Friday, April 30, 2010

Why Do We Suffer?


Talking to many people who agree that we are born to suffer. Paul Draper, a philosopher, discussed the problem of evil.

He said supernatural beings, if they exist, are indifferent to our suffering.

The virtue however, of believing in God, is that he care about our suffering.

So we are left with a problem

Why does God allow us to suffer?

To make sense of why man suffers, I like to go back to basics.

If we are to believe God spoke to mankind as a Father to a child, then we must believe he tried to make things simple.

The problem began with Adam and Eve who expressed a desire for knowledge and willfulness to disobey to obtain it.

When a child is born, we teach it. We say to a child, don’t put your hand into the fire or it will burn.

My Mother told me not to put my hand on the stove element because it was hot, So I told her Mummy, don’t do this.

And put my hand onto the burning element right under her nose.

We told our son, don’t plug in the American 110 volt game box into a 220 volt socket.

He said ok and the next morning we jumped out of bed because of a big BOOM!

Yup. He plugged it in.

Man decided he will learn through his mistakes. He rejected God and his good will to teach us.

What do we do with willful children? Do we kill them? Drug them? Kick them out of the house?

Test their brilliance to see how far they will go with it?

Man found out since then, through experimenting, that there is a way to

put your hand into a fire without burning it.lol

It got him excited. What else can he learn?

So we go through life bumbling, making mistake after mistake, suffering and learning from it.

Like any good car dealer, who supplies us with a guide book on the car we buy, God also supplied us with a book to guide us through life.

In it is the basic 10 Commandments. The rest of the book is stories to remember. Times and people change and the interpretations from the stories will change as well.

The 10 Commandments however, will never change. God made sure we paid attention to them by giving them to Moses etched in stone.

If God is anything like my parents, he would say to his child:

You either learn the easy way, through my word, or the hard way through your experiments.

Either way, you will learn or die trying. Loll

Well A coward dies a million deaths, a Hero just but one.

That’s another line my parents taught me

And living my life, I learned all this to be true.

So if this is all true what makes us think the rest of it isn’t?

God realizes that man needs to learn at his own pace and that he will make mistakes on the path that he has chosen.

So I cannot agree with the word “Indifference” as much as I would the words “respect for man's decision”.In order for man to grow, emotionally, mentally, God realized the need for man, to do things for himself.

I realized this in my second son when he got mad at me for trying to feed him and yelled SELF! His very first word. :( lol

God is a watcher.

He sent his son to teach man and man killed him. So this is a second strike against God, after Adam and Eve, that man has made.A second time man told God to butt out.

If everything goes in threes, man has only one more chance to redeem himself in the

eyes of God and he, as always, will let us do it our own way.

So why do we suffer?

The fight on earth, is not between man and God.

The fight on Earth is between man and man.Man has no belief or trust in man Thus we can say man has no faith in mankind or even in himself.

That being the case how can man have faith and trust in something beyond his comprehensiom....God?The only time man can afford true faith, is when he is done battling. Only,

when his hand unclenches in death, is man open to taking the hand of God and letting him guide him, since in the new world, he is again a babe, innocent, wide eyed and open to learning but this time, not with words.




6 comments:

Jen said...

How many times have you taken something for granted until it was gone? Without adversity, we cannot truly appreciate the good times.

Linda Bob Grifins Korbetis Hall said...

wise words,
I agree with Jen, without adversity,
one does not cherish what one gets.

SandyCarlson said...

That was thought-provoking. Thanks.

A Lady's Life said...

So true. This was probably why mankind chose the path he chose.
Mankind is an evolutionary being.
He evolves with everything he learns.
I have to wonder though.
We learn from each other as a society and from other societies.
When we come upon ancient societies like they did in South America, who have not evolved.They learn from their ancestors and do not migrate to learn more. Do they miss out on life? Are they happy?
Do we interfere to teach them? Do we leave them alone?
If you don't know about something, you can be very happy living without it. Once you learn about it, you want it.

A Lady's Life said...

I was trying to address the accusation of why God allows for suffering?
God does not allow for suffering.
Suffering is caused by man and maybe it is because adversity is what man lives for or maybe adversity is what man is presented with.
Maybe even without adversity, man could be happy cause not knowing about something,gives you internal peace, to accept and love what you do have.

Jeannette StG said...

An interesting tidbit -I've been told by a Jewish friend, that the ten commandments, in Hebrew is translated the ten Instructions!!
It shows more of His compassion, and our free will to choose, than an angry God who is going to pounce on us, every time we make a mistake:)

haha-the word verification said:bless