HOW CAN A GOOD GOD ALLOW SUFFERING?

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How can He be a good God who allows death and suffering?

This question has reverberated through the centuries. Maybe you've even asked it. Recently.

At first glance, it looks like suffering is God’s fault, because He allows it. Maybe He even caused it. Now that's a radical thought. How did He cause it? (Please hear me out on this.)

Suffering is caused by sin. Sin that happened sometime along the way. Either the person who is suffering sinned, or someone in that person’s time zone sinned, or there’s a trickle-down effect from the sins others committed in the distant past. Sometimes suffering happens simply because we live in a broken world because our great-grandparents (to the nth power), Adam and Eve sinned.

Sin is a result of the wrong choices people make. Therefore suffering is caused by people.

God made people.

So suffering is God’s fault.

Ok. So let’s all be mad at God.

Whoa! Hold up a minute. Let’s think this through.

Sin is a result of the wrong choices people make.

That could have been avoided, right? How?

I think of two options for avoiding human suffering:

1) For God to have not created people in the first place. (And some of you may wish He hadn’t...you may wish you had never been born into the misery you’ve experienced. Or you wish someone else, who has caused that misery, had never existed.)

2) The other option was for God to have created robots... creatures who had no choice but to worship and obey Him.

Read that again. 

No choice.

No choices. 

Ever.

Would you really be okay with that? Forced to do that? No choice in who or what you will worship, or in anything else? 

So are you okay with that NO CHOICE option?

I didn’t think so.

We like our ability and right to choose. That’s what makes us human, made in the image of our matchless Creator. 

(Actually, I think that was pretty big of God to make us with free will. And risky. Very risky.)

Back to that anger you feel because you or someone you love is suffering...

...if you just have to be angry at someone,

be mad at our enemy Satan 

whose mission is to rob, maim, devastate, and murder.

I’ve suffered. I understand your anger. You want to lash out, to change the outcome, to retaliate at whoever you decide is responsible for that suffering. 

But let’s ask ourselves how productive is that? And may I gently ask, are we causing more suffering by sinning because of our anger? Isn’t that kinda hypocritical?

How about we choose to think this way...

...let’s flip that anger. Since we can’t change God’s design, how about we work within it? 

[Do you see what I did there? I’m asking you to use your God-given ability to choose. ((wink, wink))]

Let’s choose to use the anger-energy to love instead. Let’s choose to release our right to be bitter, to retaliate, to get revenge. Let's choose to ask God to cleanse us of the wrong thinking that is the basis for our anger - selfishness, fear, pain. 

Let’s choose to acknowledge God’s Boss-of-the-Universe status and His wisdom in how He did things. Let’s choose love - God’s love. And forgiveness. 

Let’s choose to promote love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. Some of you recognize that list. Those qualities are the result of God’s Holy Spirit living in us.

Have you the Holy Spirit? If you are born again, with a new Spirit in you, I’m so glad and I imagine you are working with God to allow love to flow through you. You choose love and life and joy.

If you do not have God’s Holy Spirit in you, I'd be thrilled to talk with you about how that all works....how to choose that path. Just let me know, okay?

So the conclusion is that we don’t need to be mad at our Creator because of suffering. But we can CHOOSE to be part of the solution to ease and eliminate suffering by making wise choices with the help of His Holy Spirit.

I conclude that He is indeed a GOOD God. He has proved His love for us in multiple ways. Can you see it?

Tell me in the comments some reasons you're glad God allows us to choose. Or maybe about how a good choice has lead to positive results.

Photo - Alexus_Photos & Miriams-Fotos on Pixabay