If There Is A God
Why Is There So Much Suffering?

 

>if god is there why are so many people suffering, how can u believe in
>someone or something that does nothing?

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this is actually a good question and a reason why I think so many people have problems believing in God. Following, I will give you my perception of why this is like this.

In the beginning, God created everything, etc. etc. Then he created mankind, male and female. They were in the Garden of Eden and everything was beautiful and wonderful.

GE 2:8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. [9] And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

GE 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. [16] And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; [17] but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." [death in the bible often refers to spiritual death, which is a separation from God and which results from our own sins.]

GE 2:18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
GE 2:25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
GE 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

GE 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, [3] but God did say, `You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " [note here that she made a mistake and said ‘touch’, which God did not say.]

GE 3:4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. [5] "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

GE 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. [7] Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

GE 3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. [9] But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

GE 3:10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
GE 3:11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
GE 3:12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
GE 3:13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

GE 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, [the serpent is often referred to as the beast or possibly Satan] "Because you have done this,

"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust [the nations are dust]
all the days of your life.
GE 3:15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."

GE 3:16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

GE 3:17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, `You must not eat of it,'

"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

GE 3:18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
[Mathew 13:13 refers to God as the farmer spreading his Word like seed. One of the ways in which the Word gets lost is by thorns and thistles growing up around us, which represent the worries of our lives. Many people write that they are suffering due to financial stress. But how much of that is our own fault, since we chase after that larger house, nicer car, mortgaging our expected incomes to the hilt?]
and you will eat the plants of the field.

GE 3:19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

GE 3:21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. [22] And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." [23] So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. [24] After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

My impression is that God made everything and everything was right but our own nature causes us to decay, as the bible puts it. It is referred to as "the original sin", which Adam introduced into the world, but it also refers to our own desires to serve ourselves and not God. Not to follow God’s commandments. If we were to follow God’s commandments and serve him wholeheartedly, there would be no suffering in the world. And this is a choice we make that God respects. There is no point for him to step in as a supreme commander and dictator, force us all to our knees and force his justice and righteousness on us.

In the beginning, when God created things, the bible says:

GE 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. [2] Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

But in the footnote of the New International Version of the bible, it says that the word was could possibly be replaced by became. I like to look at our earth as one of many in the universe having life. I consider God the energy force before the big bang, who in one thought exploded himself and converted his energy force into matter, and out of which formed planets and the nature around us. You can read my thoughts on creation and the theory of evolution, where I believe the bible clearly allows for evolution, but also God’s divine guidance in the process. Our worlds were allowed to evolve according to natural progression, with God’s positive guiding force active in it all.

But the darkness that forms over the surface of the deep is a fundamental law of physics where everything naturally moves towards entropy, or decay. It is that natural evil within the depths of our souls. The yin opposed to the yang, the forces of darkness at war against the forces of good. When creating the universe, God had good intentions, but if his creation has a natural tendency towards evil and decay, is he supposed to step in and impose the martial law: "You must be good!"? What would be the point of that? Of course it would make sense that God would let us go our own way, for he is compassionate and loving. When Cain killed Abel in the desert, was God supposed to swoop down and stop all acts of evil? If Abel goes to heaven, and Cain suffers in hell, let it be so. Any suffering you see on this planet is the direct result of our own greed and selfishness, and it is absurd to blame God for it.

By our own free choice, which God respects, we choose to go our own way, lathering and serving our own pride, forgetting about our poor brother lying starving beside us. "Get a job!" we say, forming a shell around our callous hearts so that we can ignore their suffering. We buy cheap clothes in the store without bothering to consider it was made by suffering, child slave labour in India. We eat this beef, not bothering to consider that our last few remaining rain forests were raped to produce it. Now the world weather pattern is destabilising because of mass deforestation, areas of draught see flooding rains, etc. etc., and people think it is God’s hand against humanity. We go through our lives, want to pay as little taxes as possible and try to maximise our wealth without perhaps the slightest thought towards our starving and suffering brothers in Africa. We live in a society which has grown rich through the exploitation of the native third world, who have been turned into slaves and made to conform to our "world". I am sure if they had a choice, the North American Indians would have preferred to remain in their co-existence of respect and reverence for nature, as well as all the other native populations in the world.

Therefore, I believe all this suffering is a result of mankind and not God. If we were to love our God with all our hearts and all our minds and all our souls, adhering to all his commands, as the greatest commandment dictates us, none of this would be so. God created the beauty of nature and it is definitely not his hand that is destroying it. God sees all, past present and future, into our hearts, into all of our hearts, and knows what is best for all of us. But in our hearts we want to go our own way. Not by the path of humility and serving our fellow man but by the path of pride and serving ourselves. Survival of the fittest as Hitler preached.

I can show you any number of countless examples in the old and new testament where God preaches justice. Just last night for example I stumbled on something John the Baptist said:

LK 3:7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? [8] Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. [9] The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

LK 3:10 "What should we do then?" the crowd asked.

LK 3:11 John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."

That was just one example.

DT 32:20 "I will hide my face from them," he said,
"and see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
children who are unfaithful.

MT 13:10 The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"

MT 13:11 He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. [12] Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. [13] This is why I speak to them in parables:

"Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
MT 13:14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
" `You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
MT 13:15 For this people's heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.'

If everyone could blatantly see what their destiny was and see the existence of God, they would act accordingly. "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz," sings Janis Joplin. But because God is a god that hides, he gives us the opportunity to believe that he does not exist and hence we act in accordance to our own will, for which we will be judged. But he does choose some to give testimony on his behalf. He does work in the world for the good of all mankind. There will come a day when…

REV 20:4 I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. [5] (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. [6] Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.

REV 20:7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison [8] and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth--Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. [9] They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. [10] And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

REV 20:11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. [12] And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. [13] The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. [14] Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.

REV 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. [2] I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. [3] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. [4] He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

REV 21:5 He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."

REV 21:6 He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. [7] He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

This is called a world ruled by an altruistic dictator, which is not the case at present. We want to go our own way but we are not capable of acting in utter justice on our own. Yes, there is suffering and it is unfortunate, "but the meek shall inherit the earth." I would rather that God step in now as well, but I have faith in his wisdom and will not question his judgement. In fact, I believe there are a federation of planets out there waiting for us to join them. There are a million times a million stars in our galaxy, and a million times a million galaxies in our universe, and it would be as absurd and vain to think we are the only intelligent and spiritual life in all that as it would to believe that the world is flat and that all the stars rotate around us. But our earth rotates around a young star on the outer edge of our own galaxy. All the older stars are in the centre of our galaxy, where I believe those civilisations have already gone through their growing and maturing periods and reached the harmonious state, fully aware of God’s existence and presence, as described in the bible section immediately above. There they have already entered the "new order of things". Already now you can see how our world is joining together to form a single government. We are approaching this point in our evolution, to where we will have agreed on the futility and wasteful stupidity of war. Nato will be strong enough to force all tribes of Africa from decimating one another and from causing so much suffering. God’s hand is at work all around us working towards this, respecting each of our choices whether or not to follow his commands, and hiding from those who choose not to love him. It is his secret plan. The suffering you see is a product of our own greed and selfishness, and it is not logically feasible to expect God to come down and interject against all our evil and selfish intentions.

The bible says you have to seek God to find him and you have to love the truth to endure. I pray that you will seek the truth, even in light of the darkness you see around yourself, so that you may be a shining light for others and bring salvation to those who are blinded in darkness.

PS 44:23 Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.
PS 44:24 Why do you hide your face
and forget our misery and oppression?
PS 44:25 We are brought down to the dust;
our bodies cling to the ground.
PS 44:26 Rise up and help us;
redeem us because of your unfailing love