In several of the past few blogs, we have talked about the millions that have been tortured, tormented, and killed by various governments who were attempting to restructure their society according to their vision. The question many of us have asked is: Where was God?
How can we say God is responsible for all this suffering? As Mark Twain explains, if God controls all events in our world and in our lives that makes him responsible for everything that happens to our world and to us including all the evil and suffering.
“. . .nothing can happen without his knowledge beforehand that it is going to happen; nothing happens without his permission; nothing can happen that he chooses to prevent. . .[This] makes the Creator distinctly responsible for everything that happens. . .[It makes] the Creator responsible for all those pains, diseases, and miseries. . .” [1]
If God brought suffering into people’s lives because of their wrong doing and the suffering was proportional to their actions, we most likely would not ask this question of God. However, history is full of examples of innocent people, innocent children, suffering horribly. So why does God bring evil and suffering into the lives of innocent people?
Weatherford notes that our experience of evil “is the most philosophically important evidence against the existence of an all-powerful, all-good divinity.” [2] So if God wants us to believe in him, why does he not make his presence known amidst all the suffering that occurs on a daily bases on our planet?
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[1] Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc, 1962, p. 33.
[2] Roy Weatherford, The Implications of Determinism, New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 10.
