The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love," and look on things as if man were the centre of them.

It may be that this mortal existence is the only flash of eternity where we are allowed to have a veil over our minds and are allowed to experience incompleteness, pain, and sorrow, which give us such richness of experience. From this view, then, perhaps feeling lonely would not be seen as a disease condition but rather as one of the very purposes for being alive.
Pain, sorrow, suffering, and evil, then, may not be deficits to be overcome, controlled, removed, or eradicated, but rather they may be gifts from a benevolent Father that can serve as instruments for developing a divine nature. We may perhaps go so far as to see the traditionally tragic elements of life as the very tools of the trade in the construction of heavenly mansions.

In the end, many of the world's thinkers and theologians have difficulties finding a way to reconcile the presence of misery with the existence of God's omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence. The problem, it seems to me, boils down to the premise that pain, sorrow, suffering, difficulty, and misery are tragic, to be avoided at all costs, that they are definitely not part of a benevolent plan. ...
Perhaps by reexamining the beginning premise that misery is tragic and embracing the notion that it is possible for a benevolent Father in Heaven (with a divine purpose in mind) to be causally responsible for the presence of evil and sorrow in the world, we can arrive at a ... satisfying resolution.

It would not be unreasonable for a Christian to argue that since even Christ suffered on the cross, with suffering incomparable to any of our own, we have no right to ask why we suffer. To do so is impertinent, perhaps impertinent to the point of blasphemy. To complain about my suffering when faced with the suffering of Jesus Christ is, implicitly, to deny the gravity and effect of his suffering. I have no right to ask why I suffer. Here is another way to put the same point: if Jesus Christ asked the question of God’s justice while on the cross—“O God, why hast thou forsaken me?”—we have no right to think that we can avoid the same question. And if he did not receive an answer while in mortality, we have no reason to think that we can.

I believe one could argue that, by definition, embodied beings are necessarily passive as well as active. They can be acted on; to be embodied is to be able to be affected. In technical terms, it is to be pathetic, to have things happen to one. But to be pathetic is to suffer in the broad sense of the word (and, for our purposes, suffering is not best defined as “feeling pain” because feeling pain is a species of suffering, of being affected). If an argument from the nature of embodiment were successful, it would show that it is logically contradictory to create a world without creating suffering and, therefore, evil.

The argument is that if God is all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, then the existence of evil is inexplicable, for such a God could create a world without evil—he has the power and the knowledge to do so—and he would create it, for his love would require that he do so. According to the argument, therefore, the existence of God is incompatible with the existence of evil. For many, the suppressed conclusion is that it is irrational to believe in God if one recognizes the existence of evil, as most people do.

It is really a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong. You may suspect me of proposing another theory in its place; but I hope not, because I'm sure it's wrong too if it is a theory.

The singular nature of Christianity … is easily evidenced by Christ’s astounding pronouncement: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6). Notice that Christ does not say that he knows the truth, or that he carries with him the propositions of truth, or that he exemplifies these propositions. Christ says that he is the truth. Jesus Christ is the Word or ‘Truth made flesh.’ Needless to say, this concrete, embodied truth is a radical departure from Hellenistic and thus Western traditions of a propositional truth.

Once we know what is true, reason provides a wonderful tool for sorting out our obligations, anticipating consequences, and persuading others that what we know is true. Truth, I am convinced, can be rendered reasonable, but it does not arise from reason.

Scientists sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only, at best, decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard objective triumphs of science, and that they themselves are immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no such thing as philosophy free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on without examination.