Suffering and God – God or Delusion?

When Suffering Becomes Proof?

In this installment, we examine one of the more audacious arguments in Mark Clark’s apologetic toolkit: that suffering itself is not evidence against God, but in some deep and mysterious way, actually serves as evidence for God.

Let’s walk through this argument and weigh its emotional resonance against its philosophical weight.

1. The Emotional Reversal

Clark opens this section with an emotionally charged appeal: some of the most devout Christians he’s ever known have endured terrible suffering, yet clung more tightly to God.

He treats this as evidence that faith is most real when tested, and that suffering somehow proves the presence of God rather than challenging it.

But this flips the issue on its head.

A person’s response to suffering cannot be used to justify the existence of the divine.
Endurance, resilience, or emotional consolation does not equate to evidence.
People of all religions—and none—have found strength in suffering. That doesn’t validate their specific worldview.

In short, subjective experience can be powerful, but it’s not proof. It’s proof of a human coping mechanism, not of divine truth.

2. “Because It Draws Us to God” Is Not an Answer

Clark suggests that suffering may be part of God’s plan to draw us closer to Him, to humble us, to awaken spiritual dependence.

But this raises an unsettling implication: that God uses pain as bait.

Imagine a father who breaks his child’s leg to teach them dependence.
Imagine a doctor who withholds treatment to provoke gratitude.

We would rightly call these people abusive or manipulative.

Yet when it’s God, the apologist invites us to call it holy.

This theological move may appeal to believers who’ve already accepted God’s goodness as axiomatic, but to anyone standing outside that assumption, it reads as a disturbing justification for what ought to be unjustifiable.

3. The Problem of Selective Suffering

If suffering draws people to God, why does it break so many others?

Why does a child’s leukemia destroy faith for one parent, but strengthen it for another?
Why does a sexual assault survivor leave the church while her attacker becomes a pastor?

If suffering is a spiritual strategy, it’s a wildly inconsistent and unreliable one.

Worse, it makes God the author of both conversion and deconversion. Both the believer’s devotion and the skeptic’s despair become part of “the plan.”

And if everything is part of the plan, then nothing is falsifiable. God wins no matter the outcome.

That’s not theology—that’s circular reasoning wrapped in pious language.

4. Pain as a Call Doesn’t Answer the Cry

Yes, people have cried out to God in suffering. Yes, some have claimed to feel His presence.

But let’s not forget: many cried out and heard nothing.

Nothing when the child’s casket closed.
Nothing when the cancer came back.
Nothing when the tornado leveled the house.
Nothing but silence, grief, and the aching loneliness of unanswered prayer.

To call this silence divine—to call it a message—is to impose meaning after the fact.

It’s not discovery. It’s reinterpretation.

It’s not proof. It’s survival instinct, grasping for hope in a cosmos that so often feels indifferent.

5. The Better Explanation? Humanity, Not Divinity

People find strength in suffering because they must. Not because a god orchestrated their pain for a higher purpose, but because the human brain is wired for adaptation.

Neuroscience shows how we reframe trauma to cope.
Psychology reveals how meaning-making boosts survival.
Community, therapy, love, and reflection help us rebuild lives—not always perfectly, but often enough.

None of this requires a deity pulling the strings. It only requires human beings responding to reality, not being divinely tested by it.

Conclusion: When Proof Isn’t Proof

Mark Clark’s argument that suffering proves God is an example of apologetic inversion—turning a weakness into a strength through emotional spin.

But at its core, the claim crumbles:

It depends on subjective outcomes, not objective reasoning.
It rebrands emotional survival as divine design.
It ignores the randomness and cruelty that so often accompany pain.

For those who believe, perhaps the idea that God uses suffering provides comfort. But for those still asking why a good God would allow it at all, this argument provides no real answer—only a theological reframing of the problem, not a resolution to it.

The better path is to honor suffering for what it is: a human reality, not a divine message.

And the better question may not be why we suffer, but how we respond—and whether we’re brave enough to live in a world without guaranteed answers, but with real, present love.

Evil and the Divine: Personal Pain, Biblical Spin, and the Universal Dilemma

In this post, we turn to three key sections from Chapter 5 of The Problem of God—“It’s a Personal Question,” “It’s a Biblical Question,” and “Not Just a Christian Problem.” In these pages, Clark shifts from philosophical abstraction to a more emotionally charged defense of God’s silence in the face of evil. He attempts to humanize the problem, spiritualize the pain, and distribute the burden of explanation across all worldviews. As always, let’s begin not with belief, but with curiosity.

1. When Emotion Becomes Strategy

(Responding to “It’s a Personal Question”)

Mark Clark rightly observes that suffering isn’t merely an intellectual puzzle—it’s deeply personal. And in that, he’s correct. When tragedy strikes, it doesn’t matter how many degrees you have in theology or philosophy; the pain is immediate, and the questions are raw.

But here’s where the strategy begins.

By pivoting so quickly to the emotional dimension of suffering, Clark subtly implies that asking why suffering exists is less important than finding comfort in it. He wants us to stop pressing the logic and instead lean into the warm idea that “God suffers with us.”

This move sidesteps the contradiction at the core of Christian theism:

If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does evil exist at all?

Clark would rather we seek refuge in faith than hold belief accountable to reason. But the very fact that suffering is so personal—so wrenching—makes the absence of divine intervention even harder to excuse. It intensifies the problem. It doesn’t solve it.

Imagine telling a child dying of leukemia that “God is suffering with you.” The child doesn’t need a suffering companion. She needs healing. And if God could provide it but doesn’t, what exactly do we mean when we call Him good?

2. Job: The Bible’s Most Problematic Theodicy

(Responding to “It’s a Biblical Question”)

Clark next turns to the Bible, and specifically to the book of Job, as a meaningful response to suffering. He implies that Job offers the deepest insights into how a believer should understand pain.

Let’s look closely.

The setup of Job is this:

God makes a wager with Satan over Job’s faithfulness, giving Satan permission to destroy Job’s life to test him. Job’s children die. His wealth vanishes. His body is wracked with disease. And all of it is allowed—not stopped—by God.

Is this the “best possible framework” for understanding suffering?

It’s a disturbing one. Job’s suffering isn’t the result of his actions. It’s not justice. It’s not discipline. It’s divine spectacle.

And when Job finally demands an answer, God doesn’t give him one. Instead, He launches into a whirlwind monologue:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

(Job 38:4)

Translation?

“I’m God. You’re not. So don’t question me.”

This is not comfort. This is not clarity. This is a power play. And the resolution—where Job is “rewarded” with more children and wealth—treats human life like replaceable inventory.

If this is the biblical foundation for understanding suffering, it crumbles under moral scrutiny.

3. Universalizing the Problem Doesn’t Solve It

(Responding to “Not Just a Christian Problem”)

Clark’s final rhetorical move in this section is clever: he reminds readers that all worldviews must grapple with suffering, not just Christians. Atheists suffer. Buddhists suffer. Everyone suffers. So Christianity shouldn’t be singled out for criticism.

This is a subtle sleight of hand. Because the real issue isn’t the existence of suffering—it’s the incompatibility of suffering with Christian claims about God.

Let’s be clear:

If there is no God, suffering is tragic but expected. It’s what we’d predict in a world shaped by random mutation, natural selection, and indifference.
If there is a God who is all-loving and all-powerful, suffering becomes a contradiction.

You can’t have all three:

God is all-powerful.
God is all-loving.
Evil exists.

Something has to give. And Clark, like many apologists, wants to keep all three—and blame the tension on our limited understanding.

But ignorance is not a solution. And turning suffering into a “universal dilemma” doesn’t resolve the Christian contradiction. It only tries to dilute it.

Conclusion: Truth Doesn’t Need to Comfort to Be True

The problem of evil and suffering is not solved by making it personal, wrapping it in scripture, or spreading the blame. Those may offer emotional relief, but they do not offer logical coherence.

If Christianity’s God exists, then every childhood cancer, every earthquake that buries families alive, every instance of rape or genocide—every one of these happens under His watch, with His knowledge, and according to a plan we are told is good.

That claim demands scrutiny. And no amount of emotional storytelling can make it make sense.

In the end, we’re not asking for comforting answers.

We’re asking for honest ones.

The Real Problem of Evil: Not Evidence for God, But Against One

This post is part of our ongoing series responding to The Problem of God by Mark Clark. We’re moving chapter by chapter, examining Clark’s arguments through the lens of evidence, reason, and what we call The God Question—a philosophy that begins not with belief, but with curiosity. Our goal is not to mock or belittle, but to critically and thoughtfully respond to the claims made, helping readers engage with the deeper issues beneath the surface.

🔍 Clark’s Opening Framing: An Appeal to Emotion

Mark Clark begins Chapter 5 by asserting that “this is the most personal chapter in the book.” That immediately tells us that emotion will drive much of the content that follows. And sure enough, it does.

He recounts personal pain—his mother’s cancer and death, his own physical suffering from a degenerative disease, and emotional abuse by his father. These are real, powerful, and humanizing experiences. But Clark attempts to move from the universality of suffering to a very specific conclusion:

Suffering is not evidence against God, but a reason we need Him.

This is the central move of the chapter. And it deserves close examination.

🧠 The Bait-and-Switch of Emotional Authority

Clark’s argument operates like this:

We all suffer.
I’ve suffered too.
So let me tell you what suffering means.

This rhetorical sequence is powerful because it feels honest. But it also risks becoming manipulative. It subtly shuts down the deeper philosophical question—why does suffering exist at all in a universe supposedly governed by a loving, all-powerful God?—by overwhelming the reader with pathos.

The emotional groundwork makes it hard to question the logic without seeming cold or heartless. But we must question it.

❓Is Suffering Really a “Reason We Need God”?

Clark claims that suffering doesn’t negate God’s existence. Instead, it shows our deep need for God. He writes:

“We ask for answers. God doesn’t give us answers. He gives us Himself.”

This is poetic. But it’s also hollow. It assumes that God’s silence in the face of suffering is not a problem, but a feature of divine love. In other words: God doesn’t fix it because His presence is enough.

This, of course, raises a brutal contradiction: If God is powerful and loving, why is His non-intervention framed as an act of compassion?

The better explanation may be far simpler—and far more honest: There is no divine being answering prayers or intervening at all.

🔄 Reframing the Burden of Proof

Clark tries to turn the problem around. He argues that suffering only feels like a problem for the believer—because we expect a good God to do something about it. But for the atheist, he suggests, suffering shouldn’t be a problem at all. It’s just nature playing out—no meaning, no evil, just randomness.

This is a common apologetic move: to claim that atheists “borrow” their moral outrage from Christianity.

But that’s intellectually dishonest.

Non-theistic philosophies—like secular humanism, Buddhism, or Stoicism—have deeply coherent ways of explaining and confronting suffering. These worldviews acknowledge suffering without invoking a morally culpable, invisible deity.

In fact, atheism removes the moral contradiction entirely: in a natural universe, we suffer because of biology, environment, randomness, and human cruelty—not because a benevolent cosmic Father chooses not to intervene.

🔚 Where to Pause for Now

Let’s stop here, just before Clark begins offering the classic Christian responses to suffering (i.e., free will, soul-building theodicies, and Jesus’s suffering as solidarity).

In our next post, we’ll examine those claims in detail.