If God Were Real, He Wouldn’t Let This Happen

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of God, and I can’t understand how anyone can reconcile the idea of an all-powerful, all-loving deity with the overwhelming amount of suffering in the world. To me, it feels like blind faith in God’s existence is just a way to avoid asking hard questions about reality.

Let’s break this down: If God exists and He’s omnipotent, that means He has the power to stop suffering. If He’s omniscient, He knows every detail of every tragedy before it happens. If He’s omnibenevolent, He should want to stop suffering. So why doesn’t He? Every excuse people offer just crumbles under scrutiny.

"Free will justifies suffering.” Really? Even if you accept the idea that God allows people to harm others to preserve free will, that doesn’t explain things like cancer, earthquakes, or hurricanes. No one chooses those things. If a human being had the power to prevent those tragedies and didn’t act, we’d call them a monster. So why give God a free pass?

“It’s all part of God’s plan.” This one is even worse. How is it “loving” to include pain and destruction in a plan? What kind of God requires the deaths of innocents to achieve His goals? If we can’t question that plan, how is it even worth worshipping? Blindly calling it “mysterious” is just intellectual laziness.

“Suffering is a test or punishment.” Why would a supposedly perfect being need to test or punish us this way? The idea that suffering is meant to teach us something feels sadistic. A parent doesn’t let their child suffer for “a lesson,” so why would God?

I think what frustrates me the most is how people believe in God without questioning these contradictions. They’re so eager to cling to the idea that there’s some benevolent higher power that they accept these flimsy justifications without a second thought. It’s easier to believe in comforting lies than to confront the uncomfortable truth that we’re on our own.

When I’ve brought this up, I’ve been told to “have faith” or “pray for understanding.” To me, that’s not an answer—it’s an admission that there is no good answer. Faith seems like a tool to silence critical thinking and justify a worldview that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

At some point, I had to stop lying to myself. If God is real, He either doesn’t care about suffering or isn’t powerful enough to stop it. Either way, He’s not the loving, omnipotent being people claim He is. More likely, God isn’t real at all, and we’re clinging to these stories to avoid the terrifying reality that the universe doesn’t care about us.

I’m tired of being told to accept this lie. If your belief in God can’t withstand hard questions, maybe it’s time to ask yourself why you believe at all. For me, the truth—no matter how hard it is—feels a lot more honest than trying to justify the unjustifiable.