If God had the power to prevent his children from suffering, would he?

Answer 1

No. I have more important hobbies.

Answer 2

You must know that God absolutely has the power to prevent suffering but sometimes the bigger picture requires some suffering in order to bring about an outcome which is ultimately good and since God is the only one who knows the bigger picture in it's entirety, we must rely on the fact that his judgement is always just and involves the best and highest good for everyone involved. To put everything on a very small scale, perhaps there is a severe epidemic of disease going around and you have an opportunity to have your child vaccinated before it strikes. The vaccine is not pleasant and involves some anxiety as well as suffering on the part of your child. However, to not vaccinate, involves a significant risk which could result in the child suffering much more and even dying. Would you not allow the vaccine?? God has conquered even death. Nothing has gone wrong that he cannot and will not ultimately fix. Trust him. He has promised to make all things new again.

Answer 3

I've read the Book of Exodus recently and I think that God has repeatedly tried to wake his children up, and his children keep messing up. So he sent Jesus Christ, and his children have still messed up.

Nothing brings on a spate of praying like suffering does, thus often drawing us closer to understanding that God's will is much greater than our will (he sees farther ahead, and can add 1+1 and get something unexpected). Our suffering may have a purpose someday, somehow. I don't think that he decides to cause a particular baby or person to suffer in a particular way, but when it happens, there is an opportunity to grow.

So, yes, I think that God has the power to prevent suffering, but no, he won't stop it, because his children have so much to learn.

Been there, and still trying to figure it out.

Answer 4

He has the power but he will not prevent it. That is the life the soul chose before reincarnating into this lifetime. There is some reason that the children as with all humans that people go thru what they do. Someone somewhere is going to have to learn something from that incident. Only the person(s) effected by the experience of the suffering child will learn what it was for.
If you really look back at your life, you will realize that everything, good or bad, has become useful at another time in life. Or you will eventually before you die.

Answer 5

For all who wonder about God, the answer is simple. The fundamental mistake humans make is to assume that any supernatural being responsible for the creation and/or the goings-on in the universe actually cares about our welfare.

Belief or nonbelief in God can be made moot by simply defining God as that which created and controls the universe which is beyond our understanding. There you have it. No need to believe or disbelieve in something that can't be proven. Just define it and make it so.

So you see that it does not logically follow that this God would have any interest in our welfare. When the tsunami of 2004 wiped out 200,000+ people in one day, people asked how God could do such a thing. The answer is because GOD DOESN'T CARE! Empathy and compassion and the desire to live are human traits. Why do we assume God has those traits?

People anthropomorphize God, meaning they attribute human traits to it. Even calling God "He" is a sign of human conceit, in which we assume the omnipotent creator of the universe which passes all human understanding has a gender, when gender is simply a trait of mortal sexually-reproducing beings on Earth, a small speck of dust in the vast universe.

When people claim that humans were created in God's image, they have it backwards. They are blinded to the fact that they instead created God in man's image, telling stories of a person named God who speaks to us, gets jealous and angry, and feels compassion and love. Nonsense.

Answer 6

God has no children. God has created.

God is All Powerful. The word if and God should not be used in the same context.

God has given his creation(humans) the ability and the sustenance to live this life successfully. God has created enough money and food to support all living beings. Suffering comes from our own actions or non-actions(ex.:Sudan, Ethiopia,etc.) $200.00 dollar shoes and a 1.5 million dollar home is not worth anything if those around you are suffering, you are wearing their food and that house can shelter many families. Its really simple, those who TRY to blame God are cowards and should look in the mirror.

Answer 7

There are laws for the existence of everything in the universe and that includes the creature with the intellect, the rational soul.

The Creator gave us free will. We can do with this life as we please. We are allowed by God to worship Him as we see fit.
We are also given guidlines, laws and counsel as to our best approach to life and its problems. To the extent that we as individuals and then as nations follow in the way of the Lord we are blessed. To the extent that we don't we are given steering hints, difficulties and tests to help our progress. Some notify God that they want to be left alone. A few find the Message intended for them and follow the path. Those who want to be left alone along with those whose interest is mainly lukewarm and social or financial are given a strong delusion that they will believe a lie. What man intends for evil, God uses for good. The error prone are used to test the pure of heart. The pure of heart are not tested so that God will know them, God knows without the tests, but instead for the sake of the believer, so that he or she will see areas in their own personal life that require their attention. We won't become perfect while we are here. It will be a constant struggle. But as long as we struggle to perfect ourselves in the Eyes of God we will be Israel, which means he who strives with God, and thus we may become the true Jews.

Ro 2:29 - Show ContextHe is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal. His praise is not from men but from God.

As for the rest even their evil is a benefit to the faithful. Woe betide those by whom the tests come.

Ro 11:23 - And even the others, if they do not persist in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. Ro 11:17 - But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, 18 do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you.
Ro 11:24 - For if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.

We are not here for a veritable eternity and then we are here for almost no time at all and then we are gone from here for another eternity. What is it to us if we suffer while we are here but a blessing to the pure of heart and a bitter unsatifying thing to the unbeliever. It is only a little while and then we are gone. We can go on to the next life and a station held in reserve for the faithful.

It is my understanding that the suffering is a great benefit. The Creator never gives us more than we can handle and their are special provisions for the innocents who suffer at the hands of the makers of war. To understand how things could be this way it is important to be desirous of the knowledge of the Thought of God for mankind.

Answer 8

Clearly Gd does have the power since by definition He is omnipotent. The question is would he. I think the honest answer is no. We see suffering all around us and so it's quite clear that he doesn't, but why not? According to the Kabbalah we can't ever see the whole picture and it is very possible that suffering is an essential component to that picture. Perhaps by trying to alleviate suffering in one place it would simply increase somewhere else?

I think Gd tries to administer with a hands off approach, knowing that any intervention he would do would simply alter things dramatically and interfere with our free will to make the right changes ourselves.

Answer 9

He certainly does have the power and certainly exercises it far more than we can know. But He also gave us some instructions and not following them is going to take you out from under His protections. And serving Him means letting Him use us for His puroses and trusting His heart when things do not make sense. For example, He had the power to prevent His Son from suffering on the cross-- but if He had stopped that-- there would be no salvation for any of us.

Answer 10

He does have the power, and He does prevent them, but who are His Children, He said its those who do His will, if you chose to not follow GOD and have nothing to do with HIm He cant help you, He gave you a free will, to Chose Him or not. And if oyu do live with Him, He will not give you something that you cannot handle, and after you do handle it, that will make you stronger. Stay strong.
If there is no GOD, then there is no us. God is the most real thing there is.

Answer 11

He DOES have the power ... and no he wouldn't. We have free will. To prevent you from suffering would mean tampering with your free will to choose a path that leads you to a bad situation. Besides that, suffering is sometimes necessary and is the best (maybe only) way to learn something that you need to learn.