With the tales of war, famine, disasters, and constant death, it is very natural to ask the question “If there is a God why is there so much suffering in the world” especially since Christians preach of a loving God.
I won’t lie, as a Christian myself, I have asked this question over and over again particularly when I lost my father, you see, my father suffered from a stroke for almost 9 years, and through the time where most people knew that he might die, I kept praying and begging for his life to be saved which didn’t happen and this made me spiral into a place of doubt.
I kept on asking myself why I had to suffer and lose someone I loved when I had “a father in heaven” who I was taught that answered prayers so I asked myself ”why wasn’t mine answered”.
This period that was supposed to push me away from my Religion made me pull closely and I began studying the word of God which for me opened my eyes to a lot of things that I never understood and I will be explaining more as I go.
IF THERE IS A GOD WHY IS THERE SO MUCH SUFFERING IN THE WORLD?
First, before I go into answering this question we have to go back to the beginning of the world, at least where we were taught was the beginning.
THE BEGINNING
Genesis 1:1 says that In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth and that the earth was without form which meant that the earth when created was without suffering.
If you go further, you will notice the process of creation and then the creation of man, and when man was created God saw that it was good so he gave man dominion over the earth.
The word dominion means in my own words, God made man in charge which could also be translated to the fact that God gave man choice and a free will to rule because you wouldn’t hire a manager just to rule over him, or will you?
Giving man free will meant that God wasn’t going to boss man around or make man do things out of his will but he did tell man a simple instruction which is normal because if you hired a manager you might have rules right?
The instruction was that man could eat of every tree in the garden except the tree of good and evil which some might say was hard but there were a lot of trees so that doesn’t count.
Others might say since God was all knowing why didn’t he stop the serpent from coming to tempt them which was how the story went and my question would be well, you don’t shield your child from every decision, you give them the power of choice which was what God gave man at that time.
Eating from the tree of good and evil did just like the name said and good and evil was introduced to earth or rather to man which meant suffering was born.
Now before I go further, you might ask why the tree even existed and my answer is there was also a tree of life among other trees so why shouldn’t it have existed?
NOW TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION
The major reason suffering exists for me is because of three major things, which are choice and free will which God had given to man, and also to fulfill a prophecy which isn’t a topic for today, so let’s focus on choice and free will.
If you look at the earth and most things we go through, you will notice that most of the situations we are going through were birthed from things that humans have done in the past or are currently doing; people are killed because of people and government, there are wars because of greed and so many other causes of suffering are based on free will.
WHY DOESN’T GOD JUST TAKE THE FREE WILL/ CHOICES AWAY YOU MAY ASK?
Well, if God did that, we would also be asking questions about why God took our choices away, and clearly, in Deuteronomy, God says that he has given us the choice between life and death and that we should choose life so that we may live.
IN THE END,
You might still say this makes no sense and sometimes to me, it doesn’t but I will say everything happens for a reason and we have the choice/free will to make life better than what we are seeing but most people just profit from the suffering which means it will continue.
Moving further, I wouldn’t really bother to prove God’s existence to anyone because to me, I know he does and everyone has the right to their beliefs and to choose.
So if you didn’t take anything from this, take this; suffering exists because God gave man free will and a choice not because he doesn’t exist.