When God Feels Silent: Why Does He Allow Suffering?

There’s no question that shakes faith to its core quite like this one: If God is so good, why is life so hard?

Let’s be real—this question doesn’t come from a place of theory. It comes from hospital rooms. From gravesides. From trauma survivors and broken marriages. From the crushed dreams of the faithful. This question isn’t just philosophical—it’s personal.

And if you’ve ever asked it, you’re not alone.

God’s Goodness vs. Our Pain

The Bible doesn’t shy away from the tension. In fact, it confronts it head-on. Look at Job—blameless and upright, yet God allowed him to lose everything. His children. His health. His wealth. And in the ashes, Job asks the same questions we do: “Why?”

Yet even in his confusion, Job says,
“Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” (Job 13:15)

That’s not blind faith. That’s a fierce, honest, wrestling faith—the kind that doesn’t let go until it gets a blessing.

Suffering Isn't the Absence of God

We often equate suffering with abandonment. But Scripture tells a different story. David cries out:
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.” (Psalm 22:1)

Jesus echoed this cry on the cross. But Psalm 22 doesn’t end in despair. It ends in deliverance. Sometimes, the silence of God is not His absence. It’s the setup for resurrection.

As Corrie ten Boom, a Holocaust survivor, once said: “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”

The Free Will Factor

God did not create a world of puppets. Love requires freedom. And freedom comes with risk—the risk of pain, the risk of evil.

C.S. Lewis put it this way:

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Evil isn’t proof that God doesn’t exist. It’s proof that we desperately need Him.

A Suffering Savior

Christianity doesn’t offer a God who stands at a distance from our suffering. It offers a God who entered into it. Who bled. Who wept. Who cried out,
“My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” (Matthew 26:38)

Jesus didn’t just suffer for us—He suffers with us.

As Tim Keller wrote:

“If we again ask the question ‘Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?’ and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that He doesn’t love us.”

The Wrestling Ends at Dawn

In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with God through the night. He walks away with a limp—but also with a new name and a new future.

Sometimes, suffering marks us. But it also refines us. Deep faith often comes through deep pain.

James 1:2–4 challenges us:
“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2–4)

This isn’t toxic positivity. It’s gritty, grounded truth: our trials have purpose. Our pain is not wasted.

Closing Thought:

If you’re walking through fire right now, don’t let go. The God who seemed silent in the grave burst forth in resurrection. The same is true for you. Morning is coming.

And sometimes the most powerful faith is the one that says, “I don’t understand—but I still trust You.”

Need to wrestle with God a bit more? That’s okay. Wrestling is not unbelief—it’s pursuit. And the good news is, the One you're wrestling with is also the One who heals.

Let Him meet you there.