Why Does God Allow Good People to Suffer?

My Struggle With Faith and Unanswered Prayers

There have been moments during my years as a hospice nurse when I have sat beside a dying patient and silently wondered where God was. I have watched people endure tremendous suffering in their final days of life.

I have seen families exhausted by grief, praying desperately for their loved one’s suffering to end. I have administered medications, monitored symptoms, offered reassurance, and done everything within my nursing responsibilities to make those final hours as comfortable as possible.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, the suffering continued. And in those moments, I found myself asking a question that has troubled me for years.

If God is loving, merciful, and all-powerful, why does He allow people to suffer so terribly when He has the power to stop it?

I grew up Christian.

I was taught that God is our Heavenly Father, that He loves His children, that He hears our prayers, and that nothing is impossible for Him. But the older I get, and the more suffering I witness, the harder it becomes for me to reconcile those teachings with the realities of life.

I know the explanations Christians often give. I have heard them for most of my life…

God is testing our faith.

God has a plan.

His ways are not our ways.

Suffering is part of living in a fallen world.

But I keep coming back to one very simple question:

If I would not willingly stand by and watch my own child suffer when I had the power to end that suffering, why would a loving Heavenly Father do so?

That is where my struggle begins.

The Faith I Grew Up With and the Questions I Have Today

Growing up in a Christian environment, I was taught to believe in the goodness of God and the power of prayer. We were encouraged to pray when we were sick, frightened, needed guidance, or faced difficulties.

We were taught that God loved us more deeply than any earthly parent ever could. There was comfort in that belief. The idea that an all-powerful Father was watching over us, listening to our prayers, and protecting us from harm made the uncertainties of life easier to bear.

But as the years passed, I began to encounter experiences that challenged those beliefs. I saw good people suffer.

I watched families experience devastating losses. I witnessed people of tremendous faith endure illnesses that eventually took their lives. And I began to question things I had previously accepted without much examination.

Today, I would describe my position toward religion as neutral. I am not writing this to declare that God does not exist. Nor am I trying to persuade anyone to abandon their faith.

I am simply acknowledging that my experiences have made it difficult for me to accept some of the explanations I was given about God, prayer, suffering, and divine intervention. There is a difference between rejecting something outright and admitting that you no longer understand it.

For me, that distinction matters.

What I Have Witnessed at the Bedsides of Dying Patients

After decades in nursing, including many years providing hospice care, I have witnessed death in many forms.

Some patients die peacefully. Their breathing gradually slows, their bodies relax, and they slip away quietly, sometimes with loved ones sitting beside them.

Those are the deaths families often hope for when someone enters hospice care. But not every death unfolds that way.

I have cared for patients who experienced severe pain, respiratory distress, agitation, restlessness, and other distressing symptoms during their final days. As nurses, we do everything within our scope of practice and the patient’s care plan to relieve those symptoms.

We administer prescribed medications, assess their effectiveness, communicate with the hospice team, and provide comfort measures. Hospice care can have a significant impact, and many symptoms can be effectively managed.

But there are situations when achieving adequate comfort is particularly challenging, even with attentive care and appropriate interventions. And those are the situations that stay with me.

I have watched families sit beside their loved ones, emotionally exhausted, sometimes crying, sometimes praying, sometimes simply staring helplessly at the person lying in the bed. There comes a point when some families are no longer praying for recovery.

They know their loved one is dying. They are simply praying for a peaceful death. They want the suffering to end. And sometimes, that peaceful passing does not come as quickly as they desperately hope.

I have seen the anguish in their faces.

I have heard the helplessness in their voices.

And I have wondered why a person who is already dying must endure such distress before taking a final breath. What purpose does that suffering serve?

What lesson is someone supposed to learn when they are no longer able to communicate, when their body is shutting down, and when death is already inevitable?

If God has the power to grant that person a peaceful passing, why doesn’t He?

I know there are theological explanations for suffering. But standing at the bedside of a dying patient, those explanations can feel painfully inadequate.

If God Is Our Father, Why Would He Allow His Children to Suffer?

This is perhaps the question that troubles me most.

Christianity teaches that God is our Father. We are told that His love is greater than human love, His mercy is boundless, and His power has no limitations.

But I am a mother and grandmother. And I know what it means to love a child. If my child or grandchild were suffering terribly and I possessed the power to stop that suffering, I would not hesitate.

I would not sit back and watch the pain continue to see whether my child loved me enough.

I would not prolong the suffering to teach a lesson that I could communicate in another way.

I would not require my child to demonstrate unwavering loyalty before offering relief.

I would simply help.

That is what love would compel me to do.

Of course, human parents are imperfect. We do not always know what is best, and we cannot protect our children from every hardship. But that is precisely the difference.

We are limited in knowledge and power. God, according to Christian teaching, is not.

So why should an all-powerful, all-loving Father appear less willing to intervene in terrible suffering than an ordinary human parent would be?

I have heard people say that God allows suffering because He knows things we do not. Perhaps that explanation satisfies some believers. But it does not resolve the moral difficulty for me.

If we consider it cruel for a human being to watch another person suffer unnecessarily when they could intervene, why do we regard the same apparent inaction as loving when we attribute it to God?

I do not ask that question disrespectfully. I ask because I’ve been troubled, and genuinely struggle to understand.

What About Job? Was His Suffering Really Necessary?

Whenever Christians discuss the suffering of good people, the biblical story of Job always comes up. Job is described as a righteous man who feared God and turned away from evil. Yet he lost his wealth, his children, his health, and almost everything that made his life meaningful.

According to the biblical account, his suffering followed a challenge involving Satan and Job’s faithfulness to God. Job remained the subject of a test he had neither requested nor understood.

Christians often point to his eventual restoration as evidence of God’s faithfulness. But I have always struggled with another aspect of that story.

Why did Job have to suffer in the first place?

If God already knew Job’s heart, why was such a devastating test necessary? And what about Job’s children who died?

The account describes Job later receiving more children, but children are not interchangeable. If a parent loses ten children and later has ten more, does that erase the grief of losing the first ten?

Would any loving parent consider those lives replaceable? I certainly would not. Job’s story may teach perseverance, but it also raises profound questions about the nature of divine testing.

The same questions arise when Christians refer to David, Joseph, Paul, or other biblical figures who experienced hardship. We are told that suffering strengthens faith, builds character, or prepares people for a greater purpose.

But must every lesson come through pain? Does an all-knowing God need to test people to discover what is already in their hearts?

And what about those who suffer so severely that they never recover? What happens when the suffering destroys a person’s health, livelihood, family, or will to live?

To me, these are troubling questions that deserve more than a familiar quotation followed by an instruction to have faith.

Are We Still Paying for Adam and Eve’s Disobedience?

Another explanation I have heard since childhood is that suffering entered the world because Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. According to this interpretation of Christianity, humanity lives in a fallen world because of that original act of disobedience.

But this explanation raises even more questions for me. Why should people living thousands of years later continue to suffer because of something they did not personally do?

Why should an innocent baby be born with a devastating illness?

Why should a child suffer from cancer?

Why should a kind, elderly person endure a prolonged and painful death?

What personal responsibility do they bear for the actions of Adam and Eve? I understand that Christians differ in how they interpret original sin, inherited guilt, and the consequences of humanity’s fall.

Some see the Genesis account literally. Others understand it symbolically, as an explanation of the brokenness of human existence.

But when the story is used to explain why innocent people must suffer today, I still find myself asking:

After all these generations, why must the consequences continue?

In ordinary human life, we generally recognize that children should not be punished for offenses committed by their ancestors. We consider that principle an essential part of justice.

So why should divine justice operate differently?

And if God is all-powerful, why could He not end those consequences? Why must suffering continue generation after generation? I have yet to hear an explanation that fully resolves those troubling questions for me.

Why Do Good People Suffer While Wicked People Prosper?

Another troubling reality is the apparent unfairness of life. We all know people who have lived decent, compassionate, hardworking lives and experienced tremendous hardship.

We also know of people who have exploited others, behaved dishonestly, or caused immense suffering and yet enjoyed wealth, influence, good health, and long lives.

Of course, we cannot know everything about another person’s private life. Wealth does not guarantee happiness, and a long life does not necessarily mean a peaceful one. But the visible inequalities remain difficult to ignore.

Why does a generous person struggle financially while someone who cheats others accumulates extraordinary wealth? Why does a devoted parent lose a child while someone who neglects or mistreats their children lives to old age?

Why do some people who spend their lives helping others die prematurely, while those who cause harm seem to flourish?

The Bible itself acknowledges this troubling question. Psalm 73, for example, reflects on the apparent prosperity of the wicked. So this issue is hardly a new concern.

Human beings have wrestled with it for centuries. But knowing that others have asked the same question does not make it easier to accept.

If there is divine justice, why is it so difficult to recognize in the world we inhabit? And why must justice so often be postponed to an afterlife that none of us can independently verify?

COVID-19 Changed the Way I Look at Prayer

The COVID-19 pandemic was another turning point in my thinking. Like millions of people around the world, I watched the pandemic claim lives, separate families, and create unimaginable grief.

I lost many friends during that period.

People I had known, people whose lives mattered, people whose deaths left an emptiness that comforting words could not explain away.

During the pandemic, churches prayed.

Pastors prayed.

Families prayed.

Millions of religious people around the world prayed for healing, protection, and an end to the devastation. Yet people continued to die.

But something else troubled me deeply.

Where were all the pastors and televangelists who had spent years appearing on television, claiming extraordinary powers to heal the sick and perform miracles?

Before COVID-19, we had seen religious leaders proclaim that they could heal supposedly incurable diseases, restore people’s health through prayer, and deliver miraculous recoveries through divine intervention. During their massive, well-attended religious crusades, we watched people who had arrived in wheelchairs suddenly rise to their feet and run across the stage, seemingly healed before the cheering crowds.

Some religious leaders built enormous ministries and attracted millions of followers through such claims. Yet when a deadly pandemic overwhelmed hospitals and healthcare workers struggled to save lives, where were those extraordinary healing powers?

Why weren’t these self-proclaimed miracle workers going from hospital to hospital, healing the desperately ill and demonstrating the powers they had so confidently advertised? Instead, many of the spectacular healing claims that had once dominated religious broadcasts seemed conspicuously absent from the pandemic response.

And COVID-19 did not spare religious leaders themselves. Some pastors and prominent religious figures also died from the disease.

I found that deeply troubling. If someone claims to possess the power to heal the sick through divine intervention, surely a global health emergency would be the moment when that power was most desperately needed.

I am not suggesting that religious leaders should have entered infectious disease wards without protective equipment or medical authorization. Nor am I dismissing the clergy and faith communities who provided food, emotional support, practical assistance, and comfort during the pandemic.

But there is a profound difference between offering spiritual comfort and publicly claiming supernatural healing abilities. When the world desperately needed miracles, what happened to the miracle workers?

I know some believers would say that prayer was never a guarantee of survival. Others might point to people who recovered and attribute their recovery to divine intervention.

But what about those who did not recover? Were their families less faithful? Were their prayers less sincere? Did God love them less? I do not believe anyone grieving a loved one should be burdened with those suggestions.

The pandemic made me confront the difference between believing that prayer brings comfort and believing that prayer reliably changes what happens in the physical world. Those are not necessarily the same thing.

Prayer may help someone endure fear, uncertainty, or grief. I can understand that. But when I watched so many people die despite the prayers offered for them, I could no longer accept simplistic claims that sufficient faith would guarantee protection.

And I became even more skeptical of religious leaders who promise miraculous healing when the cameras are rolling but cannot demonstrate those same powers when humanity faces a genuine medical catastrophe.

My Father Died at 75, and I Still Have Questions

Some of my deepest questions about life and death are not philosophical. They are deeply personal.

My father died at 75, twenty-five years ago, and to this day, I still struggle to understand why. He had been remarkably healthy throughout his life. I had never known him to be sick.

In fact, going to the hospital was simply not part of his life. Then, suddenly, he was admitted to a hospital for the first time.

Two days later, he was dead.

Just like that.

Even after twenty-five years, we still don’t have a reasonable explanation for what happened or why a man who had always seemed so healthy died so suddenly. His death was a terrible shock.

There had been no long illness to prepare us, no gradual decline, no warning that we were about to lose him. One moment, my father was alive. Two days after entering the hospital, he was gone forever.

And I wasn’t ready.

There were so many things I still wanted to discuss with him. Questions I had never thought to ask. Family stories I wanted to hear. Memories I wanted him to explain. Conversations I assumed we would have someday.

I thought we had more time.

But we didn’t.

Even now, a quarter of a century later, I sometimes find myself wondering why he had to die when he did.

Why couldn’t we have had another five years? Another ten?

Why couldn’t I have had more opportunities to sit with him, listen to his stories, laugh with him, and ask all those questions that will now remain unanswered?

I know that 75 years is longer than many people are privileged to live. But when it is your father, numbers mean very little. Seventy-five years suddenly doesn’t seem nearly long enough.

You don’t think about life expectancy or statistics. You think about the person you loved, the memories you shared, and all the moments you will never have again.

And no matter how many years pass, a part of you still wishes you could pick up the telephone, hear his familiar voice, and have just one more conversation.

You simply wish he were still here.

And then there is my mother.

There are moments when I wish I could pick up the telephone and ask her how to prepare a particular traditional dish. Sometimes it is something as simple as remembering the right ingredient, the proper quantity, or the little technique she used that made the food taste exactly as I remembered it from childhood.

Those moments catch me unexpectedly. Because I can no longer call her. It is remarkable how grief lives in the smallest details of everyday life.

We imagine that the greatest pain of losing someone will come during birthdays, anniversaries, and other important occasions. But sometimes it comes when you are standing in your kitchen, trying to remember how your mother cooked something.

Or when you want to ask your father a question and suddenly remember that there is no one to call. I still wonder why the people we love must leave when there is so much left unsaid.

And I have learned that time does not necessarily answer those questions. It simply teaches us to live with them.

When Parents Pray for Their Children and Still Watch Them Lose Their Way

There is another kind of suffering that rarely receives the same attention as physical illness. It is the emotional anguish of parents watching their children make choices that damage their lives.

I have often wondered why children raised in loving, responsible homes sometimes grow into adults who take destructive paths. Their parents may have provided education, guidance, discipline, encouragement, and every opportunity within their means.

They may have prayed for their children’s protection and future. Yet those children sometimes make decisions that leave their parents heartbroken.

Of course, adult children have free will. They develop their own personalities, encounter different influences, and make choices their parents cannot control.

I understand that.

But understanding free will does not eliminate a parent’s pain. And it does not entirely answer the question of why sincere prayers for a child’s well-being sometimes seem to go unanswered.

Why does one family watch a child thrive while another watches a child struggle with destructive decisions despite years of love and guidance? Why do some parents spend their later years enjoying peace while others spend those same years worrying about children they can no longer protect?

I do not believe every difficult outcome reflects parental failure. Sometimes parents do their best, and life still unfolds in ways they never imagined.

That, too, is part of the uncertainty I struggle to understand.

When Religious Explanations Become More Painful Than Helpful

Over the years, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the certainty some religious people express when explaining another person’s suffering. Someone loses a loved one, and they are told, “God needed another angel.”

A child dies, and someone says, “It was God’s will.”

A family experiences tragedy, and they hear, “Everything happens for a reason.”

Someone prays desperately for healing and receives no relief, only to be told that perhaps their faith was not strong enough. I understand that many people offer these statements with good intentions.

They want to comfort the grieving. They want to make sense of something terrible. And some people genuinely find reassurance in believing that every event forms part of a divine plan.

But I cannot help wondering how those words sound to someone whose world has just collapsed. What does it mean to tell a mother that God needed her child more than she did?

What comfort is there in suggesting that a dying person’s suffering was part of a loving plan? And why should someone who has prayed faithfully be made to feel that their prayers failed because they did not believe strongly enough?

Sometimes, the most compassionate response is not an explanation. It is simply acknowledging that something terrible has happened.

It is sitting with someone in their grief.

It is offering practical help.

It is allowing them to ask questions without making them feel guilty for having doubts.

I have come to believe that human suffering does not always need a religious explanation. Sometimes, it needs simple human compassion.

My Growing Disappointment With Organized Religion

My questions about suffering have also influenced the way I view churches and organized religion. Over the years, I have become increasingly skeptical of the emphasis some religious institutions place on money.

There are churches where financial giving seems to occupy an extraordinary amount of attention. People are encouraged to give generously, sometimes with promises of blessings, prosperity, healing, or divine favor.

Meanwhile, some of those same congregations include people struggling to pay rent, afford healthcare, or provide basic necessities for their families.

I find that troubling.

I struggle with the sight of religious leaders living in extraordinary luxury while some of the people supporting their ministries experience genuine hardship. I also question teachings that appear to connect financial contributions with God’s willingness to bless or intervene.

If God is loving and merciful, why should His compassion be associated with how much money someone gives to a church? Does a wealthy person’s offering make their prayers more valuable than those of a struggling widow?

Surely not.

I recognize that many churches do meaningful charitable work. Some provide food, shelter, companionship, counseling, and practical assistance to vulnerable people.

There are sincere religious leaders who devote their lives to serving others. I do not dismiss that good work.

But I have become uncomfortable with religious institutions that seem to have confident answers to every human problem while repeatedly asking people for money. For me, faith and organized religion are no longer necessarily the same thing.

A person can question religious institutions without claiming to know whether God exists. And someone can value kindness, honesty, compassion, and moral responsibility without belonging to a church.

Does Suffering Really Make Us Stronger?

Another familiar explanation is that suffering builds character. We are told that difficult experiences make us stronger, wiser, more patient, and more appreciative of life.

Sometimes that is true.

People can emerge from hardship with remarkable resilience. I have witnessed extraordinary courage in people facing devastating circumstances.

But I have also seen suffering overwhelm people. Not everyone emerges stronger.

Some people are physically damaged, emotionally exhausted, financially ruined, or permanently changed by what they endure. Some never recover.

So I hesitate when people describe suffering as though it were always a gift disguised as a hardship. Would we tell a parent who has lost a child that the experience was necessary for personal growth?

Would we tell someone enduring unbearable pain that their suffering was valuable because it might strengthen their character? Perhaps some people eventually find meaning in what happened to them.

That is their right.

But finding meaning after suffering is not the same as proving that the suffering was necessary. I believe we should be careful not to romanticize pain simply because we cannot explain it.

What I Have Learned About Compassion, Even Without All the Answers

Despite my uncertainty about religion, there is something I have become more convinced of with age…

Human compassion matters.

During my years in nursing, I could not answer the deepest questions about why people suffered. I could not explain why one patient experienced a peaceful death while another endured a difficult dying process.

I could not tell a grieving family why their loved one was leaving them. But I could do something. I could assess symptoms and provide prescribed treatments.

I could adjust a patient’s position to improve comfort. I could offer reassurance and provide emotional support to a frightened family. I could explain what was happening as death approached.

I could sit quietly beside someone who did not want to be alone. Those actions did not solve the mystery of suffering. But they could make a difficult experience a little more bearable.

And perhaps that is one of the most important lessons my nursing career has taught me. We do not need to understand every mystery of existence before we can respond to another person’s pain.

We do not need to agree on religion in order to show kindness. We do not need certainty about heaven, divine plans, or the purpose of suffering to recognize that a person in distress deserves compassion.

If anything, the uncertainty should make us more compassionate, not less. Because none of us knows when we may be the one lying in that bed, frightened and vulnerable, hoping someone will ease our suffering.

Learning to Live With Questions I May Never Answer

I know some Christians reading this article may disagree strongly with my questions. They may point to Job, to the suffering of Jesus, to the consequences of original sin, or to biblical passages about God’s wisdom being beyond human understanding.

I respect their right to interpret suffering through their faith. I also understand why religious belief brings tremendous comfort to many people.

For some, the conviction that God has a purpose provides strength during life’s darkest moments. I would never want to take that comfort away from them.

But I also believe that questioning religious teachings should not automatically be treated as rebellion, ignorance, or a lack of moral character. This is because questions are part of being human.

And after everything I have witnessed, I cannot pretend that the answers are simple. I grew up believing that God was a loving Father who heard our prayers and watched over His children.

But I have lived long enough to witness suffering that I still cannot reconcile with that belief. I have watched people of great faith endure distressing deaths.

I have seen families pray desperately for mercy while their loved ones continued to suffer. I lost friends during a pandemic when millions of people around the world were praying for the devastation to end.

I still wonder why my father died at 75, leaving so many conversations unfinished. I still wish I could call my mother and ask her questions that only she could answer.

I still wonder why some good people experience so much hardship while others who cause harm appear to prosper. And I still struggle with the idea that a loving Heavenly Father would allow His children to endure suffering that an ordinary human parent would desperately try to prevent.

Perhaps there are answers I do not understand.

Perhaps there are questions humanity will never resolve.

I cannot say with certainty. What I do know is that I no longer feel obligated to defend explanations that do not make sense to me simply because I was taught to accept them.

I respect those who continue to believe with unwavering conviction. I respect those who have lost their faith. And I understand those who, like me, find themselves somewhere in between – still reflecting, still questioning, and unwilling to pretend that they have discovered the truth about everything.

I have reached a stage in life where I value intellectual honesty more than the appearance of certainty.

If God is truly a loving Father, I still want to understand why He allows His children to suffer when He has the power to stop it.

Until then, I will continue to value what I can see and experience: kindness, compassion, dignity, and the responsibility we have to care for one another. Because whatever the answers to life’s greatest mysteries may be, I believe one thing should never be in doubt.

When another human being is suffering, our first responsibility is not to explain their pain. It is to do whatever we reasonably can to relieve it.