Pain and suffering in a world created by God - Sunday 17th May 2009.

This is an address given to pupils at Sunday Evening Prayer by an Upper Sixth Form pupil.

Well, this isn't me rapping at d-factor, nor is it me being hoodwinked into posing as a ridiculous Valentine's Day mascot in front of the whole school.

No, I'd like to talk today about a common problem that many people, especially young people, have today.

These people, not only in Britain but around the world, are bothered by a single question, "Why does a perfect, all loving God allow mindless pain and suffering in the world if he himself, is perfect?"

A good question, as pain and suffering not only affect us every day in our lives but makes, at first glance, a valid reason why some might say that God may not be the perfect being that Christians around the world believe in today.

So what are the options here? How can a perfect God allow mindless pain and suffering in the world? At first, two answers come to mind.they go like this.

The first answer that comes to mind is that "God is all powerful, but not loving enough to stop the mindless pain and suffering that goes on in the world". This is concise with the biblical view that God is indeed omnipotent (all powerful and able); But, contradicts the Bible as it implies that God is not benevolent (all loving and caring). So God is able to stop the mindless suffering, but chooses through his own will not to.

Or, the second answer could be that "God is, indeed, benevolent (all loving and caring) but is not powerful enough to stop mindless pain and suffering in the world". This is the opposite to the first answer in that it agrees with the Bible that God is all loving and caring, but contradicts it when it says that God is not all powerful. So this argument says that God does love us but he doesn't do anything about mindless suffering only because he can't (i.e. he is not powerful enough).

Now both of these answers leave Christianity in a bit of a dilemma. Because, at first glance, the original question (Why does a perfect, all loving God allow mindless pain and suffering in the world) seems to make God, at least in Christianity, seem impossible. There cannot be, it seems, a God that is both omnipotent and benevolent at the same time.

But. people around the globe still believe that there can be - why? Is it because we just want comfort in our lives?

Unlikely, because (1) that works for atheism just as much as it works for religion (2) if it was comfort you wanted you could do a lot better than Christianity (3) belief in God is only comforting if you have a good reason to think that its true.

So, a third answer, a radically different answer, must exist to this question of suffering in the world.

Imagine that, in a few years time when you've got a job, your married etc., you have a son. Now this son, for the first few years of his life, you would be in complete control of him as a parent should. Yet you would also love him dearly and would never wish any harm on him.

Now suppose, when he became about 7 years old, he liked to ride a skateboard outside the house and one day he fell off and grazed himself on the tarmac.

What would be your next actions?

Would you say to him, "oh dear never mind" and not try to give him any advice on how to ride it afterwards?

Of course not.This would just mean that the child could fall over more and more and eventually run out of confidence to try it again. This is ultimately a parent who loves their child but cannot do anything (even give advice) to stop him falling off.

Alternatively, would you say "you idiot" and take away his skateboard to never let him ride it again? Unlikely. this would mean that for every accident he had anywhere he would never learn from his mistakes, which would not prepare him for the real world. It would be selfish of you to take away the child's right to learn for himself. These are the actions of a parent who has control over him but does not love him enough to give him a second chance or support to skate again.

Or, you could bandage his wound, give him some advice on how he could ride the skateboard more carefully and give him an arm to lean on while he skates until he gets better, so that he could learn for himself the best way to ride it?

This is probably the best answer to this problem and the option I think that most of you would choose as well.

And yet, being the best answer, this does not sacrifice the parent being able to love their son, nor does it sacrifice the parent's full control over him.

Who's to say that God could not act in this way if a normal person can? He gives helpful advice, an arm to lean on during tough times and gives us courage to learn from our mistakes so that we can find the best way to live our lives. Yet he still remains Omnipotent and Benevolent.

However this way of portraying God does not account for what we may call mindless pain and suffering. On the skateboard it is obvious why the boy suffers - he is inexperienced and like every other kid falls over a few times and learns, with help, from his mistakes. But in other cases it is not so obvious.

At the time of the terrible tsunami at the beginning of 2005, many people questioned saying "where is your God?" and "why did he not help those poor people?"

There have been many an event like this in history and still the questions keeps coming up "where was your God".

But before we move on lets take a look at the original question again (why does a perfect God allow mindless suffering in a world which he created?). Now I send a question back. how do you know it's mindless? If I asked any of you why you thought something was mindless you would say, "Because I can't think of a reason for it". Is it possible that we're being too trusting of our own faculties when we say that something is senseless?

I'm sure that all of you can remember a time that someone close to you decided not to tell you something (even if it would not directly affect you). and all you would think is - why isn't he/she telling me what it is? And you would probably come to the conclusion that there was no sense in them not telling you. However this does not mean that they do not have a good reason for not telling you.

The same can be said for God's actions, just because you can't see a reason for what he does, doesn't mean that there isn't one.

Let's take an example. a true story.

There was once a man who lived in New York City, called Shaun, who was a notorious drug dealer in the Bronx district

After a few years in the business he was at a drug deal where something in the deal had gone wrong and the man next to him tried to take a shot at his face with a powerful sawn-off shotgun.

He managed to get to a hospital and survived but he was blinded and scared for the rest of his life as the shot just caught him.

At this point one might ask "how could God bring any good out of this". But it is not until afterwards we understand just how God could.

After the near fatal experience, Shaun realised that the life he had been living was a complete waste and could have very nearly ended his life. He felt that this was a serious wake-up call to his conscience and therefore he thought to change his ways by living according to the Bible, which he thought gave the best moral values that he could try to live by. He is now a pastor at a local church in New York. To a close friend of his he recently said, "After that terrifying night my physical eyes were closed- and my spiritual eyes opened".

Perhaps now we can see how God played a role in saving his spirit, as it was pretty much destined for hell, when it seemed that there could be no good explanation at the time.

This is slightly mundane, let's take the ultimate example, the single most seemingly mindless act the world has ever seen, the death of Jesus Christ.

What did humans do to the one man who could save the world from sin, evil and death and bring everyone to new life in Heaven? They hated him, beat him senseless, slashed him with bladed whips tearing his body to shreds, forcefully wrapped a crown of thorns around his head, nailed him to a cross and left him to die.

That seems just about the most stupid and mindless thing that anyone could ever do.

And where was God? Even Jesus didn't seem to know this when he shouted "My God, My God!! Why have thou forsaken me?" From the cross. If you were there when it happened you would say "I don't see how God could ever bring anything good out of this".

But God was not letting this happen for no purpose, Oh no!! Through these seemingly insane actions, God was creating his master plan - through the death of himself, in Jesus Christ on the cross, he paid for the sins for which everyone on earth had ever committed so that we could be completely forgiven and join him after our death, in a perfect world, the new earth. So in fact, amazing/ infinite good came out of that.

I tell you what would be senseless, if God had done all of this and there was no sin in the world. You see without sin, God could not do what he has promised to do, and that would make him imperfect.

The reason we don't usually understand why he does what he does is, God is to smart - we are too dumb, God is too eternal -we're too temporal, Gods perspective is perfect and ours too limited to usually see what God is doing.

The only reason we know why this insanity happened on the cross, is because God decided to tell us, through his own appearances after death, through his own words, through the Bible (we have a whole book on why it happened) - without this knowledge given to us by God, we would still not be able to come up with the reason for the horrific death and crucifixion of Jesus. Yet it would not mean that a reason didn't exist.

So. out of what seemed the most senseless thing the entire world had ever seen, came the greatest act of love that could ever happen. The self sacrifice of a perfect person to save imperfect people from their own actions and bring them into perfect life.

Now if God had such a great plan for the most mindless act on earth, then why should we think he hasn't got a plan for everything else?

We've already established that we may not be able to think of a reason for all of them, but that does not mean that they aren't there.

And a there will be a reason, because it says in Romans 8 -28 "All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose."

Now there is one final thing that one might argue, why wasn't everything good in the first place, why do we have to experience evil? Can't everything just be good from the start?

The answer is no, not everything can just be good from the start, let me explain why.

Let's imagine again, you're having a bad dream in which all of your family have left you, its horrible, you're in a broken home, you have no one left and all you long for is your family back.

When you wake up, you realise just how grateful you are that you have your family and you understand just how much they really mean to you. Without the nightmare, or even just without thinking about it, you would never realise to such an extent how much you love them and what they mean to you.

In the same way without this life, full of sin and suffering for everyone, we could never fully understand the power of good or how it feels when you feel the absence of anything bad, how it feels when you are, even just for a second, at perfect harmony with the world. That is why evil is in fact, in this life, a necessity.

We see examples of things like this in other aspects of our universe as well, things like - positive charge couldn't exist if there were no negative charge, matter would not exist without antimatter, a male couldn't be called male if there were no female, joy wouldn't be joyful if there was no pain, good would not be good without evil.

So if we want to live life to its fullest potential, the reasons for which God made it for in the first place, we must work our way past evil to get to the good that God has planned for us. To understand that good, we must also understand evil. To understand evil, however one may look at it, we have to experience it first hand, and that is the reason for the sinfulness we see in the world today, it must happen if we are to understand good.

So, to conclude, we may not be able to think of the reasons behind the suffering that we all experience. But remember this, God has always got the best plans for each and every one of us, though we may not see them at the time, we will see or maybe already have seen, that God's plans are working in our favour, one way or another.

Thank you.