If there is one person in particular who has struggled with this question, it's this honest, just, and rebellious man called Job, being entirely ruined. His friends say it was God who ruined him; in order to punish him, some say; in order to teach him, others say.
From age to age, people have been comforted by thoughts such as these. No matter how bad things get, at least there is a purpose to it all. Job, however, did not find comfort in these thoughts. From beginning to end, he keeps searching for God. He actually reverses the question from: How just am I? to: How just is GOD? Never before Job was there such a fierce ring to the question as to what God has to do with our afflictions when bad things happen to good people.
The author of this book takes us through all of Job's agonies, as though they were ours. To the very end, to God's answer: to find out that suffering in itself has NO purpose. It's certainly not somehow Someone's intention to have people suffer! Neither by way of punishment nor by way of education, or whatever else! Suffering is not rooted at all in some arbitrary decree from above! Suffering is too awful to be under God's orders. It is a horrible mystery. Blaming God for it would make it only more awful and horrible.
If we still wish to articulate our feelings, we may try something like this: God is not the one standing behind our afflictions, but He does stand behind afflicted people which is quite a different matter, namely Good News.