Why Good People Suffer: Understanding Divine Concealment and Free Will

It’s no secret that we live in a world of concealment. We do not openly see how a mitzvah (commandment) or an aveirah (transgression) impacts the upper spiritual worlds, nor how these actions affect us directly. If a person eats non-kosher food, they won’t be struck by lightning, and if someone encourages a friend during a crisis, they won’t find a gift card in their mailbox the next day. There is generally no direct correlation between a person’s level of righteousness and the events that occur in their life. We see righteous and good people enduring great hardships, while others, who are far from God, enjoy immense success in various areas of life.

Why then do righteous and good people suffer? There are several explanations for this:

• Through the suffering endured in this world, the righteous person atones for the few sins they may have committed, thus their reward in the eternal world will be complete and far greater.
• Sometimes, people suffer not due to sins committed in their current life, but as atonement for sins from previous reincarnations. Although a person does not remember events from past lives, the soul is the same, and all the events it experiences across its various lifetimes are meant for its eternal rectification.
• There are times when the righteous endure suffering for the sins of their generation, thereby arousing God’s attribute of patience and preventing immediate punishment upon the generation, giving them more time to repent and improve.
• Life was not intended to be a leisurely experience of sipping coffee and eating cake on the porch. The purpose of life is to grow spiritually and forge a closer connection with God which is achieved only through spiritual elevation. When God desires a deeper connection with one of His children, He sends them a challenge. The harder the challenge, the greater the spiritual elevation God intends to grant them. Life’s difficulties are in fact a sign that God wants to elevate us spiritually and push us towards forging a stronger bond with Him.

Conversely, we sometimes see people who are far from righteous yet receive abundant material success. This too has divine reasoning and calculations. Ultimately, all this confusion and concealment in the world around us can often be misleading, causing us to think that our good deeds and mitzvot have no real impact.

In truth, this lack of immediate feedback for our actions is part of the “design” of this world which allows for the power of free will between good and evil. If the lives of righteous people were perfect, and those who are far from religion would continuously experience failures, free will would cease to exist. Everyone would automatically choose mitzvot simply because it would be "worth it," and we would become like robots, stripped of genuine choice. Performing mitzvot without free will is not the purpose of creation.

God desires our faith in Him and in His mitzvot specifically within a world of ambiguity, challenges, and free will. Only in this way can we fulfill the ultimate purpose of life — to choose good. It is therefore incorrect to expect God to run the world in such a way that every person who strengthens their faith or performs a mitzvah will immediately receive a great salvation, while those who do not, remain stuck in place.

This world is designed with a concealment of divinity, as the word “olam” (world) is derived from “he’elem” (concealment). Our role is to reveal the Divine presence from within this concealment.