(147) Bob’s Suffering Conundrum

Author:  Steve
To:  Bob (John listening)

I like your notion of spiritual optimism.  In some respects, this might be synonymous with “faith,” a trust or hope that something is true even if it can’t be proved.  You add the following qualifying conditions:  it is not illogical, it is not disproved by empirical evidence, and it is not offensive to conscience.  I concur.

With these qualifying conditions on faith, you then suggest that a God who selectively intervenes to mitigate suffering for some people but not all is beyond your faith.  For such a faith seems illogical and offensive to conscience.  You take my examples of Job and Joseph to question how a God we admire (or worship) could allow the death of many others in helping Job and Joseph grow spiritually.  Such “collateral damage” is not good or god-like.

Let me take a run at your logic, to see if I might help you see God through my interpretive eyes.  First, as you have admitted yourself, physical death and exit from this life could actually pave the way for an eternity of glory and perfect union with God.  So even though Job’s servants died at the hands of wicked men, and his children died in a natural disaster, that is not necessarily the end of their lives.  Similarly, the Israelites who died of starvation (other than Joseph’s family) could now be enjoying eternity with God.

That is the weakest of my responses, and quite frankly, less than satisfying for me.  Nonetheless, I trust that God can make good out of bad.  Perhaps the worst thing that can happen to us in this life is to lose our life or lose a loved one.  But from such tragedy springs the greatest of all good -- eternity with our heavenly Father. 

Now, let me dig a bit deeper to the core of your concerns about my illogical and morally offensive view that God can and does selectively intervene.  For those that believe such seem to suggest that God is less than good if he helps some while allowing others to suffer.  Your premise appears to build on the following cornerstone:  God’s desire to grant man free will trumps his desire to protect us from evil.  These two goals are mutually exclusive.  I disagree.   

I believe God “nudges” us, sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully – but never to the point that he substitutes his action for our choice.  I’ll try a few examples to illustrate. 
God gently nudged Jonah to deliver a message to the inhabitants of Nineveh to cease their wicked ways. 

God had a two-fold good purpose:  to help the Ninevites start leading better lives and to help Jonah become more compassionate.  The self-centered Jonah flees from this assignment, telling God he can save them without his help.  God more forcefully nudges Jonah by sending a storm and then later a rescue.  Jonah finally decides to deliver the message, grudgingly.  The inhabitants are now presented with a choice:  take heed or ignore the warning.  They chose repentance and reap the benefits of reconciliation with God.  Jonah, however, chooses to remain self-centered, concerned more with his own physical comfort than with the fate of an entire city.  God intervened, but he allowed man to choose goodness or not. 

In the New Testament, Jesus stepped between an angry mob and the adulterous woman they were preparing to stone to death.  (Regardless of whether you believe Jesus is the Son of God or a son of God, he intervened as inspired by God.)  He presented the mob with a choice.  Stone her or spare her.  “Anyone without fault, cast the first stone.”  The mob chooses to disperse.  He offers a similar choice to the woman, go and sin no more.  (Presumably, the mob will be back if she’s caught in adultery again.) 

Hitler was exposed to the Christian faith in his early life.  God was nudging him to good.  He obviously chose a wicked and destructive path.  The Holocaust victims had no choice on their subsequent physical fate, but survivors had a choice on their attitude and spiritual growth.  Corrie Ten Boom, a surviving victim, was raised in a Christian home.  The Lord led her to the Bible and Mathew 5: 44-45, “But I say, love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you.  In that way, you will be acting as true sons of your Father in heaven.”  She chose to forgive and write about her experience as an encouragement to others.   

The old saying is trite, but seems to apply here.  “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”  It seems God leads us to choices, with the loving desire to see us draw closer to him by emulating his character.  However, he will not force us to make his desired choice.  We inflict serious damage on ourselves and others when we choose the evil path. 

Perhaps in these examples, and maybe others from your own life, you can see God at work leading man to make good choices.  That is a good and loving God that we can believe in.  

In this life, we will all suffer – some far more than others.  In a sense, God does allow his gift for choice to trump his gift for good.  But he does not take a laissez-faire, hands off approach with us.  He does not delight in the suffering we endure or inflict.  He intervenes to help us and others make good choices, and he allows us to enjoy or suffer the consequences.  But at the end of our physical lives, his desire for our well-being is not trumped by our bad choices.  Repentant sinners -- yes, we all inevitably make bad choices -- are never separated permanently from his love.