If God is all-just, all-loving, and all-powerful, then why do bad things happen to good people? This is a question that has haunted humankind from the very beginning. Consider the story of Job, for example. By the end of the first chapter, Job suffers a series of unimaginable tragedies—one right after another! He loses his children … he loses his property … he even loses his health.

Why would an all-loving, all-powerful God allow that?

Job’s well-meaning, but less-than-helpful, friends suggest that it is because Job deserves it. In other words, Job has sinned—and sin must be punished because God is just. However, Job knows that he has not sinned. He is innocent. Moreover, the reader knows this as well. We are told in the very first verse that Job is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.”

All of Job’s suffering is a direct result of God allowing Satan temporarily to have his way with Job. But this would seem to paint the picture of a God who is not only unjust but also rather unloving, for how could an all-loving God even think of going along with Satan’s little game?

Of course, you could argue that God permits human suffering in order to strengthen us, or to teach us, or perhaps to have us reprioritize our lives. But if that’s the case then, sadly, I have witnessed the Almighty miscalculate far too often. Some of us do learn valuable lessons through suffering, but many do not. Some of us are strengthened by the weight of a profound tragedy, but others are broken by it. Some take stock of their lives and devote their energies in a new direction, but suffering can just as easily send others into a tailspin from which they never recover.

In his well-known book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner argues that the reason God allows human suffering is because God can’t help it. When God established free-will as one of the founding principles of Creation, God gave up power and thus it is no longer possible (or even logical) to think of God as being all-powerful. Simply put, God does not have complete control. Bad things happen precisely because there is randomness and chance woven into the very fabric of Creation!

That, in a nutshell, is Kushner’s thesis, and while I am sympathetic to it at several points, I am not quite ready to relinquish the doctrine of a Sovereign God. I think it is still possible to consider God as all-powerful just as long as we remember that power does not always equal might.

In other words, the problem is not that God is unable to do certain things. God’s problem is that God loves! Love complicates the life of God just as it complicates our own lives. Obviously, God could behave in the way that Kushner deems desirable—namely, punishing the evil-doers and rewarding the good—but God is preventing from such direct actions of justice, not because it would interfere with our free-will (as Kushner suggests), but because it is the nature of divine love to suffer with and for the beloved.

Does God have the power to prevent human suffering? Absolutely. Then why doesn’t God? Because God is all-loving, and sometimes love requires more than simply meting out justice. Often our most powerful experiences of love are when someone shares solidarity with us in our hour of suffering—reminding and reassuring us that we are not alone. So it is with God. In the person of Jesus Christ, God chose to suffer with and for us. That is the nature of God’s love … and if you ask me, it is filled with power!