These two articles by Randy Alcorn are thought-provoking and definitely worth taking the time to read and ponder.
Here are the main points that he expands on in the articles:
Part One
1. God may already be restraining 99.99 percent of evil and suffering.
2. God may also be preventing 99.99 percent of tragedies.
3. God exercises wisdom and purpose by not always intervening in miraculous ways.
4. In our eagerness to see greater miracles, we regard “natural processes” as minor and secondary, missing God’s marvelous daily interventions on our behalf.
5. No matter how much God reduced world suffering, we’d still think he did too little.
Part Two
1. No matter how much God reduced world suffering, we’d still think he did too little.
2. Severe suffering seems unacceptable to us precisely because we are unaccustomed to it.
3. Fallen beings could not survive in a perfectly just world where God punished evil immediately.
4. God restrains suffering through our limited life spans—people don’t endure eons, millennia, or centuries of suffering, but only decades, years, months, weeks, days, and hours.
5. God allows substantial evil and suffering because he values our sense of neediness and trust as we turn to him for his grace.
2. Severe suffering seems unacceptable to us precisely because we are unaccustomed to it.
3. Fallen beings could not survive in a perfectly just world where God punished evil immediately.
4. God restrains suffering through our limited life spans—people don’t endure eons, millennia, or centuries of suffering, but only decades, years, months, weeks, days, and hours.
5. God allows substantial evil and suffering because he values our sense of neediness and trust as we turn to him for his grace.
