What does the Bible say about pain and suffering?

The Greatest Challenge to belief in God is suffering. Atheists will point out the following:

If, God is loving and good,
and, God is powerful enough to prevent anything from happening,
and, painful and terrible things happen to people all the time,
Then: God must not be good (he doesn't care), or he is not powerful enough to stop it, or both. Either way, the Christian God cannot exist.

Here are several problems with this argument.
1. It is self-defeating. Atheists acknowledge that there is something "wrong" with the world by bringing this argument up. We all know that there is real pain and suffering, and that this is not the way it is supposed to be - there really is something wrong with our present reality. However, if atheists are correct and there is no God, how can there be such a thing as a "wrong" or way things are "supposed to be," everything just is. The universe and life on it came about by chance. We would all be merely the random product of the impersonal forces of the universe acting on matter. The use of this argument is an implicit admission that there is something more to the universe than atheists are willing to admit.

2. The Bible explains the cause of suffering - sin. While suffering is not proportionate to sin, it is a result. In other words, some who sin a lot suffer relatively little. But the Bible teaches that if no one ever sinned, no one would ever suffer. Suffering is a consequence of man choosing to reject God's commands which began in the Garden of Eden and continues to today.

3. The argument assumes that there is no good purpose behind the suffering. In other words, you can care about suffering, be capable of stopping it, and still choose not to stop it in order to achieve a greater purpose. The Bible tells us there is a greater purpose (see next post).
 
4. The Bible offers hope. Suffering is temporary. God is enacting a plan to bring about a time and place where there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. Atheists offer no hope of a solution to suffering.

5. God is not unfamiliar with suffering. God became a man and suffered along with us. He even suffered beyond what any of us have suffered through his death on a cross. He did this in order to save us from suffering.

 Trust the Bible is a weekday radio program that begins at about 8:10 each morning on WDOG 93.5 in Allendale, SC. You can listen to previous programs online here: http://www.fairfaxfbc.org/trust-the-bible.html