Why Do We Suffer?
- by Aaron Purvis
- Sep 17
- 12 min read
Just before Christmas of 2024, Tommy Lazzaro drove his Ford F-250 out to public land to help some friends whose truck had gotten stuck. That was the kind of man this 27-year-old was: generous, dependable, quick to serve.
But in that simple act of kindness, tragedy struck. A stray bullet from a hunter — a man he didn’t know — shattered the driver’s-side door and struck Tommy. He died almost instantly.
Tommy’s death was not the result of him making reckless choices or engaging in sinful rebellion. It was random — an undeserved accident. Yet his death left behind a thousand questions, and ten thousand tears.
Why? Why him? Why then? Why in that way?
Is God To Blame?
When tragedy strikes, our first instinct is to search for someone to blame — ourselves, others, even God.
Some imagine God orchestrating every detail — steering a plane into the ground, directing a tornado to crush one home while sparing the one next door, even charting the fatal course of a hunter’s bullet inch by inch into an innocent man’s truck.
Others think suffering is a secret message from God that needs decoding: God is displeased! Or, don’t take that job! Or, God wants me to pray harder or be more devoted to him! So we comfort ourselves by thinking there is some specific point to our pain.
But the Bible paints a more nuanced picture. It doesn’t ignore the problem of suffering at all — it documents it, wrestles with it, and speaks hope into it. It even says that God himself chose the path of suffering to bring salvation to humanity (Heb. 5.8-9).
While all suffering ultimately traces back to sin’s entrance into the world (cf. Gen. 3.16-19; Rm. 5.12ff), the reasons for specific suffering are varied — and often enigmatic. According to the Bible, sometimes suffering is deserved. Sometimes it is not.
The Suffering We Deserve
On one hand, we often bring suffering upon ourselves by the choices we make.
First, some suffering comes directly from God, who afflicts us for our sin.
(1) At times, he uses pain to prevent sin (cf. Deut. 6.12-15; 8.11, 19-20; Jer. 7.12-14; Ps. 95.8-11).
(2) Other times, his chastening rod is designed to prod us to repent of sin (cf. Ps. 107.10-16; 119.71; Heb. 12.6; Isa. 10.20-22).
(3) And sometimes he afflicts to punish us for rebellion (cf. Isa. 1.24; 61.2; 63.4; Jer. 46.10; Eze. 25.14; Ps. 94.1ff). Er, the son of Judah, is an example:
“He was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD killed him” (Gen. 38.7).
Second, some suffering is the natural consequence of foolish choices.
Scripture teaches that God has given us an orderly world, where principles like cause-and-effect are immutable (cf. Job 38.33; Jer. 31.35-36; 33.25). Since that is so, there are built-in outcomes to specific actions.
This type of self-inflicted suffering doesn’t come directly from God as a response to sin. Rather, it comes naturally as a result of poor judgment — i.e., engaging in risk-laden behavior.
Psalms and Proverbs especially remind us that unwise decisions lead to painful outcomes (Prov. 22.8; 26.27; Ps. 7.15; Job 4.8; Hos. 10.13; Gal. 6.7): Laziness breeds hunger (Prov. 19.15); gluttony and drunkenness bring “poverty…woe, sorrows, contentions” (Prov. 23.20-21, 29-35); deceit and violence often boomerang back on the perpetrator (Ps. 7.15-16; Prov. 26.27; 28.10).
This kind of suffering is not mysterious; it is predictable. Sin and folly sow seeds that always grow into bitter fruit (Gal. 6.7).
The Suffering We Don’t Deserve
On the other hand, not all suffering is earned. Sometimes the innocent are swept up in pain.
First, occasionally Satan and his servants harm the guiltless.
The devil crippled a woman for eighteen years, though she had done nothing to deserve it (Lk. 13.10-16). He struck Job with disease, who had done nothing wrong (Job 2.4-7). He tormented Paul with a “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12.7).
Evil men, too, inflict cruelty for selfish gain. Joseph’s envious brothers sold the lad into Egyptian slavery (Gen. 37.12ff). Pilate, as a cruel act of political oppression, slaughtered a number of Galileans who had come to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices (Lk. 13.1).
In short, suffering periodically strikes the innocent — not as punishment, nor as a natural consequence, but through the malice of Satan or the cruelty of men.
Second, some suffering is simply the cost of living in a broken world, where sin’s curse makes accidents inevitable.
On an ordinary day in Jerusalem, a stone tower suddenly collapsed. Eighteen people were crushed beneath the rubble. Families were left grieving, neighbors shaken, and questions began to swirl: Had these people done something terribly wrong? Was their suffering God’s judgment?
When Jesus spoke of this tragedy, he gave a surprising answer: “I tell you, no!” Their deaths were not because they were worse sinners than others.
Instead, as with those poor Galileans whom Pilate slew, Jesus warned his listeners to see in this disastrous accident a reminder of life’s fragility — and the urgent need to “repent” (Lk. 13.4-5).
On another occasion, when Jesus’ disciples asked about a man born blind, assuming he was being punished, Jesus corrected them:
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned” (Jn. 9.3).
His blindness was not a punishment but an opportunity:
“This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (Jn. 9.3).
The disciples saw a tragedy. Jesus saw a stage for glory (cf. Jn. 11.4).
Whether Satan was afflicting him, or whether his condition arose from natural causes like a genetic defect, the deeper reality was this: God would turn this man’s suffering into an opportunity to open not only the man’s physical eyes but also the spiritual eyes of many witnesses. Through this man’s suffering, he and countless others would come to see who Jesus truly is — “the light of the world” (Jn. 8.12).
Making Sense of Suffering
So what can we learn from all this?
First, Own Your Choices.
Pain from foolish decisions is not a mystery to be solved; it’s a wake-up call.
We know perfectly well why people suffer when they are addicted to drugs, when they drink and drive, when they neglect their health, etc. Such suffering is self-inflicted — sow recklessness, reap ruin. And the solution is equally plain: Take charge of your life. Make wiser decisions.
Second, Don’t Play God.
When suffering is not directly linked with reckless choices or illicit behavior, we have no right to assume it signals God’s displeasure. Philip Yancey couldn’t have put it better:
“…there is a huge difference between the suffering most of us encounter — a skiing injury, a rare form of cancer, [a] bus accident — and the suffering-as-punishment described in the Old Testament. There, punishment follows repeated warnings against specific behavior. To be effective, in fact, punishment requires a clear tie to behavior. Think of a parent who punishes a young child. It would do little good for that parent to sneak up at odd times during a day and whack the child with no explanation. Such tactics would produce a neurotic, not an obedient, child...The people of Israel knew why they were being punished; the prophets had warned them in excruciating detail. The Pharaoh of Egypt knew exactly why the ten plagues were unleashed against his land: God had predicted them, told him why, and described what change of heart could forestall them. Biblical examples of suffering-as-punishment, then, tend to fit a pattern. The pain comes after much warning, and no one sits around afterward asking, “Why?” They know very well why they are suffering...Does that pattern resemble what happens to most of us today? Do we get a direct revelation from God warning us of a coming catastrophe? Does personal suffering come packaged with a clear explanation from God? If not, I must question whether the pains most of us feel – cancer, a traffic mishap – are indeed punishments from God. If suffering does come as punishment, we are getting confusing messages indeed, for the occurrence of disease and pain seems random, unrelated to any pattern of virtue or vice” (Yancey, p. 81).
Without God’s clear revelation, it is wrong to speculate on his intentions and assign blame where he has not spoken. Job’s friends made that very mistake, arrogantly assuming his suffering was a sign that God was mad at Job for unconfessed sin. God rebuked his friends, demanding they repent (Job 42.7-8).
In short, humility beckons us to tread carefully: Suffering is not always God’s judgment, and it is wrong to claim knowledge of his intentions when he has not revealed them.
Third, Let Suffering Shape You.
When Jesus spoke of the senseless murder of the Galileans and the tragic deaths from the falling tower in Siloam (Lk. 13.1-5), he made it clear that not every tragedy signals God’s displeasure. We live in a broken world where even the innocent suffer — sometimes by random misfortune, sometimes by calculated malice. Either way, tragedy is not proof of divine wrath.
Yet Jesus also taught that suffering is never meaningless. Such events may not hide a cryptic, personal message from God, but they always sound a universal alarm: Life is brief; we aren’t meant to be here forever; death can sweep us away at any moment; so we must live in readiness. The urgent call from these two tragedies was simple: “Repent,” lest our own day to die arrives unexpectedly (Lk. 13.3, 5). Yancey put it like this:
“Maybe God isn't trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt…Suffering offers a general message of warning to all humanity that something is wrong with this planet, and that we need radical outside intervention…But you can’t argue backward and link someone’s specific pain to a direct act of God” (Yancey, p. 84).
In short, suffering always speaks, but not always personally. It is less a coded instruction manual for daily choices and more a warning siren: Repent, turn to God, and prepare for eternity!
C. S. Lewis put it memorably:
“We can ignore…pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. 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” (Lewis, p. 93).
Pain, then, is not mere noise but a summons. God’s “megaphone” carries two broad messages:
(1) Turn away from this world, which is broken by the curse of sin; and
(2) Yearn for something better — a place where misery has no hold.
And we can respond to that summons in one of two ways:
(1) We can let suffering sink us into sorrow, bitterness, and despair — remaining too attached to this world. Or,
(2) We can let it save us, shaping us into something better — not only for this world, but also for the world to come (1 Tim. 4.8).
The blind man, Lazarus, the woman who was sick for eighteen years — and many of those who knew them — allowed their suffering to lead them to Jesus, trusting him to save them both physically and spiritually. Their pains were not meaningless moments, but holy interruptions meant to lift their eyes toward Heaven, even if only to question “why,” trusting him for the answer.
Paul, too, discovered that his unmerited afflictions were not a curse but a gift, teaching him to rejoice in weakness because it made him stronger in Christ (2 Cor. 12.7-10; cf. Jm. 1.3-4; Rm. 5.3-4). He allowed pain to galvanize him, motivating him to live better and to yearn for better things to come, for “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rm. 8.18). He goes on:
“Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4.17-18).
Richard Baxter spoke about the appropriate response to pain in this way:
“What have we our time and strength for, but to lay them out for God? What is a candle made for, but to be burnt?” (Baxter, p. 121).
Indeed, our very lives on this planet are meant to “spend and be spent” for God (2 Cor. 12.15).
In the end, pain feels bleak, but it has a purpose. Sometimes God allows Satan and his minions to “buffet” us to help us “learn” God’s “statutes” (Ps. 119.71) and to bring us into “rich fulfillment” (Ps. 66.10-12). Suffering can give us a sharper perspective — a clearer purpose — and an urgency to redirect our gaze onto eternal realities rather than the fleeting vicissitudes of this world.
Fourth, Believe In The Greater Good.
Even when pain is undeserved, God’s providence is able to repair the wrong and turn it into something greater.
To be clear, God never perpetrates injustice (Jm. 1.13). He despises it (Ps. 5.5; Prov. 6.16-19). But he has two options:
(1) He could strip creation of the freedom to choose, erasing the possibility of evil altogether. Yet doing so would also erase the possibility of love, virtue, and genuine relationship. We would be mere automatons, not image-bearers capable of devotion.
(2) Or, he could grant us freedom, putting up with evil for a time, but setting things right ultimately. In this way, he punishes wrongdoing, vindicates justice, and restores what has been broken — not merely repairing the damage, but bringing about something even better.
In truth, the second path is the only path. God wants love, virtue, and a genuine relationship with beings who bear his spiritual image. And so he endures the temporary presence of evil not because he is indifferent, but because he intends to establish relationship, magnify justice, bring restoration, and turn human failings into greater purposes.
Job’s story illustrates this: His “latter days” were blessed beyond his former ones (Job 42.12; cf. Jas. 5.11).
Joseph’s life does too. Betrayed by his brothers, enslaved, and imprisoned, he could later look them in the eye and say,
“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…to save many lives” (Gen. 50.20).
Their injustice became the path through which God spared not only them but multiplied millions from a famine, turning malice into salvation (cf. Gen. 41.46-57).
So when we suffer undeservedly, we must learn Joseph’s wisdom and faith. His pain was real, and for years it seemed to yield no good. Yet through it all, “the Lord was with Joseph” (Gen. 39:2, 21, 23). His trials refined his character, taught him to trust God, and positioned him for a future he never could have foreseen.
The same assurance holds for us. Jesus promised to be “with” his people “always, even to the end of the age” (Mt. 28.20). Paul said that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Rm. 8.28).
These promises don’t shield Christians from suffering — nor do they make every event good in itself. But they assure us that no pain is pointless. God can “work together” even with what is broken and weave it into something more beautiful, whether for this life or the next. What feels bleak today may, by God’s hand, become the seed of a greater good — for us or for others — in ways we may only grasp in time or in eternity.
Finally, Show Compassion.
When suffering strikes, our first impulse is often to speculate — to explain why it is happening. Yet more often than not, what hurting people need most is not an answer but a companion.
Paul urged believers to “weep with those who weep” (Rm. 12.15), reminding us that presence and empathy are themselves ways to heal others.
Jesus himself responded to human suffering with compassion, moved by the sight of the sick (Mk. 1.41) and even grieving with a widowed mother who had lost her only son (Lk. 7.13).
From an apologetic standpoint, compassion is also a defense of God’s character. It shows that Christianity does not turn a blind eye to grief but acknowledges its weight and takes it seriously. When we bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6.2), we demonstrate that God’s answer to suffering is not cold detachment but love in action. In this way, compassion both comforts the sufferer and testifies to a God who draws near to the brokenhearted.
Conclusion
The mystery of suffering is not something we can neatly solve. We can’t always know why we suffer.
Sometimes it comes as the consequence of our own choices, whether naturally or from on high. Sometimes it arrives through the undeserved attacks of the enemy. And sometimes it’s simply the unmerited byproduct of living in a fallen world.
But even when suffering seems random — like the bullet that struck Tommy — we can still look for something better. Suffering may not usually come with a private message, directed specifically at us. But we can let suffering call us to attention. It can remind us that this world is not our final home, and that we must not waste the time God mercifully gives us to repent and prepare for eternity. The pain we endure, whether self-inflicted, Satan-inflicted, or seemingly senseless, is always an invitation to turn our eyes to Heaven.
So what should Christians do with suffering? We can:
(1) Let it rouse us to take ownership of our choices;
(2) Resist the urge to play God;
(3) Allow pain to make us better people;
(4) Wait trustingly for God to turn our pain into a greater good;
(5) And we can extend compassion to others who suffer.
When we do these things, we will discover that even in pain, God is weaving our lives into a story of hope and redemption.
The towers of life will fall. Injustice will strike. Our bodies will weaken. But suffering is never the last word.
In Christ, even the darkest valleys become places where the light of good shines through, reminding us that there is a brighter world ahead of us — a place where “He will wipe away every tear” — and suffering shall be no more (Rev. 21.4).
