God is not…obliged to save us

Of all the things the Bible tells us about God, this may be one of the most difficult for us to accept, particularly in the post-modern world of 2025. It’s a topic that a lot of people may find controversial.

One of the most common questions which people – sceptics and believers alike – will ask about God is this: why does he allow suffering? Why does he allow so much death and violence and injustice to occur in the world he created?

Many sceptics will argue that the fact of human (and they may also include animal) suffering proves there cannot be a God – or at least that the Bible’s description of God as a being full of love and mercy is clearly not compatible with reality as we observe it.

This question has caused many people who once identified as Christians to lose their faith entirely. This can be particularly so if they’ve prayed to God and asked him to take away something painful or distressing, and then (it seemed as if) nothing happened.

For many Christians, this may feel like an incredibly difficult question to answer.

Having spent quite some time thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not so much a difficult question to answer – it’s just a really difficult answer to accept.

What do I mean by that?

A few years ago I was listening to a Christian podcast and I learned something very surprising. The podcast presenter was describing how he’d set out to write a book on the subject of tough questions about God, and he’d made a worldwide appeal to children and young people within his church to give him the hardest questions they could think of.

He was expecting the overwhelming majority to be “Why does God allow suffering?” or something along those lines. And indeed, several young people asked just that.

However, that question was ONLY asked by young people living in the West (the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, etc). It wasn’t asked at all by those in South America or sub-Saharan Africa or South-East Asia, the places where life tends to be much harder and where you might expect that question to be particularly relevant.

Since then I’ve seen the same observation made by others as well. The question of why God allows suffering appears to be overwhelmingly a concern for those in what we call the developed world, not for those in what we call the developing world.

That’s obviously not because people in the developed world experience more suffering – in almost all cases it’ll be the other way around. So why does this question trouble us so much in the West?

What does the Bible say about this?

Nowhere does the Bible promise that God will rescue humanity from pain and suffering in this current life – not even for those who believe in him.

Let’s look at what Jesus said:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.'” (Matthew 10:34-36)

This was just one example of Jesus making it clear that his mission was not to create paradise on earth in this life. His teaching would instead create divisions between those who wanted to hear it and those who didn’t.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Here Jesus warned his closest followers that their lives would not be easy or pain-free as a result of them committing their lives to him, but that their true reward awaited them in the future, in the life to come after this one.

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.” (Matthew 24:6-8)

Here Jesus was predicting what the world would be like immediately after his resurrection and ascension to heaven – not a place of peace and harmony but one in which war and injustice and natural disasters would continue exactly as they always had done and continue to do until this day.

Jesus’ promise was not of paradise on earth now, but later, when he will come to earth a second time and make it so.

Why didn’t he just do it the first time, you might ask?

If he had, you and I wouldn’t be here to type and read these words! God has allowed around 2000 years to go by since Jesus’ ascension (and there may be many more years before Jesus comes again) to give centuries of individuals like you and me a chance to hear the gospel message and share in that promised paradise.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that increasingly Western culture is no longer based on what Jesus taught or did. We no longer see ourselves as what Jesus said we are: sinners who need to repent but who through him have access to a merciful and loving God.

Jesus always put God at the centre of the universe. We no longer do that. We now put ourselves at the centre of the universe. Whether that means humanity in general or yourself as an individual can vary from person to person, but either way most people now have a human-centred view of reality rather than a God-centred one.

And a human-centred reality has very little room for a God who is supposed to be all-powerful but allows human suffering to continue.

The implicit assumption is that if God was real, he’d serve us. He’d be obliged to serve us. He’d be failing in his duty and morally culpable if he allowed us to suffer pain or indignity.

Some outspoken sceptics have somewhat ambitiously declared that if they meet God after they die, they’ll have a huge list of demands to make of him, namely why didn’t he intervene in this terrible situation or that one?

A lot of people can become extremely angry at God for allowing certain things to happen to them or someone they love – sometimes even people who claim they don’t believe in him.

So what should we do?

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t feel upset or distressed at the suffering of others, or that we shouldn’t wish for a better world in which these things don’t happen.

What I am suggesting is that God is not obliged to give us that world. He’s not required to do anything for us. He is not, as CS Lewis pointed out, “a tame lion”.

He created this world and everything in it, including us. He has no duties or obligations, he’s not under any kind of authority and he isn’t morally responsible for what happens to us. He’s not a celestial babysitter.

Our lives are worth only what he says they are. He could end the entire human race right now and he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong. The fact that he allows us to continue living is not because we’re worthy, but because he is loving.

The rest of the world hasn’t absorbed this human-centred view of reality to the extent that the West has. For them, this perhaps isn’t so difficult to grasp.

For you – particularly if you didn’t grow up with a church background – this might be one of the hardest truths to grasp in your Christian journey.

No guarantees

We don’t have any way to guarantee that God will care for us. We can’t ask to speak to his manager. We can’t hold him to any moral standard, because there are no true moral standards other than the one defined by God’s own nature.

We’re so accustomed to people doing things to help us because they’re required to. We expect the pilot to land the aeroplane safely, or the lifeguard or the doctor to save our lives, because he’s required to and will face consequences if he doesn’t.

God isn’t required to and he isn’t going to face any consequences if bad things happen to us. He’s the creator of the universe with unlimited knowledge and power. He exists outside of time and space. He has complete and total control of every atom in the universe, including the ones that make up you and me. There is nothing we can do to hurt him or punish him or threaten him or control him.

To many people, that idea is terrifying. The well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens once described it as “…a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea…”.

I’m sure you’ve met plenty of people who are believers and plenty of others who are atheists. I’m almost certain, however, that you’ve never met anyone who says “I believe God exists but I think he’s evil”. That’s just such a horrific possibility that nobody seems able to accept it (although I suspect it’s what many of the more outspoken atheists actually believe deep down).

That’s where faith comes in

Faith isn’t “belief without evidence”, as sceptics often say. Nor is faith simply an acceptance of the statement “God exists” or of the Bible text as an inspired message.

Faith is trust in God. Faith is trusting that God isn’t evil, that instead he, even though he isn’t required to and can’t be forced to, loves you and wants what best for you and wants you to share in the paradise he’s going to create.

That does not mean he’s going to make your life now easier or freer of pain. He may choose to do so, but it’s not guaranteed. If anything, becoming a Christian is likely to make your life harder, at least in some ways – that was certainly the case for Peter and Paul and the other early church leaders.

That’s why becoming a Christian is such a serious and weighty commitment. It doesn’t come with a promise of ease and comfort now. If anything it’s the opposite: it means you promising to accept a tougher life than you’d have otherwise.

Christianity was never meant to be easy

This runs counter to the view that so many people have of Christianity today: a fairy story designed to make you feel better, to numb yourself to the harsh realities of life, to comfort yourself with the idea that you have access to a ‘genie of the lamp’ whose job is to grant your wishes.

It’s the exact opposite of that. Christianity teaches you to recognise your own mistakes and unworthiness, and to repent. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to do, and probably one reason why so many people look for a reason to dismiss it.

It’s only after repentance takes place that you can begin to experience the true joy that God can offer. And that repentance needs to be shown through acts of love and kindness to other people in need – again, the exact opposite of comfortably sheltering yourself from hardship and pain.

And lastly, God is not a wish-granting genie of the lamp. His job isn’t to give you whatever you ask for in prayer. What he will do is forgive your sins when you repent, ensure that you never experience more suffering than you can endure, and enable you to learn and grow from these experiences to become more like Jesus.

Sceptics sometimes ask “What kind of a father would allow his children to suffer unimaginable pain and die without ever experiencing justice?”. The answer is, quite simply, “One who can heal any and all pain, and who can even raise the dead.”

God is not obliged to save us…but he wants to. Our response to that should not be to question his love or demand that he do certain things, but rather to feel an incredible sense of gratitude and joy, and to come to him via the only way he’s made possible: through Jesus Christ.