Dear St. Peter,
Let’s talk about a very popular answer.
When confronted with suffering, believers often reach for it quickly, almost reflexively. It sounds reasonable. Comforting, even. A way to preserve God’s goodness without denying the pain we see all around us.
Evil exists, they say, because God gave us free will.
God could stop evil.
God could intervene.
But God chooses not to, because love requires freedom, and freedom requires the possibility of choosing wrong.
On the surface, it sounds compassionate.
On closer inspection, it sounds… familiar.
Like being asked,
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Because no matter how you answer, you’ve already accepted the premise.
The free will defense quietly smuggles in assumptions it never proves.
It assumes that free will is so valuable that it justifies any amount of suffering.
It assumes that moral growth requires real harm.
It assumes that a world with less evil would necessarily mean less freedom.
But those assumptions aren’t self-evident. They’re philosophical claims pretending to be explanations.
Here’s the first crack.
If free will is so sacred that God refuses to interfere, then why does God interfere sometimes? Why miracles? Why answers to prayer? Why interventions at all? If stopping evil violates freedom, then selective intervention makes no sense. Either freedom is inviolable, or it isn’t.
Here’s the second.
Much suffering has nothing to do with human choice.
Earthquakes.
Cancer.
Birth defects.
Diseases that kill slowly and indiscriminately.
If free will explains moral evil, it does nothing for natural evil. Unless we’re prepared to say tectonic plates are exercising moral agency.
And then there’s the quiet problem no one likes to linger on.
Heaven.
In most religious traditions, heaven is imagined as a place with no suffering, no evil, no temptation. A perfected state of existence.
So we have to ask:
Do people have free will in heaven?
If the answer is no, then free will clearly isn’t required for goodness.
If the answer is yes, then free will doesn’t require the possibility of evil.
Either way, the defense collapses.
And there’s one more thing, the most human thing of all.
When someone is in pain, telling them it’s “necessary” for a greater good rarely feels loving. It feels dismissive. Abstract. Like explaining a fire to someone who’s still burning.
The free will defense doesn’t comfort the grieving.
It comforts the system.
It protects a concept of God at the expense of the people who are suffering. And philosophy has a name for that move: rationalization.
So we’re left here, again, without a clean answer.
Not because people aren’t clever enough.
But because the answer might not exist.
And maybe that’s the point.
Maybe the most honest response to suffering isn’t explanation, but humility.
Not defense, but presence.
Not “this had to happen,” but “this should not have happened.”
So we leave you with one final question, dear St. Peter:
If you had the power to stop a child from suffering, would you?
And if the answer is yes…
what does that say about the God who doesn’t?
Still standing at the gate,
~ The Radical Left