Where is God? Why doesn't he do something about suffering! Part 4

From last blog we can see, if God wanted to get rid of suffering, He would need to get rid of all the causes of suffering. Since mankind is a major player in causing suffering, that would mean getting rid of us.

Just get rid of the really evil people

God could get rid of the Adolf Hitlers, Fred Wests, peadeofiles and rapests etc. that would make the world a better place wouldn't it?

That's a good point. Let's just imagine God agreed to do that. Great. Problem solved right? Wrong. This just raises another question that must be answered.

Where to draw the line?

Where do we draw the line? If we said, "We get rid of all the Hitlers and Mussolinis" etc., fair enough, that would save about 6 million Jews and who knows how many Ethiopians, World War 2 would not have happened, but the world we live in would still be full of misery and suffering because of people. And we don't know if World War 2 would not have happened. Who knows what would have happened? One thing I do know, if there was no World War 2, I would not exist! In fact, millions of people would disappear. Think how many people met and fell in love because of circumstances created by the war? Literally, millions of people alive now would not exist. But anyway, getting rid of Adolf Hitler etc, would not get rid of suffering or evil. Not nearly!

So we have to draw a line somewhere that rules a lot more people out. So for example, do we draw the line at rapists? Imagine you said 'Yes' and every rapist just vaporised, disappeared from planet earth. Would the world be a better place?

That would be a lot of people. How many 15 year old lads pressurised their drunk girlfriends into having sex - that's rape. There are loads of them. Many grown men did it as teenagers. Now they are happily married with young families etc., on your decision, suddenly they would be gone. Their children left fatherless, families broken and devastated. 

What about spouses who cheat on their husband or wife causing emotional torture, pain and suffering? Should we get rid of all of those people? That means get rid of my Dad? If you say, "No, people should not hurt one another like that but we should not get rid of them". Well, many people's lives have been devastated in that way. Many people found life so painful they committed suicide. Because of their experience, they would say, "yeah, get rid of them". Of course, that also means that lots of people who are alive now would never have been born! You can see, this is a very messy business! But it leads to another complicated question.

Who should be the judge?

It is easy to say, "Just get rid of the really evil people" and it makes a lot of sense. But then someone has to decide where exactly to draw that line. So Who decides 'Who'? Me? You? Someone else? A panel? The good people? Well no-one's perfect. So then we have to decide who is good enough. And then who is the 'we' that decides the 'who is good enough to be a judge?'

Whoever gets to make the decision would never find a place to draw the line that satisfies everyone. No-one would be happy with where the line is drawn. 

See how complicated it gets?

Surely the answer is to let God decide. If we agree on that, then we have to accept that we probably won't agree with His decision. He is never going to draw the line in a place that suits everyone. God could play it safe and rule out only the Mussonlinis and Hitlers. But then it would hardly touch the suffering in the world. We'd still be asking our question, Why does God allow suffering? So then, if God is to decide, we just have to trust that His judgment is best even though it is not what we would do. If we agree on that point, then guess what? God has drawn the line, where none of us would. 

We only see the evil that is. We don not see the evil God has prevented. A clue to this is easy to point out. How many times have you been driving your car, not properly concentrating, looked up at just the right moment and managed to stop? Had you left you home 1 second earlier you'd have been in a crash!

I believe God prevents many crashes by prompting people at just the right moment, or delaying for just the right amount of time. He saves people all the time and they don't even know it. Who knows what tyrants the world has been saved from?

So God has drawn a line, not where you or I would draw it, but we have to trust there is good reason for it, which we will come to in a later blog.

In the next blog we will see why God allows natural disasters, diseases etc and how even those things are connected to us.

Don't give up following these blogs, otherwise you won't get a full picture.

Feel free to post any questions. I'll do my best to answer to address them all at some point.