God and Suffering (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 08:18 (5850 days ago) @ Mark

Mark writes: "I ask this question of anyone who accepts that our freedom must limit God's ability to protect us from evil, yet still believes that God cannot be a loving creator: How can you also believe that it is loving to have children, when you cannot guarantee their protection from horrific suffering?" - I share David Turell's gratitude for the gift of life, and feel that so far I have been very lucky in avoiding the traumas of horrific suffering. If God exists, you are of course right that our freedom must limit his ability to protect us, but that is only part of the story. There is a huge gap between the two parts of your question. I love my children and have done everything in my power to protect them from horrific suffering, and I certainly have not deliberately created the dangers to which they are exposed. If I question your concept of a loving God, it is not only because he does not protect innocent victims, but also and most emphatically because he has created many (or, indirectly, all) of the forces that cause their suffering. - There was no need for him to make animals into carnivores (the precursor of so much that we call sin), to create the viruses that cause disease, to organize the climate in such a way that it can destroy whole cities and their inhabitants with a single blast or flood. Man is not solely responsible for the "horrific suffering" you talk of. There was in fact no need for God to create evil in the first place. I know you dispute this, but if he is the omnipotent, omniscient prime cause, there is no way round his responsibility for creating the serpent, or Lucifer, or whatever symbol you care to name. You would perhaps prefer to select instances of man-made pain, or situations in which people have a choice, or from which they may benefit in the long run through experience, but those are not the situations to which I am referring. - The God of the Jews and Christians ... as I understand both religions ... deliberately chose to create a project of multiple tests. True believers will pass. The rest of us will fail. And I have to ask why? If I saw my children suffering because of situations that I had created, I would not expect them to call me a loving father. Even Jesus cried out "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani", and I can't help wondering why it was necessary for him to die such an agonizing death, since Christians can save themselves by following his teachings, and they could have done this even if he had died of old age. Muhammad's followers are just as devoted to him as Christians are to Jesus, and he lived a relatively normal life and died a relatively normal death.
 
To return to your question, I am grateful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to experience life, and the love and stability to maximise my chances of enjoying it. I hope I have done the same for my own children. I see this as a manifestation of my parents' love and mine. At no time did they or I deliberately create any form of evil with which to test, maim, destroy, or cause needless suffering, such as the Judeo-Christian God has done. You don't believe we can explain suffering. There are three very simple explanations: 1) There is no God (see George's post). 2) The creative force has abandoned us. 3) The creative force doesn't care. Once you jettison the concept of a loving God, suffering loses all its mystery. - You also ask, "Is it worth it?" That depends on what sort of life you lead. In my case, yes. In the case of the tortured child, I guess no. You ask if the project would be justified in the latter case. Who is the judge? "Something better", "perfect peace". These are interesting concepts. Perfect peace sounds like death. "Something better" raises the whole question of an afterlife, which we have touched on but never really examined in any depth. Should we keep the project going? Yes, of course. Better to have the chance of happiness than nothing at all. But I can't answer for those who have experienced the horrific side of a world which may or may not have been deliberately created to allow for such injustice.