I was having a conversation with a good friend about our different world views, she was approaching it from a spiritual almost mystic perspective and I was coming form a Christian point of view. We weren’t trying to convert each other but trying to understand what we each believe and still respect each other afterwards.
One of the points she brought up was the question, if God is good and loving why is there suffering? How do you make sense of it? She shared some suffering she went through in her life as well as of people she knows about and I shared of my own suffering as well. I have been through a fair share of pain based on what other people have done. Having lost my father to a violent crime in my teen years caused me to question the idea of why does God allow suffering. After grappling with this question for many years now, the best explanation I can come up with is as follows.
Suffering at the hands of others
I found in myself as well as in others, when this question is asked, that most people assume they are an exception to what is defined as evil. Let me take an extreme case by the current standards of morality of a serial pedophile. One could ask, if God is good, why does He let the pedophile continue harming children. Even though this is a great evil and should be fought against in society, the flaw of asking this question lies in the fact that the questioner does not consider themselves to be as evil the pedophile and thus makes themselves as the standard of morality.
However if God was to stop such evil from happening, then it means He must stop everything that He Himself thinks is evil and not what we ourselves think is evil. For example, assuming I want to consensually sleep around, but every time I try to do so, somehow God prevents it biologically from happening, or if I want to watch porn, every time I am about to watch it I go blind and deaf and thus unable to consume the content, will that be good and loving, does the end justify the means? This can be extended to all things that God considers to be evil, from stealing, to lying, to whatever. Even though I am arguing this from a Christian background, most major world religions agree on certain sins to be evil in the sight of a God type figure (reason I am including this is to prevents the question of why do I believe the Christian religion is the right religion and not something else). So if the God type figure prevents me from doing things I want to do which are wrong by His standards, is this a good and loving thing to do? If this God violates my will every time I want to act on it, even though this will stop the evil (according to Him and not me) that’s about to happen and thus lead to a good outcome, how can it possibly be that is a good and loving thing for Him to do? If I don’t want God to violate my will and what I want to do, why should He stop the pedophile and what he wants to do, why should he stop mass murderers and violate their will as well. Should He pick and choose whose will to violate based on what I think is right and wrong or what metric should he use.
We can argue that we live in a civilized society and we know what is moral. However, I would counter argue that humanity performs really badly when it comes to determining what is right and wrong. As such morality is a fluid thing if humanity is the standard. For example, up to recent history (10 years ago?) it was considered to be immoral to be part of LGBTQ community but now it’s deemed immoral to oppose it, 100 years ago it was immoral for a black people to share the same type of privileges as caucasians in fact in some cases it was a moral duty to punish and even kill slaves. In certain cultures around the world cannibalism, pedophilia etc. was considered a moral thing. This idea of shifting morality goes back in history and transcends cultures. Taking this into account what makes us think we have a good set of morality as a race, is one cultures morality superior to another, is one time in history inferior to another? Maybe in 100 years from now, our children will look back at this time in history and deem it to be the most immoral time in history according to their standards.
Thus perhaps a different standard separate from humanity needs to be used, i.e. and absolute morality. With this, I am making the assumption that if a God type figure exists, then He must be the absolute morality and what He determines to be right or wrong is what human being must be judged on based on His idea of justice. From a Christian perspective the consequence of this translates to going to heaven or hell.
The counter argument I have heard is that if God is God, why doesn’t he just forgive everyone who does wrong. I find this to be a naive approach in my opinion because if you truly have encountered and experienced evil in your life, you know sweeping what people have done under the rug is a greater evil. To let the mass pedophile off the hook without any consequences is not an act of love or goodness but an act of terrible evil and injustice. What about all the children he has harmed? What about the aftermath of his/her decisions? Looking at my personal life what about my father and the aftermath it left for my family for him to be murdered, should the murderer go free and get off the hook, what about justice for the victim?
Suffering because of the environment
After having written and published this blog, another friend raised the question, what about suffering because of the environment. The answer to this is a natural extension of the pervious points. In that, if we don’t expect God to control our wills, why should we expect Him to control our environment. However, I must concede that this is a tricker point and there are lots of arguments and counter arguments which I won’t be able to completely exhaust in this blog.
Solution according to Christianity
This is where Christianity makes sense for me, and explains this contradiction between God being loving, the presence of evil and absolute morality. It has allowed me to make sense of the evil that I have encountered in my life and I have read about in history. The Christian perspective teaches that God is indeed good and loving, and he gave humanity the right to choose what they want. However, He told them there will be consequences for their actions based on His absolute standards. Thus if someone wants to kill or rape or lie or gossip or etc, he lets them kill or rape or lie or gossip or etc, and cause pain and suffering but will judge this evil actions. However, in such a scenario, the whole human race is evil by His standards (according to a Christian perspective that is). In that in His view of absolute morality, not only what you do matters but also the intention of your heart is subject to judgement. And again according to the Christian point of view the whole of humanity deserves to go to hell. But is this truly a loving thing to do?
Thus if the whole of the human race is condemned what is the solution? Christianity offers the idea of a Savior where all evil is punished but the punishment is willingly taken by the concept of God made man in the person of Jesus. He willingly bears the punishment deserving of the pedophile, the punishment of the murderer, the punishment of the liar, the punishment of the gossiper, the punishment of the smallest evil that we have within us that we hide, as well as the biggest grandest evil such as the holocaust or slavery. Jesus bears all that punishment. As to how that works i.e. how can one being carry the whole punishment of the human race, I don’t quite understand, but here lies the justice of the victim and the salvation of humanity. The only condition of this salvation lies in the fact that the individual must willingly accept the condition that they have they themselves broken absolute morality. After accepting that fact, acknowledging and accepting the remedy offered, that one man took the punishment due to humanity and live accordingly. Thus in this scenario, it’s not about the good that you do, or holding the absolute moral law but simply accepting the fact that I can’t do it, and acknowledging the fact that this Savior figure has that qualifies the person for forgiveness and thus for heaven.
Touching on the subject matter of heaven briefly, we can all agree to some degree that the idea of heaven and paradise is the place where suffering does not exist, this is because evil does not exist. The only reason evil does not exist is because God’s absolute morality is indeed absolute and in a sense there is no free will to do evil. It can be argued that the people who go to heaven are the ones who choose to accepts God’s absolute morality as the standard and willingly give up their free will and take on His. That’s why evil and suffering doesn’t exist, because everyone follows His standards unquestionably and because He is truly a good and loving God the natural consequence of absolute obedience is absolute goodness and the best possible outcome for everybody.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I am not trying to convert the reader, but simply sharing my own view and idea behind God and morality. Who knows this might change in the future or become more entrenched as time goes on, but currently this is my view of the topic.