Wrestling with God’s Silence in the Face of Inexplicable Suffering

Speak to God

God is not asking for silence. When we suffer and do not understand, he is not demanding the stiff upper lip. He does not object to our groanings, our pleas for help, our desperate whimpers when we can’t even form words. He does not need us to piece ourselves together before we say our Thee’s and Thou’s in formal prayer. He invites us to question him.

God is not threatened by our questions. Neither should we, then, tell the suffering to silence their complaints. But they must take their accusations straight to God—and listen.

Everywhere you look in the Hebrew Bible, you’ll see exchanges between God and the patriarchs, prophets, or kings. God does not shrink before our speech. If anything, as we see amid the calamity of invasion at the outset of the prophet Isaiah’s ministry, God invites this dialogue.

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool. (Isa. 1:18)

Where Is God in a World with So Much Evil?

Collin Hansen

Written with grace and empathy, this concise booklet answers questions and doubts for those who struggle to trust God’s justice and goodness in the face of evil and suffering.

God’s People Cry Out to Him

Consider how the prophets speak of Israel’s exile from the promised land. The prophet Habakkuk opens with a complaint against God for his people’s suffering. How could God be silent in the face of such injustice?

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not hear?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
and you will not save? (Hab. 1:2)

God’s answer reminds us that God’s purposes sometimes remain obscure even when we’re looking to understand, even when we hear the reasons.

Look among the nations, and see;
wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
that you would not believe if told. (Hab. 1:5)

Habakkuk can’t understand how God could use the evil of the Chaldeans to accomplish his good plan. In Habakkuk, we see that God is not silent before evil. That’s because he speaks through a prophet made in his image as he demands justice. These words, after all, have been preserved for us in the Scriptures. Moreover, God responds that he’s doing something as Creator that we can’t understand.

Psalm 88 might be considered the paradigm. The psalmist opens with an appeal to God:

O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you.
Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry! (Ps. 88:1–2)

He senses that God has gone silent.

But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me? (Ps. 88:13–14)

Unlike so many other Hebrew prayers, including those of Habakkuk and Job, Psalm 88 ends without resolution. It ends, in fact, with night.

You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness. (Ps. 88:18)

For anyone who has suffered depression, God’s word here offers comfort. Even the psalmist felt like darkness was his only friend. We are not alone—even when we cannot seem to hear God. This short article can hardly contain all the examples in Scripture, especially in the Psalms, of people crying out to God and hearing nothing in response. Here’s King David:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest. (Ps. 22:1–2)

Now here’s where Scripture really takes a turn. The next time we hear this prayer, it’s from a man whose companions have shunned him. His friends have fled. The world has become shrouded in darkness. From parched lips we hear a loud voice cry out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” He’s quoting Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It’s the prayerful plea of Jesus as he hangs dying on the cross (Mark 15:34). It’s the final cry of a Son for his Father.

God is not threatened by our questions.

The crowd watches and waits. They look to the heavens. If the Father recognizes Jesus as his Son, surely he will rescue him. Do not Jesus’s own disciples—indeed, his own mother and brothers and friends—expect deliverance?

Surely, this is the moment for truth to prevail. As the Father has spoken blessing on the Son twice earlier, in the presence of Elijah and his successor, surely he will deliver now before it’s too late.

The Son gives one last agonized cry. One last labored breath.

From the Father we hear nothing. Only silence.

Night has never been darker. Quiet has never been quieter.

How could this man claim to be the Son of God?

Suffering Servant

Was Jesus mistaken? Were his disciples? For Jesus, this silence meant violence. Hanging on the Romans’ most notorious method of murder, he received no reprieve from his agony.

How should we understand what was happening? How does this experience speak to those who suffer not only physical pain but also the absence of God? For a clue, we need to head back to the great Jewish prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 53:7–9, he spoke this word from God about a suffering servant:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

The lamb led to the slaughter. He opened not his mouth. Only silence.

Whatever others may have thought about the Father’s silence, Jesus wasn’t surprised. He taught his disciples to expect nothing less. The Son must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things before dying at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes (Matt. 16:21). Such is the fate of prophets who speak the truth in a world that fell with a lie. John had come as Elijah, and his head ended up on a platter (Matt. 14:1–12). Jesus knew the history. He cried, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Matt. 23:37).

Other prophets had died because of the hard hearts of the people. But this prophet would be different. This prophet died for the hard hearts of the people. Like righteous Job, Jesus interceded with a sacrifice for his loved ones (Job 1:5). As Isaiah had foretold, an innocent servant’s suffering would pardon his people’s transgression.

His chastisement brings peace. By his wounds, our world will be healed (Isa. 53:5).

Sounds of Salvation

The Father may have been silent as Jesus died on the cross. But that’s not because the Son had been abandoned. Jesus told the disciples that he would lay down his life for his sheep (John 10:15–16). He explained how it was all in accordance with the Father’s will.

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. (John 10:17–18)

The sounds of salvation that emanated from the hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha were the cries of the Son of God. For six hours, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe hung on a Roman cross, slowly dying. In solidarity with its Maker, the land descended into the darkness of night (Mark 15:33).

This Son offered friendship to all but made enemies of those who claimed to speak for God while they made every follower “twice as much a child of hell” (Matt. 23:15). The Son’s every good deed, his every healing miracle, enraged the self-righteous. In their show trials, they couldn’t find a single transgression by Jesus. Still, these religious and political leaders threatened by Jesus’s innocence silenced his prophetic voice.

Then, on the third day, the sun rose. Light shone on Jerusalem. The women who loved Jesus went to his tomb. “An angel of the Lord descended from heaven.” The sound was deafening. The earth shook while he rolled the stone away from the tomb. The light was blinding. “His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow” (Matt. 28:2–3). He came with news of a new creation.

The former things had passed way. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). That serpent of lies? Jesus crushed his power on the cross (Gen. 3:15).

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,” we read in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Theologians call this the great exchange. In our union with Christ, he takes on our sin and dies the death we deserved on the cross. He gives us the righteousness of his sinless life so one day we’ll hear from our Father, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:23).

God Has a Son

For now, at least a little while longer, the sounds of slaughter still haunt every corner of the earth. “Never again” gives way to terrorists on paragliders attacking youth during a music festival. Another land war in Europe yields war crimes in familiar Ukrainian cities. The League of Nations couldn’t stop the last major war. The United Nations can’t stop wars today. Over the clanging gong of breaking news, we listen for the first notes from a trumpet that will signal the end of evil (Matt. 24:31). Then, final judgment will be rendered to the butchers of Buchenwald and Berdychiv. No evil word will go unpunished. On that day, every child’s cries will find consolation.

For God himself has a Son. Though he did no wrong, that Son suffered. And his suffering availed to our eternal salvation. This sheep may have been silent. But his sacrifice silenced the original accuser. The first enemy can rage. In the end, however, Satan cannot win.

This article is adapted from Where Is God in a World with So Much Evil? by Collin Hansen.

Collin Hansen (MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the vice president for content and editor in chief for the Gospel Coalition and the executive director of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and wrote Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation. He is an adjunct professor and cochair of the advisory board at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. You can follow him on X at @collinhansen.