How can one affirm an eternally perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator God in the face of the facts of pain, suffering, and evil? Usually the discussion occurs as a debate, rather than as an inquiry toward greater understanding.
1. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Once you find God in personal, spiritual, religious experience, questions about suffering do not shake your faith. You rather seek the meaning of suffering and the mission of adversity.
2. We cannot fathom why God permits the catastrophes we observe. "God's ways are higher than your ways as the stars are higher than the earth." The eternal wisdom and universal kindness of the divine acts is beyond our discernment.
3. Think of all the different reasons why things happen. Natural processes follow their course, and accidents happen in our evolutionary world. An earthquake should not be called an act of God. We live in a realm of everlastingly dependable causal law.
4. Anxious craving causes suffering. We should seek “the mind of perfect poise.”
5. If imperfect beings with free will are to be created, potential evil is inevitable.
6. Mortals need the contrast of potential evil to differentiate and recognize the good.
7. Some suffering results from our misuse of human freedom, violating—deliberately or not—principles of health, sanity, morality, or happiness.
8. Without suffering we cannot develop a noble character.
9. We must not imagine that this world is the best the Creator could do. There is a heaven of eternal perfection where the will of God is done, as well as this evolving realm where human beings are invited into the adventure of becoming perfect.
10. There is an evolving phase of Deity whose incompleteness partly explains the degree of disorder on our planet.
11. The work of creation has been shared with subordinate beings who are neither infinite nor eternally perfect.
12. A superhuman rebellion against God is responsible for some of the confusion, evil, sin, and suffering on our planet.
13. It is misleading to think that God gives permission to wrongdoers. A human lifetime is over surprisingly quickly, and judgment must be faced.
14. Some suffering occurs because God chastises those he loves in order to prod them to turn from evil into the way of life.
15. Not everything is good, but God—and those who cooperate with God—so labor that everything eventually does work together for good—and we have a responsible part to play in the process.
16. God does not leave us alone. "In all our afflictions he is afflicted with us."
17. A Son of God has come forth to reveal the love of God, to experience this life with its full measure of suffering, and to comfort those who suffer.
18. Should we think of the world as filled with suffering? On balance, there is much for which to be thankful.
19. Suffering may be exacerbated by one’s failure to exercise vigorous, positive attitudes.
20. Once an episode of suffering is over—really over—we look back and find that the suffering was not truly substantial. Though evil appears to exist for a time, it can only exist by being parasitical on realities that are good. On the path from chaos to glory the sufferings of time are eclipsed by the joy of our eternal destiny.