My mother surprised me the other day on the phone when she asked me, "Why does God allow suffering?" Perhaps because it was Sunday and she knew I had earlier gone to church, or there may have been some other reason. Whatever the cause, it is a question for the ages and one that philosophers and theologians have wrestled with for a long time, philosophers and theologians far better placed than me.

For some the point is moot. If you are an atheist and believe only in the materiality of the universe, then suffering is merely a outworking of the laws of nature which assembled themselves randomly at a distant point in space and time. Gravity can cause you to fall and hurt yourself. It both supports and potentially destroys without any conscious regard. If you crash your car and die, you will have been subject to all sorts of forces, none of them the least bit interested in your welfare.

But a Christian response is quite different. Yes the laws of the universe do hold fast for how we live and interact with the world. But why human suffering should occur when we argue that God is a loving God is far more complicated. Surely a loving God would remove suffering from the world?

There are some obvious responses which go part-way to answering the question but first we need to establish one point - a complete understanding of this topic is a mystery, one of the mysteries of faith. Beyond that we can say (and I speak from a Catholic perspective here) that one outcome of having free will, the choice of loving or hating, preserving or killing, making good or bad choices, is suffering. There is joy and there is suffering and there is everything in between. It is a part of a human condition which can freely choose. A loving God has granted us this freedom.

Another aspect of suffering is its redeeming quality. Perhaps, in the sheer pain and bewilderment of a terrible situation or calamity, we cannot see any silver lining. The darkness is profound and unrelieved. Christians, however, believe that God knows the end from the beginning and only permits suffering where, ultimately, good will prevail somehow, somewhere. Redemption is one of those 'goods' that can be forged in the furnace of suffering, sometimes only there. 

I realise that this is not a satisfactory answer for those in pain. I have suffered too and while some of it has been clearly self-inflicted (poor choices), other disasters have flown out a clear blue sky. There is no self-assurance or glibness in what I write, for underlying the original question is an opacity that will not be made clear in this lifetime. I struggle for answers as many have before. 

This was the gist of the answer that I gave my mum, because she asked. But this kind of response to a person in the pangs of an awful situation is entirely wrong. Compassion, and that alone, is the only recourse we have.