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Why Does God Permit Evil and Human Suffering

Evil is anything bad or morally wrong which causes unhappiness, injury, suffering, pain, ruin, or death. Perhaps there is nothing more challenging and confusing to man’s faith in a loving and just God than the dominance of evil in our world. All of man’s sorrows trace back to one cause—sin. Why did not God prevent man’s fall into sin? Adam and Eve were created perfect. Why did God allow Satan, in the form of a serpent, to tempt them to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree?  Read more here:  Listen to the famous International Bible Student Scholar and Lecturer, Carl Hagensick, provide the real answer to this perplexing quesiton.  Just click below to hear the answer for yourself.

Carl Hagensick explains clearly Why God Permits Evil

72 comments to Why Does God Permit Evil and Human Suffering

  • Frederick Douglass

    Dear Jacqueline, I respectfully thank you.

    I believe the comment made by Ken was a cowardly attempt to belittle the suffering of the black slaves by comparing them to God’s chosen people, the Jews, as if the lives of the Jews had more value and more dignity than the lives of the brutalised black slaves of history. Like most JW’s or religious people in general they feel the need to rationalise and defend God’s permission of extreme suffering by minimising it or by disparagingly comparing it to the bible, as if the people of the bible had a worst deal than everyone else in history. Which is actually untrue and unjust. The truth is no one will dare to challenge God for his unwillingness to help those desperate children who have suffered the most unspeakable and most unbearable horrors imaginable to the human mind. No not one of these selfish hearted religious people dare to denounce God’s unrighteous loveless and merciless behaviour in the face of such evil. They take Gods side because God is in the power seat and so they side with him regardless of what there consciences think or their hearts feel. They take the side of a God who has absolute power, because it profits them to do so. They do not take the side of a God of compassion and justice, because to do that would mean to truly question whether such a God existed. No the majority do not want to “feel deeply” for there fellow man. I mean to really hurt inside for the terrible injustice and horrendous pain so many have suffered without any intervention from God (like the many children who have screamed agonisingly, only to be left at the mercy of evil) .

    I am sorry but there is no justification for this evil which God has allowed. And those who try to defend or rationalise it, will end up becoming extremely warped, twisted and calloused. For there is no righteous or just way of defending it . You have to be an inhuman monster or become like one to support it.

    • Ken

      Frederick, I wasn’t trying to minimize anything, I think we all need to be reminded sometimes that all human beings have suffered at one time or another, some of us, worse than others. One of the reasons Jehovah PERMITTED all this to happen is to show how bad mankind can get without His rule and how cruel satan really is.

    • Jacqueline

      Frederick, I am going to walk away for a bit and let the audience at large come in. But thank you for replying, for I felt awful deciding to edit your sincere comments. I am going to think before I reply but I am sure perhaps others are willing to deal with this. Slavery of blacks is a dirty little sweep under the rug subject and not many want to hear or talk about it. It is the longest atrocity on one set of people that are identifiable by the color of their skin. They can’t blend in to escape.But who brought this on us? I read the book of Enoch the first 37 chapters and got a better sense of what was happenning. My colleagueand I have cancer patients and the chemo on one seemed to be killing and torturing her, she wants to stop and die. It works on her type of cancer and her children want her to endure this tortue for the better time ahead. I will use the way Jehovah decided to do it with sufferring to get her to endure if she can for her cancer is cureable. Jehovah has a cure also for the long run. I will be back later. Your sister, Jacqueline

    • Jacqueline

      Frederick I assume you are a witness or at least know the issues and promises in the Bible. God did do something at the deluge to halt a very swift end of the human race and the DNA infiltration of both humans and animals. Immediately Nimrod rebelled. Man didn’t learn a thing. He knows that they will have to go to the brink of despair then he will step in and will have to enforce laws of righteousness. God never enslaved blacks. In fact Indians would not betray each other but in Africa our own fathers handed their brothers over. So let’s start assigning blame aside from Adam. The African betrayers on the continent, then the governments in this New World and England. God does not react to every atrocity as with the flood man wouldn’t appreciate it. They were angry that their ancestors were gone. So in rebellion against someone that helped they said if you flood again, you will flood yourself for we will build this tower to heaven. So he is letting it play out. Man is one of the most impatient creatures on earth, that’s why we make so many mistakes. God’s time table is different. Just as a father and mother judges time differently than their children. When Children are in the home the parents have the right to do what is best for the whole family not just the little Black Child. If he intervened in one atrocity he should do it for all. But like a strong father he does not discriminate against any of his children but works for the good of the whole family. If we do that how much more so Jehovah. I as a Christian and a black person has accepted that he as head of his house (we are in his home)will make the memories go away and restore life to all. Not just his little black child. Satan is still divide and conquer, it works. It takes our mind off the real issues. Neither you nor I can turn a white hair on our head black let alone redeem our brother. But JESUS CAN! You, I and every nation under the sun needs to accept this help!. Don’t be like the people living directly after the flood. They were fools.
      Now you are not going to like what I am going to say next but I am going to say it anyway. I look at the rich shores of Africa and wonder with all that going for them, why can’t they rise up. Now my fore parents were brought to these shores and they suffered. But if they see how I live and my children, pass the age of 33 they might say:WOW! At least you got some benefit. I am so sorry my great grands were in slavery and my father had to bow in Bimingham Alabama to stay alive, but Martin Luther, a little black boy was born from these parents only. God gave us a little help. I grabbed it, left the south and the rest is history. Would you or I have been born if our fore parents were left on the shores of Africa?
      I think not. Everytime a butterfly flaps it wings, things change. One wrinkle in history would have affected me and you. I am glad to be alive. I am so comfortable with the BS and the witnesses for that fact on the prejudice scale. They both have discerned the sacred secret and realizes that all will be equal in the body of Christ. Let’s keep talking, until we talk this thing out. You were guided to this site for a reason. We are here to help. In sincere christian love and appeal, Jacqueline.

    • Sharon/Tulsigirl

      Sexual atrocities in Congo’s volatile province of South Kivu extend “far beyond rape” and include sexual slavery, forced incest and cannibalism, a U.N. human rights expert said Monday. Most of the worst abuses have been committed by rebel groups, many of whom fled to Congo after taking part in the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. While rebels commit most of the worst abuses, Erturk said government forces and national police are responsible for nearly 20 percent of all cases of sexual violence reported.“The atrocities perpetrated by these armed groups are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape,” she said in a statement. “Women are brutally gang raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters.”

      The statement continued: “Frequently women are shot or stabbed in their genital organs, after they are raped. Women, who survived months of enslavement, told me that their tormentors had forced them to eat excrement or the human flesh of murdered relatives.”
      http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20038999/ns/world_news-africa/t/un-congo-women-face-sexual-atrocities/

      infamous Lord’s Resistance Army in the Congolese national park it was hiding in, scattered and began massacring villages, killing as many as 900 civilians. For slides on these atrocities check:
      http://www.newser.com/story/50186/us-funded-failed-attack-on-ugandan-rebels.html

      An elite presidential guard unit of the military in the Central African Republic is primarily responsible for countless atrocities against civilians in the northern part of the country since 2005, including kidnaping children for ransom. according to a Human Rights Watch. An estimated 212,000 civilians have been forced to abandon their roadside homes and live deep inside the bush, too fearful to return to their burned villages in case of repeat attack. 78,000 have sought refuge in neighboring Chad and Cameroon.
      http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/world/africa/16africa.html

      These three notes taken from news online are being used only to show that atrocities are being committed by people of the African nations against their own people today. I do not have a history of slavery in my family. I cannot begin to understand the effect this might have on the black community worldwide today. Slavery has been in effect every since man began, I suppose. There is sex slaves other types of slaves (white, colored and others) today right here in America. And I am certain most of those slaves are suffering.

      It has to be remembered that Satan is ruling this world not GOD.

      Luke 4:6 “And he (Satan) said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.’ “

      2 Corinthians 4:4 “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”(NIV)

      John 12:31 “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.”(NIV)

      Jesus Christ came in GOD’s name as a ransom for many, or ,all. see Matthew 20:28…

      I always mean to make just a few comments and write a book. I apologize but this is a topic that I actually have problems with, too. There is so much cruelty and horrors going on in the world that I have to remind myself. (Look at Syria!)

      • Jacqueline

        Sharon theses are indeed terrible things happening. Slavery however was sancioned by the government, it was not considered a crime it was legal. The So called Christian nations made it a law. So again Man is the blame and Satan wants to divide us. Jesus is the answer. I think your comment proves that we need some help. Catholic and protestants fought each other of the same families and race for decades in Ireland. Kroatia in it’s ethnic cleansing. Cambodia killed Millions of their own people.When it comes to the same race killing each other no one has an edge they all do it. I also want to say the holocaust was a pogrom, like slavery. It was a systematic government sanctioned event, it was law. But didn’t last as long as the Black experience

        But the slavery issue was state sanctioned and put into law, sort of like you own your dogs, fish and cats, hogs, do as you please. Owning humans sanctioned by law is somewhat unique to the black slavery in modern times. In the bible the slaves were more or less workers with some rights to decency. It is the Walk of Shame among the US and England. Civil people can’t rationize it, but God didn’t do it. He is going to fix it.

  • Ashanique

    Well said Jerome…well said!

  • Jerome

    A piece of cake Ken! Yes, a piece of cake compared to the brutal slavery of black people! That’s why the Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt after they had been rescued by God.

    I do not here any black people begging to go back to slavery again today, do you?

  • Frederick Douglass

    Why?! What was the point of it all?!

    What Jesus went through is NOTHING compared to what many of those slaves went through. Nothing! And yet jesus is praised so highly and respected so much,for what?

    • Ken

      I wonder what it must’ve felt like to be an israelite slave to the Egyptians for over 400 years?

    • Jacqueline

      I understand how you feel. The Jews rose up and became mighty again. Their women and children were not raped! In fact I unapproved your 2 comments, I think I was wrong. I am going to put them here so you can make your point. There is no experience that we know of in history that compares to the black experience and still the people have a fight. I will now go and let your last 2 unapproved posts answer some of the post just made.
      Please scroll down to see your post from last night. They made me cry because our father and Jesus witnessed it and will correct it and all persons no matter the race that have suffered because of the situation in Eden. Take Care dear brother.
      PS: I know our time zones are flipped, but when you see this. I apologize for not letting you make your point. Please tell us a little bit about your experience. We can try to understand.

  • Frederick Douglass

    Olaudah Equiano blamed brutal overseers for the worst treatment of slaves: “Another negro man was half hanged, and then burnt, for attempting to poison a cruel overseer. Thus, by repeated cruelties, are the wretched first urged to despair, and then murdered, because they still retain so much of human nature about them as to wish to put an end to their misery, and retaliate on their tyrants. These overseers are indeed for the most part persons of the worst character of any denomination of men in the West Indies. Unfortunately, many humane gentlemen, but not residing on their estates, are obliged to leave the management of them in the hands of these human butchers, who cut and mangle the slaves in a shocking manner on the most trifling occasions, and altogether treat them in every respect like brutes.”

  • Frederick Douglass

    “The ordinary punishments of slaves, for the common crimes of neglect, absence from work, eating the sugar cane, theft, are cart whipping, beating with a stick, sometimes to the breaking of bones, the chain, an iron crook about the neck… a ring about the ankle, and confinement in the dungeon. There have been instances of slitting of ears, breaking of limbs, so as to make amputation necessary, beating out of eyes, and castration.”

    • Jacqueline

      Hello Frederick Douglas, How are you? And I AM A BLACK WOMAN! I know the story and used to wonder as a little girl, why didn’t God stop this. I have unapproved some of your comments because of their length and the portions can be read from the book if you will provide it here for others to read.. You are making a very valid point. The quotations appear to be from the writings of Frederick Douglas the slave that escaped and the wiki link was provided by Jeff. Many can go there to look up his info. and series there on the brutality of slavery.
      I looked at the Cambodia massacre and other known atrocities that we have info on. Even the Jewish holocaust.
      None of the effects of any of them lasted as long as the BLACK SLAVERY. In fact when incepted the slavers said it would take 400yrs before this would be corrected. By then they said we will have built the nation not just in America, but in England as well. There were all types of betrayals. Although it happened, it is so gross as to print it here. I have read mounds of books and have had my grandmother and father tell me stories. Plus living in the South was not far removed.
      Frederick I likened my experience in the JW to a lot of aspects of slavery. I know Rutherford employed any method that worked. The army’s method to get people to think as one. The submission and humiliation and telling men what they and their spouse could do in the “bedroom laws” are all taken from the Book of slavery. Many blacks have been hit with a double whammy in this regards, some from youth.
      Many have tried to use those methods because they were effective. Our black CO, DO were nothing more than a slave master’s boy that kept us in line.My father recognized it for what it was in 1958 and abandoned the religion then.
      The God of heaven and Jesus will resurrect those slaves and they will have to answer for their atrocities. Hopefully many will submit and forgiveness can take place on the part of the innocent victims.If not those slavers will go to Gehennna.
      Ps.2:12 “Kiss the son, that he may not become incensed. And you may not perish (from) the way, For his anger flares up easily. Happy are those taking refuge in him.” Frederick, you,I and all others have been released from the bonds of slavery to the GB we are getting the truth.
      John 8:32 “and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” He saw slavery and the RANSOM Of Our Dear Lord Jesus will cover the victims.
      Tell us if you will please your thoughts. What is going on in your mind? What are so of your experiences? How did you find this site?
      Welcome! and we hope to hear from you in your own words soon. In Peace, Jacqueline

  • Frederick Douglass

    Olaudah Equiano was a slave who witnessed the rapes of slave women:
    “While I was thus employed by my master, I was often a witness to cruelties of every kind, which were exercised on my unhappy fellow slaves. I used frequently to have different cargoes of new Negroes in my care for sale; and it was almost a constant practice with our clerks, and other whites, to commit violent depredations on the chastity of the female slaves; and these I was, though with reluctance, obliged to submit to at all times, being unable to help them. When we have had some of these slaves on board my master’s vessels, to carry them to other islands, or to America, I have known our mates to commit these acts most shamefully, to the disgrace, not of Christians only, but of men. I have even known them to gratify their brutal passion with females not ten years old.” Henry Bibb, a slave from Shelby County, Kentucky, has argued: “A poor slave’s wife can never be true to her husband contrary to the will of her master. She can neither be pure nor virtuous, contrary to the will of her master. She dare not refuse to be reduced to a state of adultery at the will of her master.”

  • Frederic Douglass

    “We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!”

  • Frederick Douglass

    I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
    An escaped slave

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