My latest column is a reflection on an ancient question: How could an all-powerful, all-loving God allow so much suffering and physical evil to exist in the world?

“The situation is catastrophic. There are several villages and communities that have been basically wiped out. In one of the villages I went to, there were 40 inhabitants and 39 died,” said an official with Doctors Without Borders recently after visiting Sierra Leone, one of three West African countries devastated by Ebola. Anthony Fallah Borwah, a Liberian bishop, told a reporter, “We are losing our humanity in the face of Ebola,” which makes “impossible ordinary human kindnesses, such as putting your arm around someone who is crying.”
There is “a feeling,” the bishop said, “that God has forsaken us.”
It’s hard to look at West Africa and not wonder whether he’s right. Even as a practicing, believing Catholic, this situation, along with so many others, fills me with doubt. How could God allow this?

I invite you to read the whole column here.

— Michael R. Strain is a resident scholar and economist at the American Enterprise Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/MichaelRStrain.