Why does God allow children to be raped and killed, famine and brutal wars, and people being tortured? We all know He could stop it at any time.
There are probably just two competing explanations for suffering: 1) God can't stop bad things from happening or 2) God allows bad things to happen for His own reasons.
After Japan suffered so much damage and suffering the media went to Franklin Graham (Billy's son) for advice. His reply was that God didn't want the earthquake or tsunami to happen, He doesn't want bad things to happen to people because He loves everyone, but He wasn't able to stop it. This idea is part of the Arminian thought process: God is certainly powerful, but He doesn't meddle in the affairs of men - unless His help is requested. This fits their overall theological framework wherein man is the supreme sovereign and God is sidelined as a cheerleader for good, though powerless to act unless "we let Him into our heart".
The thought for Arminians is that because the defining quality of God is said to be "love", He is bound by the rules of His love (as defined by Arminians) and can only act in 'loving' ways. That is, God can do anything and everything because He is all-powerful, but His "love" constrains Him to be a gentleman, and as such, He is not able or willing to dethrone mankind's lordship by overruling the world of men.
Such explanations don't really answer the question and are viewed as foolishness by most. For if God is all-powerful, which He is, then He must be held responsible for His acting to cause evil or for His failing to act to stop it. If it is as the Arminians say, that love constrains God to permit evil – then how is love still love?
So, Arminians are left with a God whose divine nature constrains Him to helplessly watch evil happen. It's that old refrain from fearful people who would do nothing in the face of evil because: “I don't want to get involved” – God’s nature is redefined to match the cowardice of men.
The other alternative, a Biblical one, is that God chooses to allow in this rebellious world, a world that is under His curse, to bring forth evil, injustice, suffering, and death, both upon the good and the bad. That means that God’s primary defining nature is not love – but rather Holiness. God is Holy and therefore His will is Supreme – no one can stay His hand. His ways are not man’s ways – therefore He wills evil (hurricanes, floods, disease, suffering, and death) because man has corrupted the otherwise perfect world he was given – in this there is a real and abiding price that men must pay for Adam's sin, for his own sin, and at the hand of his neighbors' sin.
Men say that a God who allows wickedness and evil to scourge the earth is being ‘unfair’ and ‘unjust’. Fallen men judge God by their own standards – which is, a compelling desire to avoid suffering and death at all costs. Under this rubric, God is indicted for not keeping mankind content and safe – at the same time God is hated for His Character of Holiness. On a sin-ridden earth God’s Holiness demands suffering – and men want release from that suffering – but do not want an end to their sin.
So, with God we have a divine plan of the design for this earth that is mysterious, being beyond our finite understanding – but also in our limited capacity it is understandable. All men are subject to the privation of sin – whether regenerate or heathen, to include the groaning of the physical earth itself. The whole cosmos is immersed in the causality of sin’s effect – from the moment Adam (the Federal Head rebelled). In this life we do not get release from the effects of sin – but we are promised in the age to come the restoration of all things, to include ourselves (we have that down payment in the indwelling Holy Spirit and a regenerated spirit).
Therefore, if we are able, we can see the brilliance of the divine plan of redemption. It does not seek to answer or solve the current predicament of all men – we all suffer together under the curse. Why? Because by it we are defined, marked, and our character made clearer through the daily tension of confrontation with evil people and events; either to our condemnation (the unregenerate) or to our glorification (the elect).
john