The LORD is good to all
Psalms 145:9
The Problem of Pain:
If God is all loving and all powerful, then why is there suffering?
This is in response to arguments and people who use the problem of pain to say that God is cruel (not good) and therefore The God of The Bible is false. Which such questions, we cannot avoid delving into deeper philosophical underpinnings. For how can we judge someone as good or bad if we have no notion of what “good” or “bad” is? Who gets to say what’s good and what’s bad? Santa Claus? I’m actually curious how that phony will determine which children are “bad or good”.
When I deprive my daughter of ice cream to prevent her eczema from flaring up, am I being good or bad?
When God allowed wars to happen after showing and instructing us to love one another and commanding us not to kill (yet we still chose to kill one another); is God good or bad?
What a about a serial child rapist getting the death penalty? Is this good or bad?
Now one will joke saying that is good for society but bad for the rapist. How then is this standard of good and bad different from our personal weighing of what good or bad is? If this is the standard of morality which you are using (that what you feel is right is right and what you feel is wrong is wrong), then you and your arguments are not qualified to indict The Almighty.
On The prodigal son, the father knew what the world is out there. The father knew what will happen to his son should his son leave home. Was the father evil or at fault for allowing his son to leave?
God pleads to us. God sent servants, judges and prophets, and we literally killed all of them. Right even until God had one last card to play and that is His only Son. Now He sent His Son knowing what we will do to Him. Yet HE sent His one and only Son to us – to die. Now, was that an evil act?
Most people, from the way they judge God, believe that the prodigal son’s father should have just shackled his son to prevent him from leaving home. In the same way, God should have just imprisoned Jesus Christ in Heaven so He won’t die on Earth. This is what love is, right? But when our parents and the law restrict us of things we cry out because the injustice.
Which one is it? Do you want to be shackled by God’s laws or do you want to be able to do what you want? You can choose either one but what you can’t do is to choose things for yourself by yourself and not be held accountable for the consequences.
Did you read The Bible today as God has instructed?
Did you observe The Sabbath as He commanded?
No, you keep choosing to go out and be drunk while gambling and now you are broke and your family resents you. How is God not good because of that?
From your reasoning God will either be a tyrant for forcing you to stay at home, or an evil God for allowing you to waste your life away. Your flawed reasoning will never allow you to say God is good because if God is good then you have no one else to blame for your life but yourself! Like what I mentioned above, you and your arguments are not qualified to indict The Almighty!
So, I ask you again, is God evil if you play with fire and you get burnt?
This is basically what the problem is. Human beings want all the power, all the freedom, all the choice and control but none of the responsibility. You say God is not good because of all the sufferings and pain. Why shall God then be responsible for things man unilaterally decided to do? Did not man wanted freedom from His laws? Wasn’t man who tried to mock and disprove God?
Now what outcome do you expect for a world that has rejected God who is Good? Isn’t it logical that evil will thrive if you run away from that which is good? In the end, The Problem of Pain actually shows that there is God and we need to stop running away from Him!
Is God good? Like the prodigal son’s father, God wants you to come back to Him. One cannot run away from The Father then at the same time blame Him on why you ended up in the pig pen. Come back to your First Love and see that God truly is good and that only God is good. He is waiting for you with open arms (Luke 15:20).
Oh taste and see that God is good!
Psalm 34:8
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