I (Dr. Paschal) read an articlerecently where a comic actor I have often enjoyed watching was interviewed. The actor wasexplaining why he didn’t believe in God, and he said: “Five-year-old children with bone cancer—how can a good God allow that?” How do we makesense of suffering? It’s a hard question to answer because suffering often seems to make absolutely no sense. If God is good, why is there all this pain in life? Suffering and pain threaten to rob life of its meaning—and it makes us angry. At the same time, throwing God out completely may only make things worse. If there is anything worse than suffering without meaning, it may be suffering without hope. If there is no God, what do you tell parents whose child has cancer? If God created this universe and God is good, why does a good God allow pain and suffering in it? And if we are suffering and we do believe in God—then what? These are tough questions with which we need to wrestle. I’m not saying Aaron and I will give absolutely
