Why does God allow suffering

I read an article on the BBC web site about suffering, a topic that is at the fore after Haiti and the thousands who have died. I read the comments after the article and although the 6 different comments don't necessarily reflect 1/6 of the population each, it is worrying and sad when you read what people think about it. Sad that some people think God doesn't care, sad that people duck the issue and can only say things like, "we can only pray", "there are no answers" and worrying that even people who seem to be Christians who really don't understand the relationship between sin and suffering.
Sure, our sins can cause direct effects. We all know if we drink and drive then we might cause harm to somebody, if we don't govern our countries or share our wealth then some people are much more prone to suffer the effects of 'natural' disasters but I believe it goes deeper than that.
God loves us, the Bible is about as blunt about this fact as it could be. If God didn't care, we wouldn't even be here, He wouldn't need to tolerate our ignorance and misbehaviour. I think therefore to tally suffering with a loving God, we need look no further than Genesis 3 where God says to Adam, "because you sinned, cursed is the ground because of you". I like the NIV version because it is clear that God didn't curse the ground as a punishment as it appears in some versions but actually the effect of our corporate sin is that the very physical world we live in suffers as a result of our sin. This is not un-theological, you must remember that although God is the Landlord, He gave us the tenancy of the world. If we decide that we do not need God either individually or corporately then His sustaining power, His life is removed from the areas we have authority over (people and physical things) and the result is that we die and it dies.
I think it is imperative that Christians understand this link. How can we say we believe in a loving God but not understand or explain why people suffer? We need to see that death is not a punishment from a malevolant God but a result of our choice to remove Him from our life.
I have seen examples of people who give their lives to God and they are blessed in different ways, other people or countries that are Godless suffer. It is not always black and white because our lives overlap and the effects of our sins can be felt in many different ways but the gospel is that God wants to restore His life to us and He has done this through His son Jesus that when we truly see our current standing, we will choose to accept God and He can then restore us once again and also forgive us our 'trespasses' that we spend so much of our life doing!