What do you think?? Why we suffer.. even the good people...?

Question

I used to think about this when I was young in my faith in Christ.. Why does it seem like good people suffer and bad people do as they please..then it hit me.. God claims he loves us and he desires a relationship with his creation.. So because he desires a love relationship with us - he doesn't make us robots and forces us to love him.. he gives us free will.. we can either love or (he takes a risk) hate him... Some use this freedom to love God.. others to hate...therefore.. since some people chose to hate - good people get mixed up in it as well.. wierd example but take teh Batman movie.. Bruce Waynes parents were good people.. but because someone chose to do evil.. they died.. make sense? tell me what ya think.. or if you have any questions ask..

Answer 1

rofl. Some god. He gives you free will but the choices are "do as I say or burn in hell for eternity". That's not exactly free will.

People suffer because we're people and bad things happen.

Answer 2

The problem is, my answer to this question probably is going to be quite different than yours because I'm coming from a different place.

I find a lot of stuff in the Bible just plain disturbing. The whole business of the great flood and Noah's ark, for example. It sounds a lot like the angry abusive father who strikes out at his children. "You made me do this! You made me angry so now I have to hit you!" Only in the case of Noah's ark, it included killing off most of mankind and tons of innocent animals, including whatever little baby animals didn't get onto the ark.

I can't make a lot of sense of this, and I certainly can't reconcile it with the kind, compassionate Jesus of the New Testament. So I don't try. And I also don't put up Noah's ark wallpaper in my child's room. That, in my opinion, would be right up there with putting up pictures of Jews being killed in death camps. Pure, hideous, wasteful genocide.

What I think is that people waste too much time trying to interpret a bunch of words written 2,000 years ago by barely literate people and endlessly mistranslated by other people with their own political and religious agendas. (For more on this theme, read "The Closing of the Western Mind".)

My advice to anyone trying to turn to the Bible for guidance and inspiration is to take the good and ignore the rest. Chances are that the weird parts were mistranslated anyhow.

Answer 3

God created us and told us we could live forever in a perfect world, we just couldn't eat the fruit. When we did, he told us we disobeyed and would have to die, but then was merciful enough to give us ANOTHER chance! If He is that merciful to us, than he has the right to do whatever He wants!! There are several reasons why "good" people suffer as well as the "bad," the main reasons are, when believers suffer, then it causes them to see their own weaknesses, and causes them to rely on Christ. Also, when believers suffer, and are cheerful about it, (knowing that the Lord is doing this for a purpose) it makes unbelievers wonder, and want to know what gives us such hope! So by causing people to suffer, He is: 1;drawing us closer to Him and 2; by doing so, drawing unbelievers to Himself as well! Isn't He an Awesome God?!? So how can we question Him and say it's not fair? He created us, died for us, and then adopted us, we don't deserve that!

Answer 4

First of all, if there is a god he's hardly so simplistic that he thinks "you're either with me or against me". Some people love god, some people hate god and some people don't believe god exists in the first place and hence neither love him nor hate him.

Secondly, there is a lot of good people in every religion out there who truly love their god(s) but still suffer. It clearly doesn't work the way you think it does.

Answer 5

We suffer because there is sin in the hearts of men and women. Men and women who willingly choose to do wrong. People choose to point a gun and pull the trigger. One major question is why God doesn't stop harm that results from people's choices. In othe words, when someone pulls the trigger, why doesn't God stop the bullet from killing the innocent. I don't know the answer to that and the only way that I or anyone else could know the answer would be to know as much as God himself knows. Since he knows all, he knows all the variables in every life situation. We are human and finite. All we know is that someone pulled the trigger and killed someone, we don't know all of what God knows. In the bible sometimes God allowed one nation to abuse his chosen people (Israel) for the sole purpose of bringing judgement upon that nation. Why did he choose to do it that way? I don't know. Seems to me that if he wanted to take someone out, that he would just do it. But I'm not God, I don't know all that he knows. We just have to trust that God knows best and that he will and does make the best decision for every situation. I lost a brother in 1999, so I know what it means to trust God even when I don't understand or agree with his decisions. But I know that he is fair and just.

Answer 6

“The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent..Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist? ” -Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE)

Answer 7

Sorry, it's the other way around. People refuse to accept that the universe doesn't care if they're good or bad, and therefore must make up some elaborate story in which it all works out for the best. Hence, religion.

Answer 8

I think, we always think that we suffer because we are thinking like that.
I think we think we suffer because we do believe so.
I think our life basically is a combination of pain and pleasure. But humans want and seek only for pleasures, of course.. who wants to suffer?
Life is a combination of happiness and sadness, laugh and cry. You really cannot separate that two things apart from your life. They are like 2 best friends walk along hand-to-hand together. Sometimes you cry sometimes you laugh.
You just try not to let yourself dwell in deep happiness neither in deep sadness. When you are happy or when you are sad... let's try to treat them like something very casual, try to be stable and steady towards happiness and sadness. After happiness, sadness is waiting. After sadness, happiness is waiting. So, let's try not to be so hyperbolic or overemphasized when you are in a happy state or unhappy state. Am I correct?

Answer 9

Suffering is in your mind only. We don't suffer because bad things happen, we suffer because we don't know how to deal with the effects of them. You can't blame God for your own shortcomings.

Answer 10

Because there is no God, and the universe is indifferent to whether people are good or bad. Only we can prevent suffering, but we are also responsible for some of it. (Excluding natural disasters, disease, pestilence, etc.)