What about suffering and a good God?

The existence of terrible suffering is the strongest objection to belief in a good and powerful God. We won't minimize it. But it is not a knock-down argument, and the Christian response is more substantial than it first appears.

• The problem stated honestly If God is all-good and all-powerful, why evil? This question is ancient, and dismissing it cheaply has done real harm. We state it in full force.
• The free-will consideration A world capable of genuine love and choice is also a world capable of real harm. Many thinkers argue you cannot have the first without the risk of the second.
• A God who enters the suffering The distinctive Christian claim is not that suffering is good, but that God did not stay distant from it — that in Jesus, God suffered too.

Notice what this does and doesn't do. It does not explain every instance of pain, and we won't pretend it ties the problem up neatly. What it offers is a different shape of answer: not a formula that makes suffering acceptable, but a claim that you are not alone in it and that the story is unfinished. Whether that's enough is something only you can weigh.

"That still doesn't explain why children suffer, or natural disasters."

You're right that free will doesn't cover natural suffering, and honest believers feel the weight of this. There are partial responses — about a world of stable natural laws, about limits on what we can see from inside the story — but we'd rather sit honestly with an unanswered piece than hand you a tidy answer that insults the question.