In his bestselling book, “The Road Less Traveled,” psychiatrist M. Scott Peck sums up human existence thus: “Life is difficult.”

It seems like Peck is stating the obvious, to which most of us would say “duh!” But Peck’s observation is profound because it acknowledges the simple fact that life on planet earth isn’t always easy.

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria certainly taught us that recently. So did the earthquake in Mexico and wildfires in California and Montana.

If deadly weather isn’t making you anxious, then how about the threat of nuclear destruction from the modern-day Hitler, North Korea’s “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-un? That rogue nation has a bomb eight times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, and it now has missiles that can deliver it virtually anywhere in the United States.

To be honest, these two threats were beginning to bring me down, but then I received news that several different people close to me were facing very serious diseases and health challenges, and I found myself tempted to despair.

Is life difficult? You bet it is.

So why do we have hurricanes, Hitlers and health problems, among other trials?

Some might be tempted to blame God for all this. “God is sending hurricanes to punish us,” or “God is not happy that we’ve turned from Him, so he is using evil people to give us what we deserve.” The really heartless will blame God for giving someone a dreaded disease.

But let me be very clear. God isn’t sending the hurricanes. He isn’t prodding Kim to blow up the USA. He isn’t placing illnesses in our loved one’s bodies.

God is good, and everything that is happening now is contrary to His original intentions. Everything was all good in the beginning. Genesis 1:31 says that after God created the universe, he “looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!” The world started out perfect. No diseases. No disasters. No dictators.

So where did all these evils come from? What happened?

Rebellion happened. The first rebellion was when God’s most beautiful angel, Lucifer, became proud and wanted God’s job so badly that he foolishly launched a coup. He was after God’s seat on the throne, but God would have none of it and hurled Lucifer out of heaven, along with a third of his angelic followers. (For more on the history of Lucifer, also known as Satan or the Devil, see Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-16.)

Since Satan couldn’t conquer the Creator King, he directed his hostility toward the Creator’s Kids — Adam and Eve. When they bought Satan’s lie that you can disobey God and end up in a better place (sound like anyone you know?), they set in motion an unimaginable chain reaction. When Adam and Eve used their free choice to please themselves instead of God, sin entered the world. And with it came physical death and spiritual death (separation from God). Diseases destroyed once perfect people. Animals began eating other animals. Natural disasters appeared. People started coveting and killing other people. Sin made a colossal mess of everything.

According to Romans 8:22, even creation is eager for God to fix this mess. “For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Creation knows that this is not the way things are supposed to be. It wants the Creator to make things right, to restore everything to its original “factory settings.”

Now, when people call natural disasters an “act of God,” I would argue that it’s really not. God didn’t cause the hurricanes or earthquakes or wildfires. God doesn’t cause diseases. God doesn’t create dictators. All these evils are a result of the fall of mankind.

To be sure, when it accomplishes His purposes, God is powerful enough to cause a natural disaster (e.g. – flood during Noah’s time), send a disease on humans (e.g. plague against Egypt in Moses’ time), and even make it possible for a wicked ruler to gain power (e.g. raising up King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to punish Judah for its repeated idolatry). But these divine interventions are the exceptions, not the rule. Even then, God brought about eventual good from all three of these judgments. God is our redeemer, and as such he always works to redeem bad situations.

As the Sovereign Lord of the Universe, God mysteriously allows some evil to bring people back to himself. Look at what happened to Joseph. His brothers sold him into slavery, and he was later wrongly imprisoned under false charges. Eventually, he became prime minister of Egypt. God showed Joseph in a vision that a famine was coming, so he stockpiled enough grain to save the Egyptians and his Jewish family, from whom would come the Savior of the world, Jesus. Joseph told his brothers, “You intended this for evil, but God intended it for good.” God Almighty is able to do a divine jiu-jitsu to turn terrible things into a greater good.

This is not to say that we should think suffering of any kind is alright. But suffering is one of the ways that God gets our attention. C.S. Lewis, no stranger to heartache, said, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” God is trying to say something important to us.

Imagine driving down a country road during a severe rainstorm and you discover the bridge ahead has crumbled into a ravine. You pull over and stand on the side of the road, waving your hands frantically to people driving by to stop, only to ignore your warning and speed ahead to their destruction. So you decide to throw a large stone at the next car that comes by, which happens to be a $300,000 Ferrari. The man hits the brakes, jumps out of his precious car and is about to beat the crap out of you…until you show him the road ahead. Your action to hurl the rock was prompted by loving compassion, not heartless cruelty. Instead of intense anger for the minor damage, the man will show you immense gratitude for saving him from a far greater harm – death.

In a similar way, God permits some evil if some greater good can occur for man and a greater glory for Himself. God allows some hell on earth to keep people out of hell after earth.

The famous atheist, Bertrand Russell, said that one reason why he would not become a Christian is because Jesus threatened people with hell. But something is not a threat if it’s really coming. Hell isn’t a threat; it’s a warning. Just like it would be unloving not to throw the rock at the Ferrari, it’s unloving to not warn people that hell is coming.

God allows the temporary pains of this life to create a hunger for a permanent joy of another life. C.S. Lewis said elsewhere that it’s not until we’re flat on our back that we are able to look up. God wants us to look up to Him and look up to a better life and a better place, heaven.

And let me be clear: disasters, dictators and diseases are not “good in disguise;” they are “evils unveiled.” Isaiah 5:20 warns us, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” God says don’t dare take evil and call it good. There is nothing good about death, destruction, dictators or diseases.

When suffering comes, the question “why” always comes. The healthy way to ask why is to show anger against evil itself, not God. Seeking Him in the insecurities of life will always make us get better. Blaming God only makes us get bitter.

Besides, when suffering comes, knowing why really doesn’t help. Knowing why might explain the cause of an accident or the scientific reasons behind a disease, but it doesn’t bring a loved one back to life. Humans are incapable of grasping the purposes of the Divine. Even if the infinite God told us His reasons why all this is happening, it still wouldn’t make much sense to our finite minds. We won’t understand much of life’s tragedies on this side of the grave.

But we will understand them on the other side, if we place our trust in God, who loved us enough to experience pain in our place when His Son, Jesus, died on the cross.

How we respond to suffering is really important. After all 10 of Job’s children died in a natural disaster, his wife told him to just “curse God and die.” Job dismissed her cynical advice. Instead of cursing God, Job said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” True faith is when we love, trust and worship God, even when we don’t know all the reasons, even if it goes against everything we are feeling.

I had a good friend once tell me that if he were God, he would have done things differently. He’s not the only human to say that. Several years ago, a French preacher named J.M.L. Monsabre made a similar confession, “If God would concede me His omnipotence for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would leave things as they are.”

God knows what he’s doing. And the good news is that this earthly life with all its tragedies and triumphs isn’t all there is. There’s so much more. The “life that is truly life” is the abundant, eternal life that Jesus offers. It’s why he came. And He will put an end to diseases, dictators, disasters, destruction and death once and for all. Just you wait and see.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”   Revelation 21:4