It may come as a surprise to you, but the Bible points in several ways to the existence of death and suffering before the fall.
The most blatant example falls (pun intended) within Genesis 3. God tells Eve that childbirth is not going to become painful, it’s going to “greatly increase” in painfulness because of human rebellion.
To the woman [God] said, “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing....”
— Genesis 3:16 NRSV (emphasis mine)
When someone pointed this verse out to me, I couldn’t believe it. How can the Church propagate a creation without pain when the Bible openly talks about the consequences of the fall increasing pain?
Then there's God's comment about loneliness is Genesis 2.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”
— Genesis 2:18 NLT
Loneliness is the first thing in the whole of creation that is not good. Why? Because it sucks to be lonely! Anyone who ever has spent any significant time single and surrounded by dancing couples at a wedding or by kissing couples as the countdown to New Year's commences can tell you how painful loneliness feels.
And then there's God's response to Job at the end of the book that goes by Job's name. God asks him, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4 NLT), before taking Job on a poetic tour of creation where God delights in being the source of nature’s wildness. All of it.
It makes you wonder how anyone can preach that suffering and death is a result of the fall, when this proud parade of wild animals is book-ended by the lion and the eagle.
“Can you stalk prey for a lioness
and satisfy the young lions’ appetites
as they lie in their dens
or crouch in the thicket?
...
From there [the eagle] hunts its prey,
keeping watch with piercing eyes.
Its young gulp down blood.
Where there’s a carcass, there you’ll find it.”
— Job 38:39-40 & 39:29-30 NLT
The lioness hunts for prey, and baby eagles feast on the blood of slain animals. These creatures hunt and kill and eat meat. This is the natural, wild, God-ordained way of things from the beginning.
Our world wasn't created perfect
Despite what we’re told by many Christian evangelists, the Bible never calls our world perfect. It never pretends that there was no suffering or death before the fall.
In Genesis, we’re told God declares creation to be tob ("good") and tob me’od ("very good"). Altogether, tob appears 489 times in the Old Testament and not once is it used to mean perfection.
- Gen. 24:16 calls Rebekah tob me’od (“very beautiful”).
- Leah says her sixth born son, Zebulun, is a tob ("precious") gift from God in Gen. 30:20.
- The Promised Land is called tob me’od me’od ("exceedingly good") in Num. 14:7, but the Israelites often grumble like in Num. 11:25 that they were tob ("better") off in Egypt!
- The Israelites tell Saul to do whatever seems tob ("best") to him in 1 Sam. 14:36.
- And the woman in the Song of Solomon finds the scent of her Beloved’s perfumes tob ("pleasing") in SoS. 1:3.
As modern people, we struggle with associating suffering with something good and especially with something very good. Yet one of examples above is an overt example of this. When God calls the Promised Land tob me’od me’od ("exceedingly good"), he doesn't mean it will be devoid of suffering. This plot of land contained people hostile to the Israelites, as well as wild animals and many other dangers that could harm or kill them.
God declaring something very good, therefore, doesn’t preclude the possibility of suffering.
But I'm guessing you're going to need more convincing.
