There can be no argument on this one.
There is a lot of suffering in this world.
There is a lot of broken stuff and there are a lot of broken people. There are angry broken people who harm themselves and others and there are innocent people who are broken due to illness, misfortune, and circumstances beyond their control.
In a word, our world is not the way it should be.
If God is all powerful and all knowing, then why is this world, his world, such a mess? In a lot of different ways, I hear people ask this question. When they don’t get the answer that they want, they often reject God.
So……how do we reconcile an all powerful, all knowing creator, God……….with a world that is such a mess…….a planet that is, in fact, dying right before our eyes?
There are several factors:
The first is that the world we live in and the culture that we live in are not anywhere close to what God had in mind. God created a sustainable ecosystem. He put us in it, gave us free will, and left us in charge. We rebelled and it has been downhill ever since. That story pretty much summarizes the old testament.
The second is that God hasn’t cleaned up our mess. He certainly could if he wanted to. Maybe he has lost interest. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he figures that we deserve the mess we’ve made. Maybe this mess is our punishment. While those are possible explanations, I think that the real reason is more complex.
The real reason has to do with free will. Our free will is very important to God. God would prefer that we fix the mess ourselves. Most of the new testament deals with guidelines that would fix our world and our culture……….if we would only follow them.
The two central guidelines?
Love God and love your fellow man.
These guidelines are closely tied to free will. And that is where the trouble begins. Love is closely tied to free will. Love must be given freely without compulsion. Love that is forced by compulsion is not love at all. And what God wants from us……in fact, the only thing God wants from us……..is love. You cannot have love without free will……….and you cannot have free will without love.
So…….in order to get the only thing he wants……love…… God is stuck with our free will……and with the mess it has created on his planet and in our culture.
The irony here is that the suffering that we see every day is a direct result of the free will that God had to give us in order to get the only thing that he wants from us…….love.
God wants love.
Love requires free will.
Free will creates choice.
Choice can be good or bad.
Bad choices create suffering.
And that is the history of mankind in five lines.
That is why we are in the mess that we are in.
I have to believe that God has hope in love.
I have to believe that God is conflicted by our use and misuse of free will.
I have to believe that God is profoundly saddened by the suffering that we create.
Suffering, it turns out, is not the creation of God. The suffering that we see and experience every day……..is our own creation. It grows out of our misuse of God’s gift………….free will.
God is not indifferent to our suffering
God suffers with us.
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.
Moses, NIV
I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life,
Moses, NIV