God and Suffering (General)

by Mark , Monday, November 24, 2008, 10:50 (5640 days ago) @ dhw

dhw, this is a good post as it helps me to understand your thinking, and how you have difficulty in understanding my thinking. So I shall try to explain how I see things: - You say:
1) The indiscriminate suffering caused by Nature began long before man came on the scene. I cannot see any link between diseases, floods, hurricanes etc. and free will. Nor can I see how these God-made agonies are compatible with love. - The only world we know of in which free will is possible is the one we are in. Therefore it may well be the case that creatures with free will can only be made by evolution in a world which allows disease, floods etc. That is how there may be a link. - Again, you say: 
2) If, as Christians believe, God is omnipotent, and if, as Christians believe, he has made a world without suffering (heaven), it seems logical to me that it must have been his choice to make a world with suffering, which takes us back to 1). - I can well understand how you may have the impression that in Christianity heaven is a parallel independent creation into which some people are transferred at death. That is the simple way many Christians think. But a proper Christian understanding of "the life of the world to come" (as the creed puts it) is that it is the end towards which creation is directed. "Heaven", "the kingdom of God", "the new creation" - whatever it is called - is only reached through this world, by God bringing it to its fulfilment. So again, the point is that there is no short cut.