I can't understand how God allows people to suffer and die.

  The key to understanding why there is pain, suffering, loss and death is to understand the nature of God's plan for creation.  Since the beginning, God has been creating -- redeeming -- a world in which human beings would fully experience and share God's unconditional love, but God is not finished with creation or with us.  Human beings and the world around us are a work in progress.  We are still growing, still developing; in the meantime we are unfinished, imperfect (and sinful, which is to say inclined to make bad choices).

   Growing always involves change, and change always involves loss; moving forward always involves leaving something behind -- dying to one way of being in order to embrace a new way of being.  We see this pattern of life-moving-through-death-to-new-life all around us in nature and in human life.  For Christians, this pattern is exemplified in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is called the Paschal Mystery, the mystery of passing-over from life to new life. 

   Much unnecessary suffering, loss and death are caused by human sinfulness, but in the bigger picture suffering, loss and death are natural consequences of living in a world which is not yet finished.  Just as a newborn baby grows slowly and gradually into an adult, so God's creation is growing slowly and gradually into the final Kingdom.  Inevitably, there is pain and suffering along the way. The challenge for people of faith is to see suffering, loss and death as passageways to new life.  When we say "this too shall pass" we mean not only that something will end, but that something new will follow it.

Related Links
> Living and Healing With Grief
> The Spiritual Challenge of Grief
> The Spiritual Challenge of Suicide

[Posted 04.29.21]