Why Didn’t God Stop This?
The Problem of Evil and the Power of Uncontrolling Love
TL;DR: The question “Why didn’t God stop this?” becomes unbearable if we imagine God could have prevented the evil and simply chose not to. Open and relational theology offers another way: God cannot control others because God is love, and love does not coerce. That does not make God absent. It means God is always working for healing from within creation, with us and through us, never against love’s own nature.
Questions in the Aftermath
This question is not a debate topic.
This question is what grief sounds like when it turns toward God.
There are questions people ask in classrooms.
And then there are questions people ask in the aftermath.
After the diagnosis.
After the shooting.
After the assault.
After the affair.
After the phone call in the middle of the night.
After the moment your life is divided into before and after.
Why didn’t God stop this?
That is not a cold theological puzzle.
It is a cry.
It is grief trying to pray.
It is faith gasping for air.
And if we answer that question too quickly,
or with more certainty than tenderness,
we can wound people all over again.
Name the Question
What we believe about God’s power shapes whether suffering drives us toward God or away from God.
We start with questioning …
Why didn’t God stop the abuser?
Why didn’t God stop the drunk driver?
Why didn’t God stop the tumor from growing?
Why didn’t God stop the war, the betrayal, the collapse, the panic attack, the self-harm, the devastating text message, the violence we never saw coming?
Eventually, all of our questioning leads to this one question:
If God is good, and God is powerful, why was this evil allowed to happen?
This is where many people were handed answers that sounded spiritual but felt cruel:
It was part of God’s plan.
God allowed it for a reason.
Everything happens for a purpose.
God needed another angel.
You’ll understand someday.
Those answers did not help our faith.
Those platitudes nearly destroyed our faith.
For me, the platitudes led me to wrestle with:
If I believe God could have stopped the evil and simply decided not to, then I am left with a God I may fear, but cannot trust.
If I believe God planned this trauma for a purpose, then I start treating suffering as sacred, even though Jesus always treated suffering as something to heal.
If I believe God causes devastation for a higher purpose, then goodness starts to feel unstable, and prayer starts to feel confusing.
This question matters because people do not only lose faith over suffering.
They often lose faith over the kind of God they were told was behind it.
God Can’t Stop Evil Singlehandedly
God does not merely choose not to control evil.
God cannot stop evil singlehandedly.
That line can sound jarring at first.
But only because many of us were taught to imagine divine power as control.
Theologian Thomas Jay Oord asks us to start somewhere else.
Start with love.
Not love as one attribute among many.
Not love balanced out by domination.
Not love as a mood God sometimes has.
Love as God’s very nature.
And if God is love, then God’s power must look like love.
Which means:
Love does not coerce.
Love does not override.
Love does not force goodness into being.
Love does not control others and still remain love.
Oord calls this amipotence: the power of uncontrolling love.
Not timid love.
Not passive love.
Not sentimental love.
God’s uncontrolling love is the most powerful, faithful, relentless force in the universe.
God Works With Creation, Not Over It
God is always acting, but not as a cosmic puppeteer.
This is one of the most helpful concepts in Oord’s work, especially in God Can’t, The Uncontrolling Love of God, The Death of Omnipotence, and his newest book: A Systematic Theology of Love.
God is spirit.
So divine action is not best imagined as a giant hand reaching down from outside the world to manipulate matter whenever God feels like it.
Instead,
God influences.
God calls.
God persuades.
God empowers.
God lures creation toward life.
God works in bodies, relationships, communities, systems, decisions, courage, medicine, repentance, protest, tenderness, and truth-telling.
God works with cells toward healing.
With minds toward clarity.
With communities toward justice.
With hearts toward compassion.
With all creation toward wholeness.
Because love never controls, this work is collaborative.
Our bodies matter.
Other people’s choices matter.
Social conditions matter.
Natural processes matter.
Human resistance matters.
Trauma matters.
That means healing is often slow.
Justice is often contested.
And redemption comes as cooperation, not coercion.
So Where Was God When Evil Happened?
God was not behind the evil.
God was against it from the inside.
That is the difference.
God was not willing the abuse.
Not ordaining the violence.
Not scripting the tragedy.
Not teaching the lesson through terror.
God was the One
resisting the lie,
stirring the conscience,
grieving the wound,
sustaining the breath,
calling forth courage,
sending help,
empowering survival,
and refusing to abandon the victimized.
God was the holy energy moving toward life.
The persistent lure toward healing.
The unrelenting presence that evil could not fully extinguish.
This does not answer every question.
It does not remove grief.
It does not make horror make sense.
But it emphasizes the love of God that doesn’t coerce us.
It prioritizing a God who empathizes with us in our suffering.
It invites participation in the healing we know we all need.
It opens the door to a reconstruction of our faith.
And for many wounded people, that gives us hope.
Jesus Changes How We Imagine Power
If we want to know what God’s power looks like, we look at Jesus.
Jesus does not dominate people into discipleship.
He does not heal by humiliating.
He does not save through control.
He does not call down violence to prove divine strength.
He touches.
Invites.
Weeps.
Feeds.
Forgives.
Stands with the wounded.
Absorbs violence rather than mirroring it.
The cross does not reveal a God orchestrating suffering from a safe distance.
It reveals a God entering suffering in love.
This is one of the deepest gifts of open and relational theology.
It teaches us to define God’s power through Jesus, not through empire.
Not coercion.
Not domination.
Not the ability to force any outcome whatsoever.
But self-giving love that never quits.
What Hope Looks Like Now
Hope is not believing God planned the pain.
Hope is trusting that God never stops working for healing.
Oord’s vision does not leave us with less hope.
It leaves us with a different kind of hope.
Not the hope that says,
“This was meant to happen.”
But the hope that says:
This evil was real.
God opposed it.
God grieves it.
God is here in it.
God is still working to bring healing out of the wreckage.
And we are invited to cooperate with that healing.
That changes prayer.
Prayer is not asking a controlling God to maybe break character for us.
Prayer is joining ourselves to the God who is already working for good.
That changes discipleship.
We are not spectators waiting for God to fix everything alone.
We are participants in redemption.
That changes pastoral care.
We do not tell suffering people their pain was divinely scripted.
We tell them the truth:
God is with you.
God is for you.
God is grieving with you.
God is working toward your healing.
And love is still moving, even here.
Saving Us From Worshiping a Monster
We do not heal by silencing this question,
but by bringing it to the God whose love does not control and never lets go.
If you are asking, “Why didn’t God stop this?”
I do not think the faithful response is to silence that question.
Ask it.
Bring it all the way into prayer.
Bring your anger.
Bring your confusion.
Bring the part of you that no longer knows what to say.
But maybe do not bring it to the God of control.
Bring it to the God Jesus reveals.
The God of uncontrolling love.
The God who cannot be the author of evil because love does not work that way.
The God who never stops offering life, mending, mercy, courage, and companionship.
The God who heals our world from the inside out.
This may not solve the mystery.
But it may save us from worshiping a monster in God’s name.
And it may help us trust again.
Let’s Talk
When you hear the phrase “God is in control,” does it bring comfort, confusion, or pain?
How does this question change if we imagine God’s power as uncontrolling love rather than coercion?
Where might God already be working for healing in your life, relationships, body, or community?