Why would God allow suffering? A rabbi, bishop, imam and philosopher respond
October 12, 2026 · 16 min read
Rabbi David Wolpe, Bishop Robert Barron and Imam Omar Suleiman each take up why there is suffering and evil in a world made by God, Suleiman under the heading of trusting the planner, while philosopher Jack Symes, who calls his position honest agnosticism, raises a systemic problem of evil. Setting the replies side by side lets a reader compare how three faiths and an agnostic handle the same hard question.
The rules, numbers and steps worth keeping in front of you.
- Rabbi David Wolpe: a world with no suffering would have no growth and no free choice.
- Wolpe: God cannot give free will to everyone except the people who will abuse it.
- Wolpe: natural suffering has to be in some way random; if goodness were reliably rewarded, it would have no moral content.
- Wolpe's warning: explanations are obscene to a person actually suffering, who wants presence and comfort, not answers.
- Bishop Robert Barron calls evil the best argument against God he knows, and credits Thomas Aquinas with stating it at full strength.
- Barron's three replies: Augustine's greater good, trust because we see so little, and Christ going down into our suffering.
- Imam Omar Suleiman: there is enough food and enough guidance, so humans must first answer for the evil they do.
- Suleiman: Islam distinguishes between what God commands and what God allows to happen.
- Jack Symes's systemic problem of evil: evolution by natural selection requires the suffering of countless creatures over billions of years.
- Symes: the character-building defence may work for humans but not for animals, so he suspends belief.
- Symes notes that some 3,600 articles and books on the problem of evil, published between 1960 and 1998, did not resolve it.
- With someone who is suffering, stay: Barron had no answer at the wake, but he was there.
- Suleiman's warning to searchers: do not seek the truth unless you are willing to abide by what you find.
This is the short form. The full insight has every expert's reasoning, their own words and the sources.