Human Suffering

I recently taught a Sunday School Class on the topic of human suffering. Just like people that have lived for thousands of years, we still find ourselves perplexed by the reality of human suffering.

We find ourselves perplexed because of the classic contradiction of ideas that Leibniz call "the theodicy." I put the concept together this way: 1) We all taught that God is all knowing, loving, powerful, etc. 2) We find ourselves in a world of suffering. No matter what one's answer might be, this is the classic formulation of the answer.

Here are some of the classical answers to the question: 1) God is not all powerful, and does not have the ability to stop all suffering, 2)God is not all loving, 3)God uses suffering as a way to punish us for wrong doing, 3) a kind of theory of atonement, i.e. we must make up for our sins---and if we do not we are punished. None of these make anyone feel particularly good.

This is always made the most sense to me: 1)we have the freedom to choose, 2)God lets us "wrestle' with our proverbial "demons", even to the point of tragedy, 3) the world operates by a series of "physical laws' which cannot be changed all the time, 4)this life is not the fulfillment of my "existence; there is more to come.

So, I do blame humanity for the Holocaust. We could have done more to stop it. I do not blame God for the hurricane that destroys my home. That same hurricane is cooling global water tempuratures. I do blame myself for the bad choices I make. Finally, I deal with much suffering in this way: I have a choice not only to "act" correctly, but I have a choice to control how I think and feel about the bad that happens to me.

I invite you to comment with your thoughts.

Ray Province

Ray Province is a retired minister and owner of The Celtic Ozarkian, a website that chronicles life in the Ozarks. He is an IT Programer by trade, and freelances in SEO, website developments, social bookmarking, and blogging on things he loves.