If there is a GOD then why is there so much poverty and hardship in the world?

Question

How can you have children being born in such poverty and then have people living the complete opposite lives. For example Tommy-Lee-Jones takes the piss out of everything in life and yet he lives a rather good life. I find this very strange.

Answer 1

Free will... it's a vicious cycle.

Answer 2

Do you think the people in this world care about the poverty stricken? How many of us donate a few dollars to support a third world child or give to the Salvation Army? If everyone in the world would and skipped dining out once a month, or a sports game, or a DVD, or 100 million dollars to the terrorists-as a man did-we could help our own kind, so maybe God is blaming us.

Answer 3

Because if there is a god ( The GOOD )
Then there also Must be a Devil ( The bad)
how can one know goodness without knowing evil.
God gives those woh do have , the ability to help those that do not have. Some do and some dont , many rich people got rich because they choose to never share what they had in there lives.
Many children are born into poverty because of the governments they live under not helping or parents not caring. In the end the children suffer because of Grownups not making the right choices for there lives . GOD gives us all a choice to help and show compassion. and the devil gives us all reasons not to help .
It is the paths we choose that brings us to our final end.
Your question alone shows there are still people who do care
and who have compassion for the less fortunate , You are the proof God is here , you are the hands he helps with. yours and many others..
Trust him , and reach out as much as you can to those that need it.

Answer 4

When God made this earth it was perfect. There was no evil.
Poverty and hardship are consequences of the curse that came over this world through sin.
Tommy Lee Jones will die and stand before God one day. He will be held accountable for every deed and every word he ever uttered.
God does not punish people during this life, but he is just and we all will reap what we sow.

Answer 5

Let me just explain something to you, to many of the people who have answered, and many who will answer. You don't know that God does exist. You don't know that God doesn't exist. As the latter part pertains to this question, I will only expand on the latter part.

You don't know that God doesn't exist. The fact that there is suffering in the world is not proof, or even very convincing evidence that there is no God. There are plenty of explanations for why pain and suffering may be necessary, vital to the greater good, or even beneficial in the long run. It would take an eternity to list every possible reason that pain and suffering may coexist with God. But to sum it all up, to say that the presence of bad, as perceived by the limited perception of humans, in the world, by no means invalidates the possibility of God's existence.

Try this analogy: You have a pet. You leave for work. Your pet is heartbroken to see you leave and to be left alone. The pet cannot begin to understand what your reason for leaving is. But you are of a greater understanding. You are aware of more. You know that if you don't go to work and earn money, you will lose your home.

If God does exist, I would say that he/she/it comprehends more than any of us could ever hope to, and the fact that we don't understand everything that he/she/it may define as appropriate proves only that we are ignorant by comparison.

Answer 6

Don't blame God for mankind's mistakes. He rid the earth of all the wicked at the flood and gave us another chance. The suffering is man's doing not God's. Very shortly he is going to do the same again, If you check the sign of the times in Mathew you will see how close we are to Armageddon. READ it. You will learn something about your creator, He is kind, loving, long suffering and slow to anger, what more do you lot want from him
There is a very good reason why he has allowed the suffering to go on go and find out from his book, he wrote it for that reason
Gloria

Answer 7

to the person who asked..read this till the end,n u'll know why..
>Jus a short story to share... ...
>
>A man went to a barber shop to have his hair and his beard cut as always.
>He started to have a good conversation with the barber who attended him.
>They talked about so many things and various subjects.
>
>Suddenly, they touched the subject of GOD. The barber said : "Look man,
>I don't believe that GOD exists as you say so." "Why do you say that?"
>Asked the client. Well, it's so easy, you just have to go out inthe street
>to realize that GOD does not exist. Oh, tell me, if GOD existed, would
>there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If GOD
>existed, there would be no suffering nor pain. I can't think of a GOD
>who permits all of these things." The client stopped for a moment thinking
>but he didn't want to respond so as to prevent an argument.
>
>The barber finished his job and the client went out of the shop. Just after
>he left the barber shop he saw a man in the street with a long hair and
>beard (it seems that it had been a long time since he had his cut and he
>looked so untidy). Then the client again entered the barber shop and he
>said to the barber : " Know what? Barbers do not exist."
>
>"How come they don't exist?"-asked the barber. "Well I am here and I am a
>barber." "No!" - the client exclaimed. "They don't exist because if they
>did there would be no people with long hair and beard like that man who
>walks in the street."
>
>"Ah, barbers do exist, what happens is that people do not come to me."
>"Exactly!"- affirmed the client. "That's the point. GOD does exist,
>what happens is people don't go to Him and do not look for Him that's why
>there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

Answer 8

Because we need to approach God through faith,so a fairy tale Disney land type of world would give the game away. Try to think of life as not just what we have here and now but as the first stage of eternity. Yes,faith does require us to put the brain into neutral sometimes but the intellect,while important is not the only way to approach things. Let go and know, go easy on the furrowed brow.

Answer 9

I read some answers that blame the free will instead of God. I just want to know what is the will of a born baby in Somalia dying from starvation. Should we blame the parents or their nation for been poor?
The true answer to your question is that God doesn't exist.
A "God" that make only good things and wash the hands for the bad ones is really and hypocrite.
I don't want that God.

Answer 10

The world looks the way it does not because of God, but because of sin. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden, sin entered the world. Like a snowball rolling downhill....over thousands and thousands of years, look around: what you see in this life is a result of sin upon sin upon sin.

Psalm 37 talks about people who are wicked and how they look like they have everything. It says, do not fret the evildoers. God laughs at the wicked, He knows their day is coming.

There are some very wealthy, privileged people who, after a short time living on this earth, are going to hell for all of time. Someone said to me, this (the material things they have on earth) is the best they are ever going to have it. That really impacted me!

Answer 11

The fool says in his heart," There is no God." (Psalms 14:1). We are not fools so we believe in God. There is God, no doubt on this Bad things are happening because of bad willing of man, who choses the evil instead of Good. God is good, he can't do anything bad. What He wants is the Good. He allowed the evil because he made us persons, and a person has value inself. One of the attributes of a person is the freedom to chose. We can chose the Good or we can chose to fhight against Him. There are no spiritual neutrality in this world. So let's live for the Good and for the Truth! And an advice: don't watch TV, read a book instead!