If God is good and powerful, why does he let innocent people suffer?

If God is good, he should care about suffering. If he's powerful, he should be able to stop it. So why doesn't he?

Some suffering comes from human freedom: people can choose love, but they can also choose cruelty. Christianity also teaches that we live in a world that is broken and isn't yet the world God ultimately intends.

But those ideas don't explain why God allows every particular tragedy, especially things like childhood disease or natural disasters. Christians shouldn't pretend they do.

Christianity's deeper answer is that God hasn't stayed safely outside our suffering. In Jesus, God entered it—experiencing grief, injustice, pain and death.

And Christianity says suffering will not win. God will ultimately defeat evil, death and pain.

That doesn't make suffering good.

It means suffering doesn't get the final word.