What follows is a response I had sent to a Christian friend who has friends and family members facing cancer and thinking through the issue of God's will and cancer. Response: the questions you raise about cancer and God's will are of course very relevant. for years I would have somehow believed/thought that things like cancer (or any other horrible thing) were somehow "allowed" by God in some mysterious way as part of His sovereignty. I know "allowed" is a loaded term, but I know that when Evangelicals use that term, it is stronger than it's absolute, philosophical meaning. Of course by definition everything that happens must somehow be "allowed" by God because He created everything including the free wills that both humans and angels possess. Most of my thinking as an Evangelical would have put the term "allowed" in almost a Job-ian sense. Satan checked with God, God said "O.K." and Job gets afflicted. God a...