If everything happens for a reason, then what's the reason behind...?

Question

Innocent children and animals to die of cancer, tumors, etc. I mean what do dogs or cats do that they deserve to die horrible deaths? Or infants coming out mutated? Are you telling me God lets this happen for a reason? And what reason would that be? What's his purpose?

Answer 1

I'm an atheist, but all the same, think about this:

Without injustice, how can there be an urge for Justice?
Without hate, how can there be an urge for Love?
Without pain, how can there be an urge for Comfort?
Without disease, how can there be an urge for Compassion?

Humanity would be totally worthless in a paradise. We can only be our best when we are imperfect.

Answer 2

The suffering of innocent people is a huge block to believing in an All-Knowing, All-Good and All-powerful God. It is especially complicated by the belief that "Everything happens for a Reason."

Most people who have this belief will point out that anything, no matter how awful, can be an important step in wonderful things that can happen in the future.

The original sin, and our subsequent sins are also blamed for suffering.

Personally, I find these explanations a little unsatisfying. It feels like we're just making excuses so we can believe in the God we learned about before we knew of real suffering.

Rather, I believe that God is not All-Powerful. There are some things, he simply cannot stop.

Such a belief doesn't mean that he doesn't care about us, or that he forgets about us. But it does mean that if a Baby is born with a genetic disease, it isn't because God wanted it.

And there might be things God can do, such as give the baby's family strength to endure their hardships, or wisdom to find how best to care for the child.

Answer 3

Things aren't always as they seem, just because a child gets cancer or is born with a birth defect don't mean god did something wrong or was punishing the child, maybe the parents learned to love their children because of their differences. As for the Dogs and Cats, no they don't deserve to die but we need to educate everyone on the important of fixing our pets and we need to have laws about what breeders are allowed to do. We as people need to help change the world, not sit around and ask god why. God gave us wisdom, we should use it, Maybe you can cure cancer someday, and less suffering will be in the world because of you. But don't be down on the issue, turn it into something good.

Answer 4

(Speaking from a Christian point of view)--You have to remember that this is not heaven, nor has any scripture ever claimed that earth or this life is perfect, peaceful or fair by any stretch of the imagination. This is dirty old, fallen, unregenerated earth, with all the diseases and sin and nasty evil people that came from the choices the first two people on earth made. It would be more accurate to put the blame on them rather than God. He gave them the choice and they took what they wanted, thus plunging all of their descendents into a hell on earth. It seems to be commonly believed that God rules this earth, but according to the Bible, He doesn't. (Ephesians 2:2, John 8:4)

However, just because it's all around us doesn't mean God didn't offer a way out. We're still on dirty old earth, but He offers deliverance through Christ. (Again, I assumed you were asking about the Christian God, so I gave you an answer from a Christian perspective.)

Answer 5

His purpose is balance. The reason is that creation is free to work within the balance that was put in place by god. This means that anything can and will happen. If the world responded to our own will, then it would no longer be free to create, but would in fact be bound and limited.

Death and suffering are horrible and feared in our eyes. I would imagine in God's eyes, it's a part of the wonderful balance and he may even see it as a normal progression of life.

I find that God lets everything happen. It's in this granting of free will that allows the universe to stay in balance and free.

Answer 6

God has always given us free will. Along with free will comes the responsibility for the decisions we make. Pain and death entered the world through sin, but God allows this to happen because he gives us the freedom to be destructive. One good reason for our free will is that we were created to give our love to God freely, for love forced isn't love at all, love can only be freely given. God can work through all things for good, only sometimes it is difficult or impossible to see from our perspective here on earth and trapped within the boundaries of space and time.

Another thing to consider is that pain forces upon a person the recognition that something is wrong. Pain and suffering, thus, acts as a call to repentance and a return to God. From this point of view, God is always calling the world back to Himself by allowing pain to exist.

You may say this is unjust or unfair. Consider it is us who brought sin into the world, and death entered the world through sin. Everything else in creation acts according to the nature it's been given besides the demons. But even men, by sinning, have become slaves to the demons. From this standpoint, the creature which was created to freely love God and be a good steward over His creation has chosen instead to destroy it and give up his freedom to the demons and to sinful passions. The created order, corporeal and incorporeal, is crippled, changed; the material world is decaying not because it was created that way, but because by using our free will to bring sin into the world we made it such. Thus, everything good that God created we have ruined. In the spirit of justice, we deserve to be wiped out, and maybe also the demons (though I am not Judge). We are the ones to blame, not God.

Answer 7

"Innocent children and animals to die of cancer, tumors, etc. I mean what do dogs or cats do that they deserve to die horrible deaths? Or infants coming out mutated?"


Yeah that sucks BUT because we lose those that we care about we try to find cures and medicines to help cure the next generations and gaurd ourselves from natural dangers.

Answer 8

Random acts of creation are also affected by the sins of the inhabitants of the world. If you are in China, and their are no controls for what is being dumped into the river, and children are born with mutations, then, ... God really did not affect that consequence. Man made the mutation.

Answer 9

There are two underlying possibilities of God's character when talking about suffering. He is either not perfectly good, just and fair - like the Bible and many other religions seem to say He is. Or he is not all powerful, like these same religions claim. With all of the suffering in the world He must either not be a good God and therefore doesn't care about humanities suffering. Or he is not an all powerful God and cannot do anything to stop our suffering.
As a christain I believe that He is in fact both, 100% just and good and 100% all powerful. The only way I can answer you is probably what you have heard time and time again from Christains. Hopefully I can put it a little better than others have. God allows choice and freewill, He wants his creations to be able to choose obedience to Him of their own free will. This is why Lucifer (satan) was allowed to rebel against God. He was then cast out of Heaven onto earth until the end times. Because humans also have freewill we had to have the ability to be tempted. Satan tempted Eve and then adam through her, and they chose to rebel against what God had asked of them. Because of this rebellion they became aware of right and wrong and sin was now apart of humanities knowledge and existence from there on out. Unfortunately through sin arose suffering and illness and most of all death. At the same time that death is the ultimate consequence of sin, it is also God's way of defeating sin. After death God's followers (or Jesus' followers as Christianity would say) will be stripped of this sin inflicted body and be created new and perfect. But for now, because we are allowed to choose God or turn away from Him there are thinsg such as; greed, selfishness, theft, murder and even things out of our control like illness which is the bridge to death, all of this is a result of sin.
This may sound very mythilogocal or fairy tale-ish. But myself as well as 2 billion christains across the world believe this to be absolute truth. As much as many like to deny - there are historical, scientific, and philisophically logical basis' for believing what christianity claims as truth. It does not go against anything evolution says, or science at all for that matter. I know none of what I said is evidence at all, it is merely what we believe and why we believe that God is perfectly just and good as well as all powerful and still there is suffering.

Good question, it is one of the toughest questions to struggle with internally as a believer in a perfectly good and perfectly all powerful God.

Answer 10

I don't think there's a reason for it. People just tell themselves there is, because they have to find some way to give themselves reassurance that there are rhyme and reason in the world. However, there is no rhyme nor reason. Simply stated, sh*t happens. Children and animals get cancer and children are born with birth defects, because for whatever reason, the conditions are conducive to it.