If god is so loving why is there pain?

Question

why is there child rape? why is there war? why is africa starving?
why does god not end all pain?

umm first of all how is there satan if god is everywhere and everything.

and our parents are not all knowing and all powerfull.

Answer 1

Life is a test to see if we have enough sense to love one another or if we will hurt, maim, cheat, and argue over meaningless details of thing we can never know.

Answer 2

Since "free will" is the easy answer and already taken let me offer this .... Imagine that there was no pain in the world and that there had never been any. What reason would there have been for us to leave the jungle? Without the pain and struggle of life, there is no cause for us to improve ourselves. All of our advancement as a species and a culture comes from our attempts to overcome pain. Why would we invent farming if we always had enough to eat? Why would we search for God if no answers were necessary to make us feel fulfilled? Not only does pain lead directly to the maturity of the us as the human race, it also leads to the maturity of very many individuals. In fact, it would be hard to imagine someone becoming mature without ever having felt pain.

There is a good analogy for this. A good mother lets her children move out when they are old enough. She does this not because they will be safer. Many children make painful mistakes when they first leave home. She does this because she knows that if she does not let them grow up they will be a shadow of what they should and could be. God the Father does the same for us.

Answer 3

There has to be pain in the world because without pain, there would be no happiness. One of the reasons God put things that are bad into the world is so we can appreciate what we have. Another reason God put suffering into the world is because life is a preparation for heaven. There must be obstacles in our life so that we can learn to be better people, which is what God wants us to be before we go to heaven.

There must be a God. Who do you think created life? All life must come from other life, so where did the very first creature on earth come from? God. The chances of life on earth are fewer than the chances where if you take a 5,000 peice puzzle and stand up on a chair and drop the puzzle peices down on the groundand it would make a picture. That is MORE LIKELY than life on earth. Without God we wouldn't be here.

Answer 4

God has ended all pain in the afterlife. This world isn't perfect because of the sin of Adam and Eve, they brought sin by disobeying God they were forced to leave the Garden of Eden never to return.. God did not bring those things PEOPLE did, he gave us free will which is why there is pain and sin. This world is temporary and our bodies are imperfect but in the hereafter all pain suffering and sin will end.

Answer 5

Well, it doesn't seem this loving god is really out there at all. Pain and suffering are not spared to the innocent. Even the animals suffer constant struggle, fear, pain, disease and death. Are we to believe that the penguins and the badgers too have to pay god's wrath for one man's eating of forbidden fruit?

Life has always been hard. That's the way it is. Sorry.

Answer 6

God did not bring pain into the world. God created the world and it was good (Genesis 1). What happened is that man rebelled against God, disobeyed and sinned. That brought imperfection, pain and death into the world.

God's response was to come to earth as a man and die on the cross for our sins that we might be restored to a right relationship with Him and have the opportunity to spend eternity with Him in heaven - no pain, no suffering.

Tom
http://discern.ca

Answer 7

What you're asking for is a theodicy. A theodicy is a 'vindication of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.' There is no satisfying answer to your question because there is no theodicy that works, not even the popular "free will" one.

God is supposed to be all powerful and all knowing. This means he could have created a world with absolutely no evil, suffering, pain, or harm whatsoever. Because suffering obviously exists, we can come to one of the following conclusions:

1. God is evil/immoral/doesn't care
2. God doesn't exist
3. God does not have the power to stop evil (which means he's not god, which means god doesn't exist)

“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?”

- Epicurus

Answer 8

God gave humans the power of choice, whether to love Him or not. People cause pain when they make wrong choices. God does not force people to obey Him.

Answer 9

I don't believe there is a god. But if I did allow for a possibility of there being a god, I would hope that he/she/it would not stoop to such tedious matters as "child rape" etc. To my mind, the perfect proof of the non-existence of a god is our relentelss casting of him/her/it in terms that we can understand. Put simply, if god occupied him/her/it self with child rape etc, I wouldn;t think much of that god.

Answer 10

I walked a mile with Pleasure
She chattered all the way
but left me none the wiser
for all She had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow
and not one word said She.
But, oh; the things I learned from her...
when Sorrow walked with me.