are not two competing plans or two different gods. God does not approve of sin, yet He permits the exercise of created freedom and can bring good even from what creatures misuse.
That conviction does not give us a complete explanation for every particular loss. We should be cautious about telling a grieving person why God permitted a tragedy. Faith gives us grounds for trusting His goodness; it does not make us readers of every hidden purpose of Providence.
What is the Response to the Problem?
Let us return to St. Thomas Aquinas’ exploration of the objection to the existence of God based on the problem of evil. He responds this way, quoting St. Augustine:
“As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): ‘Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.’ This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good (ST I, q.2, a.3).”
Like I said, it is not an emotionally satisfying answer. We long for justice and peace. And we want it now. In our fallen world, it can be easy to give in to despair. But we are called to trust in the infinite goodness of God. If He allows evil to exist, then He will produce a good out of it, though we may not see it in this lifetime. If He allows evil to exist, then His justice will be made perfect in the end.
As St. Paul teaches us:
“We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28).”
Redemptive Suffering
And as I have already mentioned: God not only knows of our suffering but He also fully cares. We can see this on full display in the apparent triumph of evil, pain, and suffering on Good Friday. On the Cross, the Son of God died for love of you and me. If we were there on Calvary’s hill, we would be justified to some extent to question God’s wisdom or His omnipotence. For the Apostles, this dark day seemed like the end. How could a good possibly come from all this suffering, misery, and death? Even the demons thought that they had won a great victory. But the story did not end on Friday. On Easter Sunday, Jesus Christ burst forth from the tomb, the one who died who dies no more. Our God knows the way through suffering and death to eternal life.
As the Catechism puts it:
“By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive passion (CCC 1505).”
In moments of affliction, suffering, and pain, we can offer these experiences as prayers when we unite them to the perfect Cross of Christ. By grace, our suffering can become a participation in Christ’s self-offering for ourselves and others. This does not make suffering good in itself or remove our duty to relieve it. We can “offer up” our sufferings for others, and it can even bring us spiritual healing and peace.
Taking the Long Perspective
Human suffering is real and persistent. We all suffer. In this valley of the shadow of death, we do not see the full picture. In our limited human perspective, we do not even always see the good that God works in spite of evil. Nonetheless, the merits of Christ on the Cross continue to flow as grace to us through the Sacraments. And so, we hold fast to the truth of the Catholic Faith. We trust in God, especially in the darkest times. Through consistent prayer and cooperation with grace, we intentionally unite our sufferings to the Cross and conform ourselves to the Savior. We rely on the intercession of the sorrowful and immaculate Heart of Mary who was pierced by accompanying her holy Son on the way of His Passion.
Christian hope does not deny the pain of loss. It places that pain before the One who knows it from within and promises that death will not have the final word.
Sources and further reading
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3