If God is all good and all-powerful, why do his people suffer?

This is an excellent question, one which philosophers have riddle over for centuries. The difficulty of the question is asking why does God allow evil to exist when he has the power to stop it. I won’t even pretend I know the mind of God, but I can venture forth an answer based from the Bible.

God loved us, as people, and he wanted this love to be mutual. In order for you to love someone, you must have a free choice to do so. A forced action is not a sign of love. You can’t pay people to be true friends. Likewise, God could have programmed us to be perfect people, but then it would not have been our choice. Essentially, God gave us a free will, even though this lets us do evil. If I take a gun and kill someone, God is not any less powerful nor any less just. He is saddened because although he has the power to prevent evil, if he does, we’d lose our free will in the process, and hence the ability to love.

Job was a good God-fearing man and a classical example of suffering. God allowed Satan to ‘test’ Job and take away everything except Job’s life. God let him lose his wealth, family, and dignity. Despite this, he never cursed God. Job had long conversations with his friends about his misfortune, and they each give shallow possibilities for why Job suffered. Finally, Job talks with God. God points out that everything Job had was from God. God had given Job his health, his family, his money, his prosperity, and his respect. If we accept God, than we must accept that everything we have is from God, and so shift our focus from the gifts to the giver. (If we don’t accept God, we must first consider that.) Because of Job’s faithfulness during his suffering, God restores him and gives him twice everything he had had before.

One can not hold God responsible because someone else commits an act of evil. That an all good and powerful God doesn’t stop us from doing evil yet still lets us love is not a statement of God’s limits, but rather a logical impossibility.