God's Active Punishment

Not all pain has a moral dimension--some suffering might come about due to purely natural, and therefore amoral, causes.  Nonetheless, the moral ramifications of pain are worthy of discussion in the context of justice and God's character.  Regarding the latter, a vital question might easily arise in the minds of Christians about God's activities: does God actively harm people or does he simply remove protection from certain individuals?

While the Bible might provide clear examples of God withholding protection and thus permitting misery to befall some people (such as in the case of Job and his family), it also provides examples of God deliberately, directly harming or killing deserving people, from the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) to Herod Agrippa (Acts 12).  The Old Testament and the New Testament contain overt examples of God actively punishing individuals, and thus divine judgment is hardly limited to the allegedly outdated early books of the Bible.

There is a more significant example of God intentionally inflicting pain and death than even events like the flood of Genesis 9, the destruction of Sodom, and the killing of Herod Agrippa, of course.  Hell is the ultimate example of God directly punishing unsaved humans by means of a torment that ends with the cessation of existence.  Matthew 10:28 and 2 Peter 2:6 make it clear that it is God himself who will annihilate the unsaved, killing their souls as he destroys their bodies.

None of this means that pain that is not caused by God must be caused by Satan, demonic entities, or other people.  On the contrary, it is entirely possible for pain to befall someone simply because he or she is the victim of natural forces, where there is no moral aspect to the pain whatsoever.  Pain, whether physical or psychological, can be a major component of human life, but there is not one guaranteed cause for any particular instance of it.  Where pain exists due to God's direct actions, though, there is no place for moral criticism: any objection could only come from the emotional whims of conscience or the meaningless agreement of the majority.