The perennial question

The perennial question, "Why does God allow suffering?"

On top of that, a God of Love.

Well, let me break some things down first. First off, let me define love. See, the word love in the English language is quite vague unlike in Greek where there are different terms for different kinds of love. I will keep the definition of love within the bounds of religion for the sake of theme of this site. Love is a choice. Love is to seek what's the best for the beloved. What love is not is a feeling. Feelings come and go whereas a choice is something we commit to. God loves us all no matter who we are, even if we've rejected Him.

Now let's tackle the perennial question that plaques philosophy and theology. Simple answer is we cannot definitively know. However, the Church seemed to have made guidelines. God is all knowing, all loving and all good. Yet evil still exists. And in some cases, evil gets very personal. God allows suffering to protect a particular good. One of which is free will. If God did not allow evil, there would be a loss of something important in the universe. Remember what I said about love which is a choice. If there is no free will, we cannot love or even choose to do otherwise.

On another perspective, suffering is similar to this situation: when parents brings a child for innoculation. To the child, all he knows is that he is being taken to a strange place with strange people. All of a sudden, the parents that he knows that love him hold him down and he experiences pain from the innoculation. A child will not understand this from his perspective. But the parents have certainly good reason for this, don't they? They do not wish for their child to suffer from disease in the future. The innoculation spares the child from such. Similarly, we cannot definitively know why God allows suffering yet we may aspire to know and understand.

All hope is not lost, however. God enters into all suffering to bring something good out of them. We may not see it immediately but He is there to work good. Let us not also forget that God Himself entered into suffering which he freely accepted. And He never promised that life would be happy or pleasurable. He said that if we want to follow Him, we must take up our crosses (Luke 14:27). He also mentioned that we need to endure until the end (Matthew 24:13, Mark 13:13).


(Source: Catholic Answers Live. Nov. 9, 2004 episode)