Why does God allow so much pain?

[Resting in Christ]

You know, I've had a lot go on in my life since I asked this question. I have been reading all of the replies and discussions that have arisen as well. I had a meeting with a Pastor and asked him this question in person. Anyway, after thinking upon his answer to my question, I have come upon a reason and purpose in pain.

I've come to the conclusion that people are people and people hurt people. That hurt is not caused by God but by people choices. But, I've discovered that God can "use" the hurt, pain, disappointment, and all manner of things to help others who are in the same place.

2Co 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

I thought about what Paul was relating about God. Paul was saying that God doesn't cause our pain and trouble but God comforts us so that we can comfort others who have been were we are. I have been horribly abused (emotionally, physically, sexually) and very deeply hurt by church but if someone comes to me who has been hurt like I have, I can understand what they are going through. If someone came to me and said, I understand, but they have not been in my shoes, I might wonder, "How would you know anything about how a feel?"

But, later this week, something hit me. I was asking God how he comforts us because the aforementioned verse says God comforts us in all our troubles.

Hebrews 4:14-16, Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

We go to God and God comforts us but the missing link was Jesus. I had always talked with God as the Source but didn't understand that Jesus was the path to God. I can go to Jesus who feels everything and knows my hurts better than anyone, including my husband.

Romans 8:34- 37, Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." {#Ps 44:22} Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."

I thought if Jesus is praying and thinking about me then that's the biggest comfort ever.

Psalms 139:17-18, How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You.

For someone who used to believe with all of my heart that God hated me, to discover that he thinks about me (and everyone else, good thoughts) just really made a difference.

Jer. 29:11, For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. {expected

[Guest paul1975]

Why does God allow so much pain? Is God strong enough to stop some of it? I don't understand. :emot-questioned:

Just because you can't see or imagine a good reason for why God might allow something to happen doesn't mean there can't be one. If you're saying that you can't think of a reason for all of the suffering in the world, then there can't be any, right? The problem with that, is that it's blind faith of a high order.

Take the story of Joseph in Genesis. He was an arrogant young man who was imprisoned by his brothers. He spent years in bondage and misery, but was strengthened by his trials. Eventually, he rose up to become prime minister of Egypt who saved thousands of lives and even his own family from starvation. If God had not allowed Joseph's years of suffering, he never would have been such a powerful agent for social justice and spiritual healing.

With time and perspective most of us can see good reasons for at least some of the tragedy and pain that occurs in life. Why couldn't it be possible that, from God's vantage point, there are good reasons for all of it?

The argument from evil (and pain and suffering of the innocent is evil) is a long standing argument for atheism.

If anything, pain and suffering may be evidence for God, and thus against atheism. People, we believe, ought to not t suffer, be excluded, die of hunger or oppression. But the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak - these things are all perfectly natural. On what basis, then, does an atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unjust? The nonbeliever in God doesn't have a good basis for being outraged at injustice, which is their reason for objecting to God in the first place. If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and filled with evil, then you are assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or super-natural) standard by which to make your judgment.

Basically, it's a mistake, although an understandable one, to think that if you abandon your belief in God it somehow makes the problem of evil easier to handle.

Edited July 23, 2008 by paul1975

[meliy]

I totally agree with what you have said here.

[Grungekid]

So why does an all-powerful, loving god do nothing?

He didn't do nothing, or else it never would have ended. God allows us to endure evil to test our faith, to test the faith of those around us, and to help us grow in life. Sometimes a good doctor has to injure a patient to make them stronger.

I'd also like to note that sin, and therefore evil, are results of our own free will. The Bible speaks of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, and their decision to disobey God and learn of the polar opposite of all that is negative - evil. People like Sam Harris all dismiss it because it sounds like a fairy tale, but they don't realize that it's a great parable of the battle between morallity and personal desire that occurs in all of us. Anyone, put in their place, would have lost in the same way.

Some people claim it is because such a god does not exist. This is a logical argument based on observation of actual events.

It's an emotional reaction to the dark facts of life. God can't exist because you don't think He would let this happen. If there is anything so beautiful in life, it has to behave just how you would expect it.

I don't think it's logical at all. I think it's more logical to assume that the evil that occurs in life has its God-given purpose, whatever that may be, because that makes sense: why should we think of suffering the way we do if it means nothing? Oh let me guess, we 'evolved that way.' The answer to every question concerning humanity. Woefully shallow, and woefully inadequate. I can see the merit of the Problem of Evil if you believe that God is supposed to be completely understood by human beings, but we aren't perfect, therefore it follows that God would not be like us, and therefore unlike what our sense of reason depicts Him as being.

What opportunity did the Jews of Europe have to avoid their treatment at the hands of the Nazis? None. You can't explain it away and you can't explain why the all-powerful, all-loving God of the Christians did nothing.

I can't? Just like you can't explain away everything that happens to people suggesting a spiritual side of life? Oh, we can both explain away whatever we want to, Cycel. We will. Just like one can choose to believe anything, they can choose NOT to believe it - do you remember that one funny-looking guy from where was it - Pakistan? I don't doubt what happened to the Jews really took place in history, but I think it is a perfect example of how the planet seems to react poorly to them and their ideals. And you're leaching it for the rhetorical effect like some kind of politician. You're more interested in using it as leverage to attack their cultural beliefs.

That doesn't work at all for me. Young children separated from their parents and sent to be killed while husband and wife too were separated and put on work details. Such suffering. I don't see any sign of God's mercy in these circumstances. I have read survivor accounts and the misery was palpable. It coated everything every waking moment. Never enough to eat. Prisoners survived by stealing food from others. Young women offered sex to German guards in return for a tiny piece of food. That's how they survived.

Oh, it was awful, the worst human-caused tragedy; but I won't piss on those people's graves and say it was just a big cosmic accident.

Some perhaps, but many others did not. What I have often heard is that the survivors frequently never talked about their experiences with their children after the war. The events were too horrible and too dehumanizing to revisit.

Hey Cycel, they were just a bunch of flukes of the universe, right? That's precisely what the true naturalist would say of them, and it is exactly what Hitler thought of them (obviously).

You really ought to start looking into the depths of the mind that carried out the whole thing: Hitler didn't believe the Jews were God's Creation, that they were to be honored. He directly disregarded the Bible, so don't say He did it for God's sake.

See, I think, Cycel, Hitler woke up one morning, and thought of the world exactly like you did. He was going to die and fade away, and he imagined not even being able to leave a legacy on this planet. That drove him crazy, and with his malignant narcicism, he was only bound to start thinking about how to change that. Then in all of his despair, he came to a terrible conclusion: he had to take drastic measures to ensure that something of him survived, what little he could preserve. Good deeds require heart-felt conviction, and can only be recognized when performed by the rich.

Aggressive actions always get into the books. Being a survivor of the first world war, he saw how fragile life was, and how the world challenged his livelihood. He was no stranger to violence. That only fueled his desperation. He also had an engrained sense of nationalism, and saw that mastery of his own culture was a strong vehicle for his agenda.

At first, it took little to get attention. Radicals need only speak to be heard; why do you think the title god is not great catches or eyes? Or albums such as Issues are so lucritive? He preyed on all of the groupies, the homeless men at labor camps, and the disenfranchised soldiers. People who were as caught in hopelessness as he was. It went from there. He was one of those commanding personalities that post-modern rockers like to sing about - Power Trip comes to mind - and he got what he wanted from the downtrodden public. They were eager for a savior, and as symbolic of the delivering rebel as any other figure in history, he ordered a march on the throne. Almost like a work of philosophical fiction, he got exactly what he wanted in life. Looking back, it's too bad he wasn't another angry failure of an outsider. Anyone he blamed for the turmoil around him, anyone he percieved as being a threat to fulfilling his dying wish, he publicly condemned. The rest is history.

Let's give you the benefit of the doubt here: there is no God, and what Hitler did was just an the work of a psychotic mind whom had no control and was controlled by no one. It was so inescapable, it must have been natural: the way it was supposed to be. So why, Cycel, are you and I bothered? We should be like sheep, watching everything happen, but only caring about breeding and eating. And yet, we aren't.

So it would seem that there were many reactions to the experience, some of them the opposite of what you claim.

Evidence of free will, or personal interpretation. Just as you and I and most of the other people here are two sides of a coin, so were they.

[NickyLouse]

I like the sensibility of your question provided you are open to trying to understand the response.

Maybe I didn't phrase my question the right way. I am sometimes told that if there was no God that everyone would be running amok. I live my life as if there was no God. Yet I do not live without ethics or values. I give to charity. I stop to help people in distress. I am kind to strangers and animals. I do these things not because I expect a reward in the afterlife and not because I expect to receive punishment if I don't, but just because I think this is the proper way to behave.

When I stopped disbelieving in God, the first thing that came to mind was that I needed to measure up to God's standard for living. I tried really hard and do you know what happened... I became frustrated and bitter because I realized I could not do it. I thought of all of the ways in which I was not living right and swore to myself that I would change... because God loved me enough to die in my place and He deserved to have a better child than what I was. So I started doing the things you mention... living a moral life, giving to charity, helping people, etc. But in my heart I was bitter because I wanted everyone to behave as I did. It wasn't fair that they could go on sinning while I had to tow the Christian line.

But the problem was that although I was open to believing in Jesus I had not accepted the fact that He died so that I wouldn't have to do the thing that I could not do, namely 'measuring up'. I could not forgive myself for being in part to blame for the death of such a wonderful person as Jesus. Then, it dawned on me that Jesus went to the Cross willingly and with joy in His heart for all the good that would come from it. He certainly could not have been happy that men devised such a torturous way of killing and He was not happy that it came down to Him being killed for our sakes. But He had an eternal outlook on matters and it gave Him joy to do His Father's will.

My point here is that men intend harm, but God intends it for good. In the same way we see suffering as harm, God does intend it for good. All people will see at the conclusion of history how each and every thing we intend for harm was allowed by God so that good would turn out.

Suddenly, the things I was trying to do 'to measure up' became rewarding to me as I am sure they are for many people who consider themselves 'good people'. The whole difference is in the motivation behind our deeds. Am I doing good to impress myself or others? Am I doing good because I think I might need someone else's help someday? Am I doing good because I think that this is what everyone should do and I am going to do my part whether others do or not? ... Or am I doing it out of love - love for the One who looked into eternity and found joy in His own sacrifice for my benefit?

My question is, if you unexpectedly came to the belief that there was no God after all, would you start running amok or would you continue to live life basically as you do now, but without visits to church and without taking time to pray? In short, do you think belief in God is necessary to keep people in line?

If I unexpectedly was given evidence that Jesus was a fraud and a liar or a lunatic who only believed he was fulfilling a ton of prophecy and that his miracles were in fact just some strange coincidence... If I unexpectedly became aware that my life since coming to know Him is based on a mountain of lies, I think I would become homicidal or totally withdrawn. Life itself would mean nothing to me. Assuming I would be able to get over my depression, I don't think I would give any other person another care. What I would do for the remainder of my days could not be wasted on doing anything that did not benefit myself. There would certainly be selfish reasons to help others, but ultimately it would boil down to what was best for me.

Edited September 10, 2008 by NickyLouse

[tigeraqua]

I think most of the pain humans go through are caused by humans themselves.

God loves us so much that He gave us free choice. But we often abuse this right He gave us and make wrong/stupid decisions that result in pain. Yes, there are also other pains that are caused by natural disasters that we cannot control. But I remember reading that through pain and suffering, we get to strengthen ourselves in God. Sometimes, it is only through pain and suffering would we grow closer to God.

[Neopatriarch]

Why does God allow so much pain? Is God strong enough to stop some of it? I don't understand. :laugh:

I think I have a better question.

How can God in his perfect righteousness and goodness not send us, wretched sinners that we are, to the eternal torment of hell we so justly deserve?

[Grungekid]

So how does suffering strengthen one's belief in God and bring them closer? If anything I'd think it would push them away.

Because we learn to rely on Him in order to make it through our struggles. It's sobering, but it's also a big part of life; taking your blows in stride. To me, nothing makes more sense in our existence.