Post by Caroline on Apr 30, 2017 14:06:35 GMT -5
A common objection to Christianity is that an all-powerful, all-loving God as portrayed in the Bible is incompatible with the presence of pain and suffering in the world. If God is omnipotent he could do away with or prohibit all suffering, and if he’s good and loving he would want to. The fact that he doesn’t is evidence, the atheist maintains, that he doesn’t exist.
It can be reasonably demonstrated that there is no logical contradiction between a loving, omnipotent God and the reality of the degree and kinds of suffering humans experience. Reconciling the two will involve acknowledging the following truths:
1. Suffering, deserved and undeserved, can result in some good.
2. God has a purpose for our lives far deeper and more meaningful than just to enjoy them.
3. We are not the center of the universe. He is.
4. He has chosen to give humanity free will.
5. There is life after our bodies die, when all injustices will be made right.
I wrote a 3-part series on this topic I titled, Why doesn’t God do something? Here are some excerpts and links to the posts for further reading:
“Pain and hardship are what bring many to seek God. If our lives were trouble-free, would any of us recognize our need for him? Trials can also develop and strengthen virtues like compassion, perseverance, humility, and contentment. What insufferable, spoiled brats we would all be if we never had to endure difficulties. The descriptor insufferable is apt – if we fail to suffer, we become ‘too extreme to bear; intolerable.’”
- Why doesn’t God do something? Part 1
“We humans may love deeply and sincerely, but we love imperfectly. God loves perfectly. His love for us is unconditional and totally selfless, unhampered by sentimentality so that he never fails to be tough when that is what we need. He is compassionate, but he is not soft. His perfect love will do everything necessary to make it possible for the beloved to be his or her very best.
“We may prefer not to be so loved by God, but we have no choice in the matter. We are, however, free to choose to return his love…to obey and submit to him…or not. This is the doctrine of free will, and it is crucial to a proper understanding of suffering in the world. True love must be freely given or it is not love at all. But freedom to choose good is necessarily a freedom to choose evil as well. And God cannot restrain all evil without overriding our free will.”
- Why doesn’t God do something? Part 2
“In his book The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis argues that a predictable, stable world with fixed laws is necessary for man to effectively exercise his free will. Because if God was consistently altering the natural laws to prevent evil and suffering, we would not be able to function properly. It would make it virtually impossible to freely operate in our environment. And, ‘such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void.’”
- Why doesn’t God do something? Part 3
Pain and suffering are sometimes categorized jointly as “evil,” not denoting solely moral evil, though that is included, but instead as a descriptor of everything that causes human suffering. Click here for an excellent defense of Christianity in light of The Problem of Evil by William Lane Craig.
It can be reasonably demonstrated that there is no logical contradiction between a loving, omnipotent God and the reality of the degree and kinds of suffering humans experience. Reconciling the two will involve acknowledging the following truths:
1. Suffering, deserved and undeserved, can result in some good.
2. God has a purpose for our lives far deeper and more meaningful than just to enjoy them.
3. We are not the center of the universe. He is.
4. He has chosen to give humanity free will.
5. There is life after our bodies die, when all injustices will be made right.
I wrote a 3-part series on this topic I titled, Why doesn’t God do something? Here are some excerpts and links to the posts for further reading:
“Pain and hardship are what bring many to seek God. If our lives were trouble-free, would any of us recognize our need for him? Trials can also develop and strengthen virtues like compassion, perseverance, humility, and contentment. What insufferable, spoiled brats we would all be if we never had to endure difficulties. The descriptor insufferable is apt – if we fail to suffer, we become ‘too extreme to bear; intolerable.’”
- Why doesn’t God do something? Part 1
“We humans may love deeply and sincerely, but we love imperfectly. God loves perfectly. His love for us is unconditional and totally selfless, unhampered by sentimentality so that he never fails to be tough when that is what we need. He is compassionate, but he is not soft. His perfect love will do everything necessary to make it possible for the beloved to be his or her very best.
“We may prefer not to be so loved by God, but we have no choice in the matter. We are, however, free to choose to return his love…to obey and submit to him…or not. This is the doctrine of free will, and it is crucial to a proper understanding of suffering in the world. True love must be freely given or it is not love at all. But freedom to choose good is necessarily a freedom to choose evil as well. And God cannot restrain all evil without overriding our free will.”
- Why doesn’t God do something? Part 2
“In his book The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis argues that a predictable, stable world with fixed laws is necessary for man to effectively exercise his free will. Because if God was consistently altering the natural laws to prevent evil and suffering, we would not be able to function properly. It would make it virtually impossible to freely operate in our environment. And, ‘such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void.’”
- Why doesn’t God do something? Part 3
Pain and suffering are sometimes categorized jointly as “evil,” not denoting solely moral evil, though that is included, but instead as a descriptor of everything that causes human suffering. Click here for an excellent defense of Christianity in light of The Problem of Evil by William Lane Craig.
