Suffering with No Clear Purpose

DEFENSE

God can bring good from evil and he can more than compensate us.

The faculties that allow suffering—such as the pain receptors in our nervous systems—have a purpose, which is to help us avoid danger (see Day 7), but sometimes they are triggered in situations where they don’t help—resulting in apparently purposeless suffering.

Fortunately, God can bring good out of every tragedy, and faith tells us he will (Rom. 8:28; CCC 324). However, there is more that can be said.

For a person with an atheistic perspective, death is the ultimate end. If someone has suffered unjustly in this life, that’s it. The person is just out of luck. Nothing can ever make up for the suffering he experienced.

But from a Christian perspective, death is not the end. It’s a transition, and we will exist forever. That means that no matter what we have suffered in this life or how short our life was, God can make it up to us. Indeed, he can do far more. Paul says: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).

Elsewhere he says, “So we do not lose heart. . . . For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16–18).

This is part of what makes it possible to live with the mystery of evil. I may experience evil in this life. From an earthly perspective, I may suffer, but I can endure that if I know that death is not the end and God will more than compensate for what I have suffered innocently. I don’t have to know all the reasons why this or that evil occurs, as long as I know that God will make everything right in the end.