Believing in God’s existence is not impossible, but believing that He cares for each individual is pretty difficult to do when observing the misery in this world.
The cause of misery is the gift of free will. With free will comes the choice to do either good or bad. Without it, we’d be no different than animals, driven by instinct only. Since being tossed from the Garden of Eden for abusing that gift, God never said this world would be easy. We’d live by the sweat of our brow, subject to various calamities, and eventually die. Does a soldier complain about the danger he’s in? But he still loves his country.
I understand what you’re saying. But the misery is for a fraction of eternity. That’s a very small piece of a person’s existence.
That’s what I struggle with. Is there a ‘personal’ God that cares about you as an individual. I think there probably is an afterlife and a God, but I don’t think he cares very much about daily affairs on our scale.
“Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of [the Soviet] revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened’.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The idea that the misery we all see means that God doesn’t care for everyone is simply specious, and an easy excuse not to grapple with His offer of redemption.
It’s not very deep thinking, nor is it a very good argument. It’s ignoring God’s outstretched arms, and it simply won’t help you or anyone else.