You’ve heard the question right? You’ve probably wrestled with it deeply yourself: If God is all powerful and all good and loving, why does bad stuff happen?
Since Muslims and Christians have similar convictions regarding the first two propositions, you’d expect we’d find some commonality of response to the question. And you would be right.
(Let me be plain here: Addressing this in 300 words is ridiculous! Please go here and here for a more thorough look at Islam and suffering.)
Here are five ways theologians throughout history, both those academically trained and those simply mourning dry fields and rains that never came, have answered this question.
God is smarter than me.
He says as much himself in Isaiah 55:8-9. A drifting-from-faith friend once mockingly discounted, “My ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts,” but any reasonable understanding of God surely includes realization that we can’t completely understand God.
God allows people to choose.
People have free will and will often exercise it selfishly and stupidly. Raise your hand if you’ve seen an example of this. How about if you have been an example of this?
God is testing me.
Muslims tend to carry this more than Christians, at least Christians in our current, Western generation.
It gets better later.
Followers of both Islam and Christianity throughout history have held on through the most brutal and trying times by looking forward to life beyond this life.
God is with me.
Christians can rejoice in this in ways Islam forbids Muslims to. In Christ, the transcendent God we both speak of stepped into human reality and suffered in ways both familiar to us and beyond our comprehension.
As a pastor and mobilizer, that last one speaks to me today: It’s medicine I hope will comfort my parishioner I’ll visit in the hospital today, but one Muslims have left on the pharmacy shelf, forsaking Christ and the healing, help and life he has for them.