I was working amidst a rural community and was invited to dinner with one of my workmates and her husband. My colleague has just been diagnosed with cancer for the second time in her life. Its a tough time for her but she’s dealing with it really well. She had grown up Christian but in her twenties several people she knew died in short succession. This led her to conclude there was no God. “Why would God allow such suffering?” She feels as if she’s coping just fine now without believing in God and she certainly appears to be.
She asked me as a declared theist “If there is a God, why would He allow such suffering?” As an invited guest of a colleague with cancer I felt it best to empathise with her perspective and listen without offering a theistic view.
The belief that suffering rules out the existence of God is something I’ve heard from atheists and agnostics before. Although I’ve suffered in life from time to time, its never led me to question God’s existence. In fact I’ve just had a really tough month or so for which I’m grateful. Admittedly I’m not wrestling with a cancer diagnosis or the loss of a loved one.
So I’m curious as to how others view suffering and whether it affects their beliefs about God positively or negatively. If a Creator God exists why didn’t He do a better job of designing the universe? If we suffer, shouldn’t we see it as an opportunity to develop and attain new insights and strength?
I’ve put this in the general debates section to allow freedom of expression. I’m wanting to better understand why this is such a critical issue for so many people rather than debate. Thanks in advance for those who drop by to offer their sincere thoughts about how suffering affects their faith.
There is an all too common, simplistic understanding of God which I think is highly associated with literalism which states "if you believe in God and Jesus as your savior you are covered. You just need to tick that checkbox and you can breathe easy in your self-examination of your actions and character." This is truly a comforting thing psychologically but it doesn't last. We know when we sin and we know when we cover it up and the shame and the guilt must always be manually re-buried each time it threatens to rear its ugly head. Unfortunately this also leads to science-denialism and the suppression of, even emotional mocking of, any sort of questioning of the authority of the Bible. If the Bible looks wrong then we must be wrong to rationalize away all of the guilt and shame we have been covering. If the Bible is fallable then ooops! we suddenly have to be thoughtful and self-responsible again.
But God created the human psyche and He cannot be fooled by such personal attitudes. Jesus knew this and tried to explain it to us. When something really bad happens to someone whose faith is this thin, then that faith is at great risk of being broken. Ideally what it is replaced with is grieving and acceptance and a moving on toward a greater appreciation of the grace of God's gift.
I think those that pray for things for themselves are also at risk here. Those that pray for things for themselves still hold a simplistic view of reality and what they might have to endure in it It is not for us to ask of God something for ourselves...we should only ask for His grace to accept what we are given. Who knows what trials may lead to acts of salvation (physical or spiritual) that may result? Indeed, no one knows. The outcomes of an evil act, no matter how great, might conceivably have an outcome that prevents an even greater act of evil from coming to fruition. It is even conceivable that God needs us to break with Him for a time in order to become the person He wants us to be. This is a very common mythic motif where the old authority--which could be seen psychologically as an invalid personal understanding of truth--must be discarded in order for the individual to grow into a superior sense of reality and the self-assurance that comes from that. Democracy itself relies on each of us to throw off simplistic dependencies on authoritative parent figures and become our own self-responsible actors. This is very easy to backup Biblically.
The last hurdle, perhaps, is to understand that while God created the universe and pronounced it good, it is best seen by us humans as amoral. This makes God appear to be amoral. After all, how can we expect to perceive the goodness of God's plan in all ways? Surely that would be like claiming God's own omniscience...which is folly. As such we believe that God is good but we have no proof and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Now as a believer if this makes you squeamish...consider this. Whether you believe or not, the non-believer is faced with precisely the very same issue...the universe appears to be indifferent to human sense of right and wrong, that is, it is an amoral universe. As such it requires that we, as individuals, act in order to make it better than the way that God apparently left it.
Now this may seem shocking to some and rooted in some sort of self-aggrandizing personal over-valuation. And as with any outward profession of belief, it is easy to give the appearance of anything. However, for those who have truly struggled with their faith against a reality that God created that seems very much less than helpful at times, to achieve this much faith is a remarkable inner development of one's maturity and usability for God's will IMO. It is not for everyone and indeed it may be rarely achieved.
There are some clues to this in the Bible. Job is one obvious one, but so too is Abram/Abraham where he questions God's intent and God seems to relent...Genesis 18: 16-33. Incredibly, in this story God is shown "thinking to himself" and trying to determine whether he should tell Abraham something. Why would/should God ever have to pause to consider the goodness of His own action? The result is that Abraham argues with God about the morality of what God is about to do! And God appears to relent!
What are we to make of this? Significantly, God actually does end up destroying everyone because, supposedly, they were not according to what Abraham was concerned about. But, nonetheless, the idea that God wants us to have the space to question His authority and then act on it, cannot be ignored. It is highly underemphasized in the Bible but this is because, perhaps, it is the few and the rare that achieve this state of spiritual maturity. It requires faith against great suffering. And those who complain to others about the lack of such faith do not truly understand what that sort of faith entails.
So I think your approach in your conversation is appropriate. Who wants to stand in the role between God and their personal sense of safety and say "Grow up, God created the Universe and will do what he will do! You are to still have faith nonetheless! I don't care if so-and-so suffers..." No one of us should do such a thing.
For the atheist and the believer the problem is the same...what do we do in a reality that is amoral with respect to our personal understanding and has caused us great personal suffering? There is only one thing to do...stand up and fight and let no apparent authority or force stand in the way of creating a more moral reality. Surely a good God will stand behind anyone who does this.
