By Movieguide® Staff
Author Lee Strobel shares his powerful response to those who ask why God allows suffering.
“If you could ask God any one question, and you knew He’d give you an answer right now, what would you ask him?” he said during an episode of TAKEAWAYS WITH KIRK CAMERON. “Well, 80% of the time, they’re going to ask some permutation of the question, ‘If God is real, why is there suffering in the world?’ So, what I used to do is say, ‘Oh, well, let me tell you why,’ and I would give them a whole five-point sermon on why God allows suffering.”
Strobel said he no longer does this; instead, he asks them, “Of all possible questions in the universe, why did you choose that one?”
“And then they say, ‘Because we lost a child in childbirth five years ago. I want to know, where was God when that happened?’ Or, ‘My wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer. Where’s God in the middle of that?’” he continued. “And that’s when I realized, they don’t need a five-point sermon at that point. You know what they need? They need me to put my arm around their shoulder and to weep with them and to console them and to relate to them and to love them and to show them grace and to be Jesus to them.”
Strobel said most people are just looking for someone to “love people the way that Jesus would love people.”
“You know, apologists love to quote 1 Peter 3:15 — ‘Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that they have’ — but they forget the last part, that says, ‘But do it with gentleness and respect,’” he concluded.
Strobel recently published his latest book, Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World.
In an Instagram post, Strobel said his book deals with “the question of whether we can reasonably conclude from the evidence that the supernatural realm is real. In other words, if we don’t rule out the possibility of the supernatural at the outset but instead call ‘a ball a ball and a strike a strike,’ as any unbiased umpire would, then where would the evidence point?”
“This is a bridge where we can connect with people who may be far from God and yet have an interest in the supernatural,” Strobel said during an appearance on ChurchLeaders’s “Into The Supernatural Podcast.” “It may be an entryway for them to really learn about what the Bible does teach about the world beyond our physical realm.”
Strobel’s response to those asking why God allows suffering is a moving reminder to meet doubt with love, as we never know what others have suffered.
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