Why would a loving God have allowed suffering to occur

  “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.

If God does not directly cause suffering 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: Other human beings and 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.

So why would an unconditionally loving God allow human beings to cause suffering to one another? 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 behavior 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. Only God can give a truly satisfactory answer this Why. We must ask God and He may have a unique answer for each one who asks like a child.