Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Job's story makes you rethink it all

The Book of Job is one of the most enigmatic books of the Bible. It begins with Satan approaching God to challenge the authenticity of Job’s faith. The story then follows Job as God allows him to be tested and lose everything — his wife tells him to “curse God and die”, his friends accuse him of a multitude of sins, and Job himself despairs of the day he was born.

As you read through the Book of Job, you quickly realize that it raises far more questions than it answers. Foremost among them is the question “why does God allow suffering?” But frustratingly, it’s a question you never get an answer to.

So why does this 2,500-year-old text still capture people’s attention so vividly?

The answer lies in how it illuminates the assumptions you make about God and his justice. Today, we explore what the Book of Job reveals about the nature of suffering, and what to do when God feels absent in the midst of it…