Not satisfied with the answers regarding God allowing suffering

Curiousmind said:

hi,

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Br,

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Not sure why you would think you should have a life with no suffering. But for whatever it is worth, according to the Old Testament, God took the Children of Israel through suffering so they would learn to obey and love him. Just something to think about.

This life is about Christ, not you. And that is a very liberating principle.

Curiousmind said:

hi,

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Br,

Click to expand...

You can't have beings who can truly know God or be like God if that being has never experienced pain and suffering, or hasn't ever suffered in the very kind of exact same ways that God has first, etc. That's the number one reason for it above and beyond anything else, etc. Since we then also couldn't have a truly intimate and deeply personal/intimate relationship with Him ever either also, etc, and we most definitely wouldn't truly know Him at all, etc, if we didn't at first know a thing or two about a very unique kind of sometimes very intense/painful/evil, very unique kind of pain and suffering fiirst, etc. And it's also possible that it could keep us out of Heaven also, if we didn't know a thing or two about that personally first, etc.

In Isaiah it says about the seed that was to come that would crush Satan's head (Jesus), etc, anyway, it says that even He had to first learn about the bad in order to reject the bad and choose the good first, etc, and that may be true of the rest of us as well and/or also, etc. Which would mean that we would need to experience some or a lot of bad first to get us to do that first, etc. And it's very possible also that, unless we know a thing or two about that first, it could (like I just now said earlier, but feel it needs repeating, etc) anyway, unless we know a thing or two, or a maybe even a great deal about that first, it could keep us from having a quote/unquote "real relationship" with God firstly, etc, (because we wouldn't/couldn't ever truly know Him, etc) and then secondly, or nextly, could also maybe keep us out of Heaven next, etc. And those are some of the number one primary reasons for it, etc.

It's not easy to get beings that you wish to grant full autonomy to, to know all about all the bad, but never choose it, but always only ever choose the good only, unless they've suffered a lot first, etc. And in some cases I mean like "a lot, a lot" first, etc. And that's one of the number one primary reasons for it, etc.

God Bless.

In the Bible it says we can have a truly deep and personal and intimate relationship with God through our shared bad experiences/sufferings, etc, and that this is one of the most highest and primary ways to have a very, very true, and very, very deep, deep close personal, and very intimate relationship with Him, etc.

God Bless.

This is also why the Bible would say "absolutely crazy and completely insane things" like about how we should all "rejoice and leap for joy when we are counted worthy to suffer the very same kind of things, or suffer in some of the very same exact kinds of ways that God always has/does/did", etc.

"Completely insane" right? Cause you certainly can go insane sometimes because of things like that/this sometimes, or when you do sometimes go through things like this, etc. I'm living proof of that, etc.

God Bless.

Curiousmind said:

hi,

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Br,

Click to expand...

This is the age of satan, man chose suffering over perfection and no suffering. So God is letting this age play out and when this age does come to an end, after extremely great suffering. The next age, which is the Messianic age (1000 years) suffering will be basically nonexistent, people who die at 100, are thought of as being accursed.

Curiousmind said:

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Click to expand...

I had that mindset for a while, but it was selfish and harmful to myself and others and caused (surprise surprise) more suffering.

Largely because it enabled distance from God, and I think that you will find that distance from God is the root of
most suffering. Suffering is not necessarily the same thing as pain; not all pain is suffering. Suffering is when reality is
experienced as pain (whether that reality is painful or not). A jogger running a marathon experiences pain, but he is not
suffering, he is conquering. Two people can have a toothache, and neither want it. But one may suffer from the toothache, letting it dominate their reality and cloud out all other experience, and the other endures the toothache because they've learned that there are bigger things beyond it.

There are terrible pains and sufferings, that I think are beyond the limits of human endurance; some turn to God and find
that endurance. Others curse God for it and don't. I too, wish their were less. But my business is not to add to it, and to help
where I can. (at least it should be) In some sense, I think we are or will be measured by this.

"You put me in a world with all this suffering!"
"Yes... and what did you do then?"

If you put it like that, it's obvious what the right answer should be. And it's also obvious that we've been choosing the wrong one.

I always liked this particular viewpoint and quote

===
Why, we ask, should the entire human race suffer because of Adam's fall? Why should all be punished because of one man's sin? The answer is that human beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, are interdependent and coinherent. No man is an island. We are 'members one of another' (Eph. 4:25), and so any action, performed by any member of the human race, inevitably affects all the other members. Even though we are not, in the strict sense, guilty of the sins of others, yet we are somehow always involved.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way
===

And if you look closely, you will see that the door can swing both ways, both for good and for bad. Your choice, my choice, our choice.

I don’t know why God endures some suffering, debilitating, it takes almost everything even the will to live. God says He is pleased with the way it is being handled and helps little. But He doesn’t give suffering in every instance. It happens and He doesn’t always heal it. There is a silver lining though….

suffering can come after a good life and it ends badly. Like Job. But he got rewarded and we don’t. God was proving a point. But He is not to be blamed. What we can see is pretty horrid. But what we can’t see is his building, building, building a great reward for those who hate their life on earth and keep going to the finish. No apparent purpose but doing Gods will anyway. We are not here to be glorified. We are here to get to glory by whatever means at our disposal.

Suffering isn’t the goal but an eternal weight of glory to follow

we suffer from our mistakes, for doing wrong sometimes from our youth for the rest of our lives. But there is still the way. God is good he doesn’t leave us alone. No one can touch our suffering,not the deepest preacher. But God is there. He knows. It happens. We have got to tap into Him.

I like that getting our endurance from Him.

Curiousmind said:

hi,

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Br,

Click to expand...

This is an interesting read....only 13% actually blame God.

Curiousmind said:

hi,

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Br,

Click to expand...

What answers do you know of??

Curiousmind said:

hi,

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Br,

Click to expand...

Suffering is a mystery. So many 'Why...'s and so much silence from the all-knowing God.

From my own wrestling with these questions, my advice is to seek Jesus' face in prayer. He wants to embrace you and He thirsts for your love and companionship.

When we get to Heaven and stand before God, and He reveals all that He accomplished through our suffering, for our benefit and for the benefit of others, will we consider it worth it?

If someone comes up to us in Heaven and says, "thank you, man! I watched what you went through and yet you kept the faith through it all. It inspired me to do the same!" Will that one person be reward enough for enduring it all for the mere speck in time that was this life of seeming contradictions?

Most specific to the latest question, what about the person who appears to suffer for no reason at all, through no fault of their own?

I would refer them to the example of Joni Earekson Tada. Healthy, vibrant, athletic. And a woman of prayer. Innocently dove off a boat one day headfirst into an unknown sandbar. Broke her neck and paralyzed from the shoulders down. She essentially asked God, "really God? The rest of my life in a wheelchair? THIS is your answer to my prayers?"

Well, despite the temptation to remain in a state of doubt and perpetually critiquing her Creator, she dedicated herself to keeping her faith in His goodness no matter what, and to continue to proclaim His Gospel to as many as would listen.

She's been a quadriplegic for 57 years now. 57 years of almost utter dependence on someone else to provide all her needs. Somewhere along the line she developed scoliosis. Many years ago the pain meds stopped working, so she is in almost perpetual pain. She has nights where she gets only a few hours of sleep and says she wakes up utterly empty inside. She has the humility to admit that she asks her husband to pray for her that she won't lose her faith.

Pretty heavy? Well that ain't all. She's developed cancer, twice - and beat it thus far. She got Covid. And I don't know what else. I watched a recent video of her giving a speech and she said she had planned to prepare it, but that she had been bedridden for 2 weeks, so was just gonna wing it. And her resulting testimony knocked my socks off.

So what is the point to all of her faithful endurance of suffering? Well, quite frankly, God chose her to bear much fruit in this life. Somehow over the years, she has managed to attract a huge ministry through books, a radio program, YouTube videos, lectures, sermons and a foundation that services thousands of disabled people - of every stripe - physically, mentally, economically, ect. In her 70's, she is still in high demand around the world.

How does she do it? I heard her once explain that when she gets too focused on her suffering and beginning to doubt, she contemplates the depth of Christ's suffering for us. For the world.

Just this weekend we celebrated His suffering on the cross. Consider, though, that the cross wasn't all He endured. For the first 30 years here, He walked amongst people who were suffering the effects of sin, and He knew that He was the answer, yet He had to hurt for them silently while the Father was preparing Him for His time.

Then He begins His ministry - heals and feeds and raises the dead and teaches and reveals the very heart of God's compassion - and yet few genuinely believe. Instead He is criticized for being a drunkard, a glutton, an associate of prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners - accused of being possessed by demons and being a madman. Even the people who laid down palm branches and shouted "Hosanna in the highest" turned on Him. And finally His disciples deserted Him. The final response of this Man of Sorrows acquainted with our grief, the only truly innocent Man to ever walk the earth, a High Priest who bore our weaknesses?

"Father, forgive them, they know not what they do".

Here's the kicker. You would think that would be enough, but He is suffering still. Everything we go through, He goes through with us - because He indwells us. In fact, to talk about suffering, He and the Father have been enduring it intensely for all of human history. Re-read God's laments over His people throughout the Old Testament. And consider how profoundly Jesus reflected the Father's compassion in weeping over Jerusalem, and in being "deeply moved in Spirit" over those mourning over Lazarus. All without imposing His will while yearning from the depths of His being for our salvation and fellowship.

Isn't that enough demonstration of God's goodness and compassion for our sorry state to warrant our faith that He knows what He's doing in the things we don't understand? And to put our full faith in His Son and in His Word? To pick up our cross and follow Him?

Romans 8:18-21 NIV

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

God bless!

Curiousmind said:

kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.

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Curiousmind said:

I am refering to suffering that is not your fault for example drunk driver hitting you and you get paralyzed

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How would you organize the world differently? What should happen when an object hits you? How would you arrange the physical laws?

Curiousmind said:

organizing reality like it is now

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God is our resource for making good out of any situation. Jesus on the cross has used that for so much good.

There is "the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience," our Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2:2.

This earth is where Satan and his evil spirit are, for now . . . being processed on their way to hell. And while God is processing Satan and his kingdom to where they will spend eternity . . . God is adopting children to become conformed to the image of Jesus. We have been adopted out of Satan's kingdom. And we are staying here, now, so we can reach others and help them to get adopted, too.

But this is an evil world. This is where Satan and his people are being kept, here on earth as a prisoner-of-war camp. And we are in charge with Jesus who is the Lord of all. With Jesus, we can make His good use of anything.

And Jesus left Heaven itself in order to come here to reach us and get us saved and adopted to become children of God. So, we don't need to be wishing to hide ourselves in our own little self-made heavens here, I would say. Jesus left Heaven itself; consider what that could be like, to leave Heaven and come here with things the way they are here. But Jesus is able to make this good for us.

"'Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.'" (Matthew 11:29)

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21)

"Test all things; hold fast what is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

When things come to test us . . . test them for what God has us doing with them for His good. God knows the good we can have, in any situation; so put every thing to the test, to see what is the good that we can have with God

Curiousmind said:

hi,

So I almost know all the standard answers regarding why God allows suffering in the world, but thing is I am not satisfied with the answers and kinda a bit dissapointed in God for organizing reality like it is now, I want it to be organized differently.
I wouldn't mind if God decided to destroy me and everything else and start all over again.

Br,

Click to expand...

God is about Free will. Free will is about being able to make your own decisions. About gaining wisdom.
You cannot have free will or wisdom without suffering.
Would you prefer to give up free will?

Maybe it is not suffering you are having a challenge with. Maybe there is no Joy. If you cannot give God the Glory for the suffering, you likely will have little Joy in your ife.

Peace and Blessings