Pat Flynn – Word on Fire Blog –
On the philosophical level, one plausible but emotionally unsatisfying response to the problem of suffering is this: God will allow suffering and evil if, and only if, suffering and evil are the best or only available means to deliver an outweighing benefit primarily to the sufferer. A starting analog of such moral permissibility would be the parent who permits the suffering of their child for the outweighing benefit of receiving a critical inoculation against some life-threatening disease. The parent, of course, does not want the child to suffer the pain of the inoculation, but is morally permitted in allowing or even willing that suffering to occur, because of the outweighing benefit. In very fact, the parent who does not allow their children to suffer the inoculation would (arguably) be acting immorally, since parents have a binding obligation to do what is really good for their children, even if that involves the infliction of suffering. It is better to allow the child to suffer, in some cases, then not.
The difficulty, here, of course, is we cannot extend finite examples to the universal providence of omniscient Being. We not only do not see what God’s ultimate plans are, but we should not expect to see it. After all, we’re not God, and so it shouldn’t surprise us that existence is suffused with unsolved mystery, where specific answers to pressing questions may be frustratingly unavailable to creatures of limited intellect—specifically, creatures like us. So, we cannot really say why God allows this terrible thing to happen, or that atrocity to occur, or mosquitoes or bunions, because we are not God, but certainly neither can we say, no matter how atrocious such atrocities may be, or just plain annoying, that God could not have morally sufficient reasons for permitting them. Because God’s ways are not our ways, and we simply cannot see how everything connects. Humility, then, is the appropriate response. Stick to what we know, and, best we can, use what is clear (God’s goodness) to illuminate the fog (evil and suffering).
God hasn’t left us completely unaided, after all. As Catholics argue, God has definitively revealed himself; Christ Jesus has shown us God’s heart—given us the literal human portrait of the unrestricted and benevolent Creator—who is not only not indifferent to our suffering and sin, but was willing to assume the full brunt of human depravity upon himself, even to the point of an excruciating death, prior to which God was mocked, tortured, and humiliated in front of his own mother. The result from this literal human act of deicide? God somehow, and indeed miraculously, swallowed up all that tremendous evil and transformed the worst treachery into the greatest treasure: human salvation. I mean, holy mudcats! Because if God can bring that much good from that much suffering, imagine what he can do with everything else, even if we can’t see or predict how it’ll happen. Again, who saw or predicted Christ’s Resurrection?