Suffering 2 - Why is there suffering? ...

Wednesday, June 2, 2010. Why is there suffering in this world? Probably you know the old questions. Why is there suffering at all? If there is a God, if God is so powerful, if he is so good, if he wants to help and if he can help, why is there still suffering?

People have asked these questions ever since. Are there answers? If yes, why are the answers not well-known? We could even think: since the answers are not well known, there are no answers. Some people think that faith must be an illusion, otherwise it would be known …

What does God want?

What does God want? The biblical testimony is rather clear. God does not want us to suffer. In fact he does not want any being to suffer. He wants us to live, to be healthy, to flourish, to be full of joy, full of excitement, full of peace. God wants to be happy in community with us.

What does God want? We had the week where we talked about heaven. God wants us to be in heaven. He wants us to be as happy as we are when we meet our best friend, when we have fun with friends or family, when we have just fallen in love with someone …! God wants the best. He wants much better things for us than we can imagine.

God shows what he wants. He talks about it by the words of the prophets. He talks about it by his actions. He wants to help. He wants trust and security for his people. He even sends his son Jesus to establish his deep forgiveness, to bring us back into his presence. He does not want us to suffer …

Freedom and Suffering

God does not want us to suffer. But still there is a lot of suffering in this world. Why does he not do anything about it? We should better ask: why do we not do anything about it? A significant portion of human suffering is caused by humans. We treat each other badly. We keep necessary resources for ourselves. We do not feed the hungry. We want power. We are in war with our fellow humans.

A significant part of suffering is caused by human freedom. Since we make decisions, humans suffer.

Of course, there is more suffering than caused by humans alone. There are natural disasters, there are illnesses, there is death. Our life is limited. There is an end to our plans. There are deeper reasons for suffering. We need to ask: why does life have an end? Why is there death? We will continue to explore these questions over the next days … ... more texts