Loving God and evil...?

Question

Religious teachings claim that God loves us all, and yet he allows sinless children to suffer unspeakable horrors and agony. That is NOT a sign of love, no matter how convuluted and twisted an argument one might present about God's "gift to us of freewill," or that "the ways of God are too mysterious for mortals to understand," or that "evil must exist so that good can also exist," and so on and so on. If...repeat IF...God is all powerful then He should be able to spare children the pain and horror of evil without taking away or weakening any of the other "good" things he does for us.

Any REASONABLE thoughts welcomed, but try to spare me the vagueries of scripture.

Answer 1

Dear friend,
I cannot answer your question, but you asked for thoughts and so I will share mine. You ask this because you do love and you care. So do I. Sometimes I cry when I read the horrible atrocities committed against children, born and unborn. It is sad enough when they are injured accidentally, but when it is malicious it is incomprehensible.
From a theological standpoint, as some answerers have pointed out, we all are born with a sin nature inherited from the first man, Adam. But you are right, children are innocent - none of them deserve to suffer and using that as an explanation is not acceptable to me either.
My understanding of this world is that God built into it 2 principles: a physical world that runs according to consistent natural laws, and human freedom. When God committed to these 2, he allowed for the possibility of abuse.
Here are my thoughts: God is not happy with this world either. This is not the way it is meant to be - we humans have rebelled against the original design. Forget about Adam and Eve - just look around today. Do wild animals mutilate their unborn? Think of all the evils we hear about daily - it is almost too much to bear.
And the wickedness is not new. I know you don't want to hear scriptures but early on in the days of Noah, mankind had become so decadent that God actually regretted creating us!
The Bible, from beginning to end is the story of God's plan to restore creation to its original state of perfection. It all started with Paradise, a river, the glory of God, and the Tree of Life; and it ends with the same. All of this "mess" in-between is the struggle to regain what was lost.
I know that still doesn't answer WHY? Fredereick Buechner said this, "God doesn't explain. He explodes." If you read the book of Job you will see a man who God himself called blameless - suffering horrifically. When Job calls God to task for it, God doesn't reveal the why - he reveals himself. And Job is awestruck. Job never got an answer; he got God.
But I think the real struggle for me and perhaps you, is: does God care? And he most emphatically DID answer that. The crappiness of this world demanded that God come down and see what it's like for himself. And he came, in human flesh, in the person of Christ. No other religion offers this - a God who willingly takes on the limitations and sufferings of his creation.
This is from Dorothy Sayers (novelist):
"For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile."
Jesus became one of us and he showed us that God recoils from suffering just as we do. When we read the accounts of Jesus during his time among us, we see one who was deeply moved by the pain of others. His disciples never asked if he cared - they saw him caring every day.
Jesus came to earth, suffered and died for us. That does not remove pain from our lives, but it does show us that God is not sitting idly by watching us suffer. His response to our suffering was to give us Himself.
During WWII when London was being bombed relentlessly by the Nazis, a man asked Winston Churchill a question: why doesn't God stop this? Is it because he doesn't care or because he doesn't have the power? Churchill responded: Neither. He cares and He has the power, but His ways are inscrutable.
When I was 18 I came to the conclusion that having tried everything I knew to make life work - it was all a cruel joke. I decided there was no meaning to it at all and I was contemplating suicide. My despair came from being one of those innocent children, abused and traumatized by the ones who should have loved me. I said, "God if there is any meaning, if anything matters, I need you to show me." And He gave me Himself.
With all my heart I believe that to anyone who asks God to show up in his/her life - He will.

Answer 2

If you are willing to be reasonable, then here goes: how would God spare them the horrors of which you speak? Since this is generic, I must ask a question: Who is doing this horror? Is someone responsible? If the answer is no, then I'd like to know just what this is. If the answer is yes, we must look further. This is a sensitive subject, I realize, and I am no fan of people dying. I just wanted to clear that up. The further look into the life of the one responsible reveals that it was likely not one action that brought horror to an innocent's life; but the evil act that the person did was a culmination of many bad choices. These bad choices were done encountering various other people, good and bad, with their life experiences too. The bottom line is this: it was their choice. In order to do this God would have to force the will of not just the one person directly responsible, but many. So he cannot change the will, for that would make us all robots. So the answer is then, that He allows it. But we cannot call Him immoral. For to do that appeals to an absolute moral law. And where there is an absolute moral law, there is an absolute moral lawgiver. And that would be God Himself, meaning He is innately good!

Answer 3

God never promised that this life would be easy.

It is horrible that children suffer these things, or anyone else for that matter. This is not God's doing, though. It is sinful people that do this. If everyone obeyed God and lived their life in Him, it would be a perfect world. I'm not kidding either.

However, we all know this isn't the case. It does boil down to freewill. This is because everyone has the free choice each and every day to do good for one another, or to do harm. We choose this, not God. Therefore, the horrors we witness every day on the news and in the papers are things we inflict on ourselves. There are alot of good people out there who do their best to live good lives and or affected by the wrong of others. This just goes to show that sin affects everyone.

On the other hand, those good people that do their best to live right and do what God asks, their actions bless and affect others as well. See how this works? See how the world would change?

Myself, I try to learn my faith and live it as best I can because I want to be one more person out there affecting good on others. All it takes is one person doing it, and then another, and then another. Stick to that.

God bless.

Answer 4

Evil does not exist, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love, that exist just as does light and heat. Do you think darkness exsist? Do you think cold exsist? There's no such thing as darkness or cold. It's a term man has coined for the absence of light and heat. You can not measure darkness or cold. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light. God made us in his image......that certainly doesn't mean there will be no suffering.
In a sense....we can say barbers don't exsist either. Even though I get my haircut, and I can see hundreds of barber shops off the side of the road......why is there people with long hair and beards? It's not because barbers don't exsist......it just means they don't come to him............And I don't mean individual people don't come to God or have him in his heart. That starving family may know God very well...but does their country leaders know him? And not just the leader..everyone associated with making the decisions that affect our day to day living and future...the whole governing party. I have a hard time believing for example, everyone in leadership in our government, believe and know God. Would they give their fancy new coat to that homeless guy at the light begging for food or shelter? Or would they just stare at the light wishing it would hurry up and change? If they truly and I do mean truly all knew God, do you think we would have people starving and dying? Jesus gave away his only jacket and shoes away even though he was cold and his feet had blisters. Imagine if we all did that....It was once calculated that if all the billionares in the world gave 50% of their money to a cause for hunger, that every man woman and child on this earth could eat 3 meals a day for 80 years! Why can't they do that and still have billions in the bank?......................
*read all that is stated above*

Answer 5

First, there is no one on this earth that is sinless. Adam and Eve took care of that. The Sin is in the blood (bloodline). Secondly, a lot of the trouble that we get into is because of our choices in life, not God or Satan. The bad things that happen don't happen because God is sadistic. Our vision is narrow. We see only what we want to see. When Jesus was on earth people were thinking that he was here to overthrow the Roman empire (King of the Jews), but that is not why he came he came to die and rise so that we may have eternal life. Meaning......his is the King just on a grander scale. We tend to think much smaller than God, but his ways are not our ways nor his thoughts are or thoughts. Lastly, God is all powerful. I don't know if you have children, but I, as a parent, know that if I gave my child everything she wanted she would be spoiled and have respect for nothing. You want God to give you everything good and not allow anything bad to happen to you. That would be an injustice to you. You learn from life's experiences. You can't learn anything by having everything handed to you on a silver platter. God said that he has given us everything you need. You don't partake of it. Do you want to know how I know. One sentence you wrote.".........but try to spare me the vagaries of scripture.". You can't enjoy what God has to offer if you don't know what he has to offer. You need to read your bible.

Answer 6

The "If God is all powerful" argument assumes that God values what we humans value. Christian Religious Society has a very "human-centric" (if I may be allowed to make up a word.) view of God. Like God has a beard and is a "he" (or a "she"). Muslims beleive that god is like a river and doesn't hold to a form of a Holy Ghost shapen like a human. That is why you won't see any human figures in Islamic Art. The mistake of most religions is that human values are projected upon a Diety as a way of indoctrinating others. A problem arises when the teachings of one sect conflicts with that of another and a war breaks out in Gods name. Suffering is a human condition arising out of self consciousness. Don't mistake human projection of what God represents for the truth, which is not KNOWN by any living human that can communicate to another.

Anyone who says they "know" is truly lying because they can't prove it. But that is a lie that they will never admit to because that would deny their faith ( In secular grammer: it leads to a paradoxical conclusion). A lie is a lie and lies pertain to communications on facts, not beleifs. If you want to beleive in God, its cool with me, just don't tell me that you know something you can't prove.

Answer 7

Bear with me. The problem you're wrestling with is called "theodicy," that is, the justification of God's goodness in the face of the world's evil, and you're not the first to wrestle with it.

Simple solution: it's a misconstrual of the notion of divine omnipotence to say that God can unilaterally bring about any state of affairs God wants to.

The notion of "being" necessarily includes the notion of "self-determination." There is nothing which exists which does not manifest at least an iota of self-determination. On the level of fundamental particles, this is manifest as quantum indeterminacy. On the level of sentient primates like us, it's manifest as "free will" (obviously free only within certain parameters and subject to the constraint of many opposing forces). Take that away, and we (i.e., any finite beings, whether electrons or humans) don't exist.

So the idea behind divine "omnipotence" -- that we exist, but that God is actually in control of everything -- is plainly and simply self-contradictory. If we genuinely exist, then we are ultimately outside God's control. And not just us -- ultimately the whole cosmogonic process. God is not in control. Things happen that God didn't want to happen. There are diseases and earthquakes because that's the path taken by the development of earth's geology and ecology.

With all that said: I think that God is a necessary part of a world-view which takes all the data into account, for a variety of reasons. The most salient one here is the reality and potency of "possibility." The possible is not actual; how then does it exercise any power over actually existing things? This was the problem that drove the philosopher A.N. Whitehead back to theism. In Whitehead's conception, God eternally envisages all possibilities, some of them with the appetition that they be manifest. We perceive this appetition in our perception of ideals. To all existent beings, God present lures -- possibilities offered at a preconscious level, aiming towards the increase of richness of experience, complexity, and beauty. This is how the universe has progressed from a chaos of momentary energy-events, to stable particles, to the emergence of stars and planetary systems, to the emergence of organic compounds, to life, to sentience, to self-reflective consciousness. All by God's lure or persuasion, not by God's coercive control of events.

This is the key to the problem of theodicy: God does not coercively control: God persuades -- and yes, God even persuades electrons, but because of their vanishingly small "freedom," they do not have much capacity to manifest creative novelty. We, on the other hand, have a rather great capacity to manifest creative novelty.

There are some links below if you're interested in exploring this particular theistic vision more thoroughly. It's a very satisfying, intellectually rigorous form of philosophical theism, and if you're dissatisfied with a naive Biblical faith, I recommend you investigate it.

Answer 8

Okay, so no free will arguments...

What is more loving - for a parent to allow a child to experience the world, complete with its ups and downs, or for a parent to shelter a child and in effect force him or her to grow up as the parent sees fit?

Or getting a little more radical - what if in the end, our experiences on earth aren't as "big" as we think? Remember being 8 years old and thinking that the worst thing on earth was to have your "best friend" eat lunch with someone else? Or being a teenager and convinced the world was coming to an end due to a public embarassment?

Both are imperfect analogies, but it's a start.

Answer 9

Yeah bring it on dude, im so totally for gods love, but if u think about it, satin is the cause for all these horrific deeds, and in gods plan satin and his demons run free here on earth, now how is this love? Is it not from his love that children are sinless? And that they have an inevitable path to heaven? And whats to say that any miricales havent been performed in this scenario? Pain is from the earth and from the earth they leave.

Answer 10

God is Holy! Therefore it is impossible for Him to change or breach His Word. His Word is infallible and perfect. He will judge with perfect equality based on His Word. Once again it is impossible for Him to change because He is Holy!
If you are serious about this topic you may consider humbling yourself before the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the God Most High the God of the Covenant and cry out to Him with aim to open the eyes of your heart and dull understanding (attributed to sin) in a solemn effort to understand and know His attribute “Holiness”. Once you are able to grasp this disposition your question will be answered. Men cannot answer this question; you must receive the answer into your heart from the Lord….

Answer 11

The only answer is that there IS NO individual called "God."

If there is a god-like force in the universe, I do not believe it is sentient. Even if it was, why bother with the likes of us? To what end would torturing us bring it?

I think, if there is a god directing things, then it is a child god and it is playing with us cruelly, like a small human child plays cruelly with an insect before s/he comes to value life in any way.