Sunday School: Suffering
Why if God is truly all Holy, all Loving and all-knowing does evil, injustice and suffering exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? Should evil be allowed to exist?
Before we discuss evil and suffering at a deeper level, we must discuss free will. God gave us the capacity to freely choose between Him and goodness or the world and evil. Adam and Eve were already made in the image and likeness of God. Satan tricked Eve tempting her to just eat this and “you will become like God.” As a result, Adam and Eve rebelled choosing their own path, the path of disunion and ultimately, death. God did not create evil, but by giving us the capacity to choose, he allowed us to choose it freely and thus evil entered the world.
Why does God allow evil to seemingly flourish? Wouldn’t a truly loving God intervene? Miraculous interventions do occur occasionally, but rarely. If miracles weren’t rare, wouldn’t we quickly take them for granted? To prevent evil, God would have to constantly interfere with the exercise of free will. God does not want robots, he wants his flesh and blood, beautifully made, but sometimes rebellious children to turn away from their own path and to live a life of self-sacrificial love for the other.
God wants us to freely choose to live our lives in communion with Him and our fellow man. Our Byzantine Catholic Faith teaches we can live a “grace filled” life of self-sacrificial love where lives and persons are transformed by the healing touch of His Sacred Mysteries. Love desires to be loved for its own sake. True love requires sacrifice, as in the parable of grain of wheat. When we die to self, new life comes forth in abundance.
From the Saints and Others
“If God is the Creator of all things and evil is a thing, then God is the Creator of evil and He is to be blamed for its existence. No, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice. Evil is no more a positive thing than blindness is, but it is just as real.” – Peter Kreeft
“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.” – ILN, 10/23/09 – G. K. Chesterton
“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can’t. If a thing is free to be good it’s also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. … The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they’ve got to be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (…) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.” ― C.S. Lewis
On Disputes
As discussed in the previous weeks, moral standards do exist, and the fact they do exist can demonstrate God’s existence, not completely, but it is a forceful argument. Natural Science only tells us what is, not what ought to be.
But what about the problem of evil action and the fact natural disasters not caused by human action lead to unfair suffering and even death? If God is a loving God, why does he allow these to occur? The videos for this week discuss the problem of evil and the counter arguments to those who claim the existence of evil proves God does not exist.
Indirect proof from evil for the existence of God: If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Evil does exist. Therefore objective moral values do exist because some acts are truly evil, even non-believers must acknowledge this fact. Therefore God does exist.
Even though evil can be seen to call God’s existence into question, in a deeper sense it actually demonstrates It because without God there can’t be any foundation for declaring anything evil. But we know evil does exist, it’s all around us every day. Defining it, however, requires a standard or, better put, a standard maker; God. Next week will take up the topic of suffering and why we can see how God allows it, and how we should respond when we suffer
Challenges
Read from one of the Gospels for five minutes every day. Take three minutes afterward to think about what you read.
Choose a prayer space at home for a daily conversation with God. Make sure a Bible is handy for your use along with any images or items (natural or manmade) that help you focus your mind on God. Spend at least 10 minutes being still, with as few distractions as possible.
Practice your listening skills. Meet with a close friend or family member. For a full five minutes, listen attentively, asking questions as needed.