Why does God allow suffering?
In short: God does not will evil and does not send suffering as a punishment decreed by a distant judge. Suffering entered the world with the breaking of the bond between humanity and God — but God does not remain outside it: in Christ, he himself descends into suffering and passes through it, all the way to death on the Cross.
The Orthodox nuance
In the Orthodox tradition, God is not the author of evil. He made the world good and made humanity free — and true freedom can also be refused. Evil and suffering do not come from a decision of God, but from the wounding of the bond between creation and the Creator. This is why the Church does not read every pain as a personal punishment, sent "from above" to be deciphered.
The Orthodox answer is not first of all a theory that explains suffering, but a Person who enters into it. God does not watch our pain from afar: in Christ, he himself goes hungry, weeps at the tomb of his friend, and dies on the Cross. The Cross does not explain suffering — it passes through it and transfigures it from within. The sign is no longer the absence of God, but his presence precisely where we expected it least.
This does not mean we call evil "good." Suffering remains suffering, and tears are permitted — Christ himself wept. But in the hands of God, even what hurts us can become a place of meeting him, of growth and of drawing near. Not because pain is good in itself, but because nothing is outside his love, which can bring forth life even out of death.
And something very concrete: Orthodoxy does not leave you alone in suffering. The Church prays for those in distress, visits the sick, and has sacraments — Confession, Communion, the Anointing of the Sick — which are not "procedures" but real encounters with Christ who heals.
Sources
- John 16:33 — "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."
- Romans 8:18 — "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."
- Saint John Chrysostom — in his homilies (among others the Homilies to the People of Antioch and those on the Epistle to the Romans), he teaches that God can bring good even out of the evils he permits, without being their cause.