Why Does God Allow Suf­fer­ing

When we look around at the world we are liv­ing in, tak­ing in the hor­rors that are occur­ring around the world on a daily basis, the most preva­lent ques­tion on many people’s minds is,“Why does God allow (let) these things to happen!”

His­tor­i­cally, turn­ing to the clergy for the answer to this ques­tion of why does God allow any­thing evil or bad to hap­pen is a les­son in futil­ity, as the answers we are asked to accept raise even more questions.

Answers like, “God works in mys­te­ri­ous ways. We don’t under­stand why He allows these things to hap­pen, but we must trust that it is all part of His plan.” Some of the less sym­pa­thetic answers lend them­selves to things like, “God is pun­ish­ing us for all the sin and evil in the world.” For­tu­nately, none of these reli­gious plat­i­tudes have any basis in Spir­i­tual reality.

Why Does God Allow Some­one You Love To Die?

When a loved on dies, for what­ever the rea­son, men of the cloth can be heard spew­ing out ridicu­lous state­ments like, “God took them home!” or “God had his rea­sons for let­ting them die.” So in essence then why does God allow bad things to hap­pen? Think for a moment about how such state­ments impact a child, sit­ting in the front pew of a church funeral, hav­ing lost a mother or father in a tragic acci­dent. State­ments like, “The Lord took um home!” is what they are asked to believe, in the absence of a more con­crete expla­na­tion of why a lov­ing God allowed this to hap­pen to mommy or daddy. And because God is “all pow­er­ful”, the death of their loved one is con­sciously or uncon­sciously placed squarely on God as the one who could have pre­vented it, but didn’t. So then does God allow bad things to happen?

 Why Does God Allow Suf­fer­ing and Bad Things To Hap­pen If He is “All Mighty?”

While it is true that God is “ALL MIGHTY” and “ALL POWERFUL”, it is not true that because of these attrib­utes, He is free to do what­ever He wants. Believe it or not there are some things that All Mighty God can­not do.

2 Things God Can Not Do

There are pri­mar­ily two things that God can­not do.

1. He can­not lie.
2. He can­not break His word, once given.

When God cre­ated the world, He gave “domin­ion” of the Earth to Adam and Eve, or in the greater sense, He made the human race the supreme author­ity over the planet. The book of Gen­e­sis, in the first chap­ter, verse 28 tells us that after cre­at­ing man in His own image and like­ness, God gave man domin­ion over the affairs of the planet.

“Be fruit­ful, and mul­ti­ply, and replen­ish the earth, and sub­due it: and have domin­ion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every liv­ing thing that moveth upon the earth.”  By def­i­n­i­tion, the word domin­ion means “rul­ing power, author­ity, or con­trol”.

By giv­ing the human race “rul­ing author­ity and con­trol” over the planet, God made it clear that He would honor what ever deci­sions the human race made con­cern­ing the planet. When Adam and Eve rejected the Lord­ship of God over them in the Gar­den of Eden, God had no choice but to honor his word, and let Adam and Eve and their descen­dants rule the world in any way that they saw fit. They chose Satan’s sys­tem of gov­ern­ment which is a sys­tem based on every one being their own gods, that is, a gov­ern­ment based on ‘SELFISHNESS’,  where every­one does what they please accord­ing to their own wills, rather than God’s gov­ern­ment, which is based on rec­og­niz­ing God as their Lord, and com­ply­ing with His will. God’s gov­ern­ment is based on com­plete ‘SELFLESSNESS’ , or every­one doing what is right for well being of every­one else, and esteem­ing all oth­ers higher than themselves.

Once Adam and Eve made the deci­sion to dis­obey God in the Gar­den of Eden, and chose Satan’s gov­ern­ment over God’s,  Satan became their new LEGAL  ‘father’, (the oper­a­tive word here is ‘LEGAL’) and God had no choice but to back off. From that moment on, God could not legally inter­fere in the affairs of men with­out break­ing His Word and tak­ing back the author­ity He had given them over the Earth. Since it is impos­si­ble for God to break His word, the human race has been in charge of planet earth for the last six thou­sand years, liv­ing out Satan’s sys­tem of gov­ern­ment. Satan is the enemy of God and men. He delights in our demise, and than does every­thing in his power to get us to believe that it’s all God’s fault.

This is why God sent His Son Jesus to the earth. Since it was humans who unwit­tingly gave domin­ion of the earth over to Satan and his form of Gov­ern­ment by dis­obey­ing God, or sin­ning if you will, only a human being could win the planet back to God and free mankind from the bondage that Adam and Eve unwit­tingly placed us in.

The Bible tells us that” God was in Christ, rec­on­cil­ing the world back to Him­self” (2 Corinthi­ans 5:19) This is why God had to become a man in order to save the planet. A human being plunged us into this mess, and only a human being could get us out. By becom­ing a human being, liv­ing a sin­less life in obe­di­ence to God, and fac­ing the death penalty that went along with men choos­ing to be their own gods, Jesus, by his blood, won the right to claim the Earth back to God forever.

Soon the reign of evil men will be over. All who align them­selves with God and believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord who saved them, will live for­ever in a world as God intended it to be. A world free from death, sor­row and pain, a world where all are of one accord, a world free from self­ish­ness and sin, and a world where we will be reunited for­ever with the loved ones who were lost to us. Jesus said,

“I am the res­ur­rec­tion, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25) Those who make a deci­sion to fol­low Christ into eter­nity will one day hear the words. “Well done My good and faith­ful ser­vant, enter ye into the Joy of the Lord.” (Matthew 25:21)

Until then, be at peace know­ing that God is not respon­si­ble for the ter­ri­ble things that go on here, but nei­ther can He arbi­trar­ily inter­fere with or use His might and power to stop that which we have brought upon our­selves by choos­ing to be our own gods.

 Copy­right 2013 — V.P. Valentino, Manorville, NY 11949