The critique is often made that analytical theodicies make claims about God and the permitting of evil from a standpoint characterized by logical compatibility – a standpoint which differs from the individual or collective experience of suffering. And so theodicies of mercy, especially Hans Jonas’, are preferred. The present article seeks to show that a discussion which relies on arguments need not be cut off from the question of suffering as trial, and that articulating claims using first-person language may help show the compatibility between lived suffering and the existence of a God who is both good and all-powerful, without instrumentalizing evil and without any grim calculating of evil’s utility.