“Why would a loving God have allowed
suffering to occur?”
As will be seen, there are several reasons
why God would allow suffering to occur in the world, but if God is
unconditional love, then all of them would have to be linked to the advancement
of love. Thus, if God allows human beings to cause suffering to one another, He
does so for reasons of advancing the free appropriation of love; and if God
created an imperfect world with natural laws which indirectly cause suffering He
would have done so for the same reason. In this view, God does not directly
cause suffering (except to impede those headed toward imminent
self-destruction), and if He allows suffering, He does so to advance love and
to strengthen His invitation to eternal unconditional love.
Well, then, if God does not directly cause
suffering (except to impede those headed toward imminent self-destruction), and
is therefore only an indirect cause of suffering, what or who are the true
direct causes of suffering? There are two major sources beyond ourselves:
1. Other human beings
2. Nature
God should be likened to the most
compassionate and affectionate of parents who would gladly suffer in the place
of his/her child, but realizes that this child must make her own decisions and
must deal with the challenges of life as a free human agent. It seems that an
unconditionally loving God would suffer with everyone who suffers, and would redeem
every scintilla of suffering through His providence for all eternity. It seems
that an unconditionally loving God would allow suffering to occur if it could
lead to our choice of a more authentic love and life which could last for
eternity. The key thing to remember is that God has an eternal perspective. He
also has an unconditionally loving perspective.
The
Intrinsic Relationship of Freedom and Love
So why would an unconditionally loving God
allow human beings to cause suffering to one another? In a phrase, because love
requires the freedom to be unloving, and “unlove” frequently causes suffering.
In other words, without the capacity to cause suffering (through choices of
unlove), human beings could not be truly loving..
If God were to create a creature incapable of
unlove, He would also have to create a creature incapable of love, because the
very powers of self-consciousness and imagination enabling one to envision
one’s self in the future can lead equally to jealousy or magnanimity,
egocentricity or altruism, arrogance or humility, greed or generosity, anger or
kindness, hatred or love. To render a being incapable of jealousy is to render
it incapable of magnanimity. To render it incapable of egocentricity is to
render it incapable of altruism. Ultimately, to render a being incapable of
hatred is to render it incapable of love.
If God is to create a loving being, He must
create that being with the capacity to create a loving action; and if He is to
create a being with that capacity, He must create a being with the capacity to
choose love or unlove; and if He creates a being with that capacity, He creates
the very possibility of unlove leading to suffering.
God does not create the actuality of
suffering in the world, but only the possibility of suffering, by creating
agents who have the real choice. God must create this possibility; otherwise,
He could not create a free agent, and therefore, could not create a loving
being – that is, He could not create a beloved with the freedom to love others
with a love that is its own.
Could
God Eliminate Human Evil through Continuous Miraculous Intervention?
There can be little doubt that God does
intervene in our lives through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (in our own
lives and the lives of people around us), in little and great conspiracies of
providence, and even in outright miracles. But these occasions are rare – very
rare – because they truly represent interruptions in the free action of human
beings.
In this scenario, God becomes the giant
behavioristic conditioner in the sky. He so frequently lowers the boom on
anticipated evil that He conditions most people (out of fear or desperation) to
avoid evil. Unfortunately those people did not choose to avoid it, but rather
reacted to the continuous negative stimulus of attempting it. In the end, God
would only have succeeded in creating people who treat their boss with respect
even though they utterly hate him; or treat their coworkers with respect out of
fear of the dreaded boss. Whatever this is, it is not love. If God wants us to
choose love, He has to allow us the real possibility of unlove, a real
possibility which is not cloaked in fear, hindrance, and retribution.
The problem with God eradicating only some
really terrible people is that human ingenuity will discover it, and when it is
discovered, the process of conditioning (on the basis of fear) will begin.
People of common sense will not approach the line even though they desire it;
and the ones who would approach the line wouldn’t have a chance. They’d be dead
or rendered incapacitated before they knew what happened to them. God must
avoid this kind of behavioral conditioning in all its forms; for it interferes
with our freedom for unlove in all its forms, which ultimately interferes with
our freedom to love in all its forms.
God so loves the world, and God so wants us
to love one another, that He will respect our freedom, and restrain Himself
from interfering with that freedom, even in the most egregious situations and
with the most egregiously offensive people. The price of love is not only the
capacity for unlove, but the real possibility of unlove.
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