Posted on 08/10/2014 9:31:05 AM PDT by OneVike
Few seem to have good answers for the question:
“Why didn’t God just create us so that we would never have to experience pain, suffering, or sadness?”
After all, God has the power to make the world free of evil, yet He chose instead to make us creatures with free will. Thus, free will was the door left open for the possibility of evil entering our lives.
What is the purpose of pain, suffering, and evil? Why does God allow humans, who were made in His image, to live on a planet where evil abounds? God could have made us perfect without the ability to sin, and we would have never known pain and suffering.
We would be like Chatty Cathy dolls–just pull the string and watch us do and say whatever we were programed. Is that the kind of life you would wish to live? Well, obviously God did not think so either. That’s the short answer to why God created us with free will.
With free will came the possibility that Adam and Eve might disobey God of their own volition and partake of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Well, thanks to some coaxing from Satan, Eve ate the fruit and offered some to Adam. The first two humans that God created exercised the right of choice that God had given them. Because they didn’t obey God’s command, sin entered the universe and that sin was handed down to every human who was born of man. All of us, believers and non-believers alike, wrestle with the daily struggles of the “Adam and Eve” within us.
Christ died on the cross so that, if we believe in Him, we can have eternal life. However, just because we gave our life to Christ, does not mean we are immunized from the pain and suffering of this world. This is why so many Christians inevitably ask the question, “Why am I suffering God? Why do my loved ones suffer?” What if on the day we accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior, we were given God’s total and complete protection, so nothing bad ever happened to us again?
“Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face. Job 1:9-11
Can you imagine what would happen if God did put a hedge about us on every side? Would not the people of the world who do not know Christ, say:
“So what, that you love Go. Anybody would love God if He protected them the way He does you. I’m not impressed. Your God doesn’t offer me anything; I live in the real world.”
What if those people, who watched us suffer, saw the way we dealt with the same issues of pain, suffering and disappointment as they deal with, and we showed an example of looking to our Father in heaven with love and gratefulness? His loving mercy allows us to be free enough to learn and grow through our trials and tribulations, like the......
(Excerpt) Read more at therelevantchristianmagazine.com ...
Assuming free will as a reason for negative events in our life assumes that God did not plan for things to be at this point at this time. That assumes a lot of allowing bad things to happen and could be argued to mean that God has not been directing things.
Is it possible for us to argue that God BOTH allows events and directs events? Or,Is it necessary to conclude that He does one or the other?
Why would anyone with a modicum of intellect suggest that a finite man could apprehend the mind of God. Few thinking people would expect an answer and even fewer thinking people would ask the question.
If you wish to amuse God, tell him of your plans.
Like a good parent, yes. We are humbled by our mistakes.
Jesus told us that in this world, we would have tribulation but to be of good cheer, for He has overcome the world.
Overcoming means overcoming, not being delivered from every unpleasant situation that we encounter.
We cannot overcome evil with good, if we don’t encounter the evil to overcome.
Good for your pastor and his congregation.
Be well, all.
Daily Reflections with Oswald Chambers [August 10, 2014]
The Holy Suffering of the Saint
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3191256/posts
Funny how this is the one for today when you posted this.
Thanks for the link.
I often notice how pastors at various churches who know nothing about each other or commentaries posted throughout the web, and even radio programs of various pastor sermons will seem to have a common theme at the same time. It’s as if God knows our need and that is what he is ministering us on.
I say, as if, more like it is Him doping so.
There are many in the world today who are suffering and seeing suffering, especially Christians in the Middle East, and God is hearing our prayers and letting us know that the here and now is not what we should dwell on so much. it’s not the temporal, it’s the hereafter that matters.
Did Yeshua not promise that we must suffer, and even be killed?
He certainly never indicated that life would be rosy.
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Perhaps he wouild like other Christians to step up and take the opportunity to help where and when they can. In suffering there is an opportunity for ministry. Unfortunately we miss this way to often.
Also, we can never really know when and if God is intervening. I believe He is doing this constantly.
At the times I’ve felt that the Lord is showing me something, He never does it just once.
I always get hit with it at least three times from completely unrelated sources.
I’ve had it happen as often as 5 times in three days.
Then I really take note.
I’ve been having a rough summer as this food problem I’ve been dealing with seems to be growing worse. I’ve begun to react to things that I had previously been able to tolerate. This disorder never gets better, but only gets worse and there’s nothing that can be done for it medically.
My ONLY option is divine healing. In the meantime, it’s been a real struggle.
I am not much for shrinks, but I have a great respect for Viktor Frankel’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’... One of the most poignant and profound works I have ever read as concerns the meaning of suffering. Frankel lost everything, and nearly everyone, barely surviving a Nazi death camp - His point of view is priceless.
thanks, I will look it up and check it out.
we also suffer from other folks’ choices. current choices and ones’made by people in the past.
cs lewis wrote on this topic as well.
if God intervened all the time it would render free will useless. and people would get really angry being micromanaged all the time. they would get angry because they are still sinful and God isn’t.
angels, not angles. and please forgo the right angles are in heaven and the wrong angles are in hell, joke.
Book of Job
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