if God really loved humanity why do we suffer?

Answer 1

He also loved his son....but he suffered more than us all.

Answer 2

Humans create suffering.

Bad things need to happen for a number of reasons. Suffering is a human pain that God has no control over. It mostly comes from our perceptions, and our psychology is greatly affected by it, as well.
The human race is not perfect. If God took away all suffering, we'd create more. As humans, we have a tendency to look towards the bad, and if it's not there- we create it. For some reason, we get bored with whatever is "good".
God, on the other hand, must make all sorts of things happen- happy, exciting, tragic... you name it. Do you think humans would be as artistic or intelligent as they are without a good grasp of all emotions? We need bad things to happen. There's no sweet without the sour.
Also, the 'bad' is what brings us together. We all remember the tragedies of 9/11/2001. We mourned, and we cried, and then we cried some more. But it brought us that much closer as Americans. You can take the same concept and apply it on a worldly level. Suffering is what breeds compassion, sympathy...it educates us, and pushes us forward. Without tragedy, we'd be stuck where we were- on a natural, selfish human level.

God wants us to love each other, so God gives us something that we can all relate to. Joy, tragedy, and the wide range of emotions. There will always be people who ignore their emotions, but whether you believe in God, or not, we all have to learn to get along someway. God gives us suffering so that we can be saved from the greater tragedies.

Answer 3

I've been doing this in RE all day! there are a variety of answers,either evil is a test of humanity to make us better humans and become closer to god, evil allows gods love to be displayed, some even say that suffering and evil is a punishment for mistreatment of free will.
there are also three theodicies, the Augustinian theodicy which is the oldest out of the three and its kind of based on punishment, Augustine believed that evil did not come from god, nor did it exist in its own right.' evil comes when those beings that had free will, angels and humans turned their back on god' and settled for lesser goods. he also believed that the sin of Adam is seminally present in all humans- that basically Adam carried all of humanity inside him and that he passed it on to all humans. god is a 'just' god.
another theodicy is that of the Irenaean tehodicy, this was that god had aplan and a purpose to provide humanity with the opportunity to develop the qualities necessary to become perfect,he stated that god created the natural order to include the possibility of good as well as evil and suffering- he allowed humans to chose with their free will, this kind of god is more loving and evil has a positive purpose- to make souls good.
the third is process. its is that god did not create the world but is part of the it and feels evil and suffering alongside humans but can do nothing about it.

Answer 4

Expand on your question please. How are you suffering exactly? You obviously have money, a computer and therefore I can assume a roof over your head?

I for one, along with others looking at the replies here, do not believe in God. There is no evidence whatsoever to make me believe that God exists and that Jesus ever walked the Earth.

Maybe people suffer because there is NO God?

Answer 5

I think it's because of suffering that we are able to see the goodness that is also present. Mind you, "suffer" is a human made word.
But I've always wondered if we'd be able to see good if there wasn't any bad around so I came to the conclusion that neither can exist without the other...

Answer 6

Its a result from what adam and eve did. If Eve hadnt of commited the crime, we would be a lot closer to God. There was a time when us humans were very close to god, but because of what eve did we lost a lot of our knowledge and became distant from god. Remeber this: God wanted to create a perfect world and Eve messed up the plan for us..

And the work of the devil is at large already.

Answer 7

Now THAT'S thinking like a philosopher. Though I wish you explained a little more. Well, personally, I don't believe there is a God. Believing in God just brings you hope that He will care and protect you all your life, and that's not true. You could be the nicest, greatest person in the world who loves God and all that jazz, but something truly horrible can happen to you. It can happen to anyone. Believing in God isn't going to help that, I'm sorry to say. That's life, my friend. That's. Life.

Wait, I'm not sure if I answered the question...well...maybe we just suffer because there isn't a God, like I said. Ok, I'm done.

Answer 8

God is not all good, he is all-powerful there's a big difference. Being all-powerful he doesn't love or hate anything, he see's all things as equal and suffering as a part of life. He see's humanity as another one of his creations not the best of his creations. We suffer because it is the way of life to be good and bad, its called balance.

Answer 9

God is something we as a human race made a story up thousands of years back,that was told to one person then another,then more people heard this story & added their own little bit to it & it caught on!.
God is something we made up so we don`t feel alone in this big empty space,no one want`s to be alone!?.Why do we suffer?,well free will is a strong catogery but Power is the ruler!!,the more power you have the more important you/they think they are.To get this power we start wars,belief against belivef.You have more land than i,so i will cause you pain.You did something in your past so now i will make it avalible too others to dis credit you & take your job.The list is endless...
We are capable of such brilliant things but some horrible ones too.Its in our nature!.

Answer 10

The statement that "God is all good, so why is there suffering" leads people to an inference that is flawed. People say that because God is all good there shouldn't be any bad. Well not really. God is all good, but that doesn't rid his knowledge of bad or evil. This is the same for you and me. You are all good in the subject of not killing people, but you know what killing is, and you know the general means as to how to kill someone. But we don't label you as a killer just by having the knowledge of it, we label you as being a peaceful person because you don't kill. This is same princicple is true with God. He is all good, and has the knowledge of what evil is, because evil is exactly opposite of what he declares to be all good. So why does evil occur? God made man with free will. God also made his angels with free will (I speak of the Christian God). Think about this, for GOd to make his creation with free will shows a great deal as to the love he has. He could have wired us like robots to continue doing his will in a systematic way with no flaws. But where then are personalities and personal quirks that are funny about you and me and everyone else. If God programmed us as a bunch of robots, he would not be having the relationship that he desired, which is why he made us in the first place. He wants a living, breathing, loving relationship with his kids. This is all over the New Testament. But he gave his angels free will with that, and with that Lucifer rebelled along with other angels and lucifer then becomes what we then refer to his as the Devil, Satan, some still Lucifer, or the Adversary. And with what happened in the Garden of Eden, was not just the loss of a relationship between God and man, but power of the dominion of the earth was transferred over to the devil. God gave Adam dominion over all the earth in the beginning chapters of Genesis, but due to the sin Adam made, that power was transferred to the devil. This can be proved by one of the temptations of Jesus Christ by the devil. The devil took him to an exceeding high mountain top and showed him the nations of the world, and sayed to Jesus, if you bow to me I will give you power over all these nations. If he had not that power Jesus Christ could have simply said, This isn't yours to give away, nice try. But he did recongnize that the devil had something to barter with and instead said that noone should worship anything but the Lord God. So that is why horrendous things like Hurricane Katrina occur, not to say that God does not have action in saving lives and helping people through horrible circumstances, but mankind messed up at there chance of running the show. And because of free will, we too have the decision of what we do. God said we can follow his way(A) or the devils(B). And allowing us to choose is an amazing decleration of love. Forcing us to choose would be emotionless acts on our part. So we can choose A or B, but we can also combine them and make C, or just disregard A and B and do our own thing (which in the end is B). And that is why there is suffering and death, because God hasn't programmed us to kill or love, but gave us the choice. Adam ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Meaning that man knows good and evil now, and the choice is ours. But there is a day coming where God is going to send back Jesus Christ and over time the Devil will be no more, and the suffering will end. And not only with the suffering end, but as Romans 8:18 says "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared witht the glory which shall be revealed in us." God Bless

Answer 11

God loves us. We're put on this earth as a test of God. He wants to see who is weak & who is strong. If you pass the test, your soul will be permitted into the gates of heaven. The devil also exists...is that the reason for our suffering?