6. Answering the Problem of Pain

The people of Israel were starving. Their land was rich, but their enemies devoured the produce (Judges 6:4). A young man named Gideon summed up the crisis: "If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?" (6:13).

That is the problem of evil. And it is one of the most obvious objections to the Christian faith: if God is good, and powerful, why do bad things happen? There must not be a good and powerful God.

That was the conclusion of one of Billy Graham's early partners in ministry who became a professing atheist. What was the turning point in his de-conversion? He saw a picture of a North African woman holding her baby who had died of starvation due to drought. For him it became impossible "to believe that there is a loving or caring Creator when all this woman needed was rain." God upholds and rules heaven and earth and everything in them (HC Q/A/ 26). The Bible says that God is love. But the God of love is also the God who "gives rain on the earth" (Job 5:10). And yet people in his world die of drought.

How do you defend your reason for hoping in a God who is good and powerful against what C.S. Lewis called the problem of pain?