For parents

"Why does God let bad things happen?"

Written by AskScripture · Every verse checked in context · Updated 15 August 2026

This question almost never arrives in the abstract. Something happened — a classmate got sick, the news was on too long, a pet died, someone's house burned — and your child has done the math every philosopher has done: God is good, God is strong, and the bad thing happened anyway. Adults call it the problem of evil and have filled libraries with it. Your child asked it at dinner.

Take heart from one thing before you answer: the question itself is biblical. Job asked it. David asked it. Habakkuk opened his book with it. Your child, mid-complaint, is in excellent company — and the Bible never once scolds the askers.

The oldest hard question, at child height

What a child means by this question is usually smaller and sharper than the philosophy-seminar version. They are not auditing theism. They are asking: is the world safe, is God paying attention, and does he care what happens to me? Which means the answer they need is less an argument than a portrait — of what God is like when things go wrong.

It also means you should answer the question they asked, at the size they asked it. A six-year-old asking why God let the hamster die does not need a lecture on free will. They need to know God saw it, God cares, and sadness is allowed in your house.

The short answer

Bad things happen because the world is broken — it is not the way God originally made it, and it is not the way it will stay. When people turned away from God, the whole fabric tore: sickness, death, cruelty, disasters. God did not design those in, and Scripture never shows him enjoying them. What Scripture shows instead is a God who comes into the broken world — near to the brokenhearted now, in person on a cross at the story's center, and with a promise of a repaired world at the end.

Notice what that answer refuses to do: it does not explain any particular bad thing. The Bible itself declines that — Job demands a reason for thirty-some chapters and receives God himself instead of an itemized explanation. You are free to decline it too.

What Scripture actually says

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34 : 18 · NASB

The Bible's first move on suffering is not explanation but location: where God stands when things go wrong. Near. For a child the concrete question under everything is "has God left?" — and this is the direct answer.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Romans 8 : 28 · NASB

Handle with care — this is the most misquoted verse in the category. It does not say all things are good, and it is not a license to tell a child the bad thing was secretly a gift. It says God is at work in all things, weaving even the broken ones toward good, for those who love him. The promise is about where the story ends, not about relabeling the middle.

These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

John 16 : 33 · NASB

Jesus, hours before his arrest, promising his friends trouble — "you have tribulation," present tense — and peace inside it, not exemption from it. Children should hear this early: the Bible never sells a trouble-free life, so trouble is not evidence that something has gone wrong with God.

… and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away."

Revelation 21 : 4 · NASB

The end of the story, and the reason Christians can say "this is not how it stays." Every category of bad thing your child has met — death, mourning, crying, pain — is named and cancelled. Concrete enough for a four-year-old, load-bearing enough for you.

A real answer, shaped for one child

Below is an actual AskScripture answer to this same question, generated for a parent of an elementary-age boy who is growing in faith, carries some doubts, and learns best through stories and analogies — condensed for length. Yours would be shaped for your child.

Elementary · 5–10 Analogies & Stories Some doubts

While bad things do happen, God is always with us, caring for us even in hard times — and Jesus also suffered, so we can trust God's love and hope for a better future with Him.

Help him see God's presence in hard times

Sometimes bad things happen because the world is broken and not the way God originally made it.
Even when bad things happen, God never leaves us alone; He is always close and cares about our feelings.
Use the story of Jesus' suffering to show that God understands pain, because Jesus went through hard things too.

Use simple analogies to explain suffering

Suffering is like a bad storm that comes, but God is like a strong shelter keeping us safe during the storm.
Just like a doctor helps us get better when we're sick, God helps us grow stronger and learn during hard times.
Sometimes we can't see why something bad happens, but God promises He uses even hard things for good in the end.

Encourage honest questions and feelings

It's okay to feel sad, scared, or confused about bad things; God welcomes those feelings.
People in the Bible like Job and David asked God hard questions and still trusted Him.
Encourage him to talk to God honestly in prayer, telling Him how he feels and asking for help.

Point him to hope and God's promise

God promises to make everything new and good again one day, where there will be no more sadness or pain.
God's love is bigger than any bad thing, and He is working to bring good even from hard times.

One note on that answer: the doctor analogy — God helping us grow stronger through hard times — is true and useful when a child is asking in general. If your child is asking from inside a fresh loss, hold it back. Growth-framing offered to raw grief lands as "your pain is a curriculum," and Scripture's own first move, as Psalm 34:18 shows, is nearness rather than lesson-drawing. Comfort first; the meaning-making keeps.

Three things not to say

Each of these is common, well-meant, and quietly expensive.

"Everything happens for a reason." As a slogan it assigns God the authorship of every cruelty, then hides the reason from the child. Scripture's claim is different and better: not that every event has a secret justifying reason, but that no event escapes God's ability to work good from it. Romans 8:28 promises redemption of the bad thing, not a rationale for it. Children can feel the difference even before they can articulate it.

"God is testing you" — or worse, tying the bad event to the child's behavior. A child told that the bad thing relates to how good they have been will do the arithmetic in reverse forever: every future disaster becomes their fault. Jesus explicitly broke this link — told about a tower that fell on eighteen people, he rejected the assumption that the victims were worse sinners than anyone else (Luke 13:4-5). If Jesus refused to read disasters as report cards, so should we.

A complete explanation, delivered with full confidence. The parent who has a tidy answer for every evil has promised more than Scripture does, and the child will eventually meet an evil the tidy answer cannot cover — with no one having taught them that faith survives open questions. "I don't know why, and I still trust him" is not a weaker answer. It is the answer Job's whole book exists to make honest.

Worth reading next

Two books for the parent — one on suffering itself, one on fielding your kids' hard questions in general:

Amy Orr-Ewing — Where Is God in All the Suffering? Hillary Morgan Ferrer — Mama Bear Apologetics

Common follow-up questions

Did God make the bad thing happen?

No — and the distinction between allowing and causing is one a child can grasp. Scripture describes a world that is broken and not the way God originally made it: sickness, cruelty, and death entered when people turned from God, and God grieves them. He is not the author of the bad thing. What Scripture does claim is stranger and better: God can work good even out of things that are themselves bad — the cross being the ultimate case. Keep those two claims separate for your child: God did not do this, and God is not finished with it.

What do I say when my child asks why God didn't stop it?

Say honestly that you don't fully know — nobody does, and the Bible itself declines to hand out case-by-case explanations. Job asked exactly this question for thirty chapters and received God's presence rather than God's reasons. What you can give your child is what Scripture actually offers: God is near the brokenhearted, God understands suffering from the inside because Jesus went through it, and God has promised an end to all of it. A child can live without the explanation. They cannot live without knowing whether God is good — so answer that question instead.

Is it okay to tell my child I don't have the answer?

It is better than okay — it may be the most important move on this page. "I don't know why this happened, and I still trust God" teaches a child that faith can hold an open question without breaking, which is precisely the skill they will need as adults. Faked certainty teaches the opposite lesson: that faith depends on having every answer, so the first unanswerable question becomes a crisis. The psalmists model this constantly — honest lament and stubborn trust in the same breath.

What if the bad thing happened to my child — or to their friend?

Then the order of operations changes: comfort first, frameworks later, maybe much later. A child inside fresh pain is not asking a philosophy question; they are asking whether they are safe and whether God has abandoned them. Answer with presence, with Psalm 34:18's promise that God is near the brokenhearted, and with your own steadiness. Explanatory framings — even true ones, like God growing us through hardship — can wait until the child is asking with their head instead of their wound.