Why is there pain in the world? How could a good God let suffering happen? Does God hear my prayers?
These questions are not new. Every culture throughout time has asked them. I asked them. I saw atrocities and injustices. Why did prayer not work to stop things from hurting people?
God answered one of my basic questions immediately. I simply asked God if he existed. He answered, “Yes.” It was as clear as if someone next to me spoke, but it resonated throughout my whole body. I sang for a week and knew for sure that he answered some prayers. However, that did not end my quest. I needed rational answers, and so kept asking.
I do not believe in the goody-goody God that cannot harm anything, or that he is so perfect that he must hide from sin in some faraway heaven. If God is omnipresent, then he is everywhere, no exceptions. The Creator exists with everyone, not just the good guys. That means he does not leave the worst murderers, rapists, and hypocritical church leaders while they plan and enact evil. Not one evil deed goes unnoticed. And, he let each continue their evil ways without stopping them.
But, that does not answer the question of, “Why pain?”
The Bible describes God with feelings. Some say the writers anthropomorphized God. Some say this was Jesus. I believe God has emotions. Being everywhere means God feels every person’s pain. He has been with every victim of every crime. Not one of them suffered or died alone. He shared their pain and ours.
God took responsibility for all that pain. He made a covenant with Abraham (Gen 15), but instead of letting Abraham pay the price for his children’s future sins, God accepted responsibility for those transgressions. In doing so, God took on himself the sins of the entire lineage of Adam, including those yet unborn. Jesus, who is God, consented to physical life and physical death to show us that he remains close in our suffering.
But, that does not answer the question of, “Why pain?”
Most prayers are petty, and even a contrite prayer about “impending doom” can sound petty in contrast to someone else’s troubles. I think God sees our petitions as if we are small children. We want what we want when we want it. NOW! Yet, throwing a tantrum or “praying hard” does not get us what we want. After a while, if we don’t receive what we want, we think bad things about God. He does not answer prayers. Maybe, he can’t answer prayers. God is mad at me. He hates me. He’s not good. However, saying, “No,” to a child is often the best answer. They don’t understand why, and they may never understand why, but it is still the best answer.
Prayer is not about getting stuff. It is not a magic wand to flick for miracles. Prayer can make us feel better if we pray often. That is because we are communicating our troubles and worries instead of bottling them up inside. God helps us work through problems and often shows us how our selfishness became the barrier to the solution. If we become upset with God, we stop communicating. Not surprisingly, the benefit of communication leaves, and all those troubles and worries stay within. That does not mean God did not hear or feel your frustration and distress. It merely means we need a way to release them, to grow past them.
A lot of pain originates with humans. We, as a society, inflict it upon ourselves and expect God to fix our troubles. Good people do not stand up to evil people who continue to spread their evil. Instead of stopping the bad people early on, we let it endure until we must go to war to end its spread. Conflicts happen globally and within families. Consequences are real, and churches are not immune. Atheists are not immune. All those involved are wounded psychologically.
My belief for why God does not stop these from happening is that the good people were supposed to act but did not. Leaders were supposed to teach righteousness, but the power-hungry became the leaders, and they preferred ritual and dogma that hid evil. Leaders were to teach inner healing but did not befriend those whose heart bled. A community’s morality and ethics become so distorted that they call good evil and evil good. God goes through all that pain with all those people, because we were not willing to step up early to fix our mess or help our neighbor.
That does not answer the second big question. “Why would a good God create a world with so much pain in the first place?”
The book of Job addresses that issue. His friends preferred to hunt for something to blame. In the end, God rejects their reasons. However, God gives a strange response to the question of “Why?” A paraphrased short version would read, “Because. That is how I made the world.”
That answer frustrated me for a long time, but the answer is there. We don’t understand because our teachings are those of Job’s friends. Biblically, God did not create a perfect world, nor did Adam’s sin corrupt recreate God’s world. Those concepts are not in the Bible. Our forefathers preferred to blame Satan or sin. They added to their beliefs because people do not comprehend why God’s creation included earthquakes, high wind, and many creatures that harm and kill. We cannot accept that God’s creation allowed for mutations that turn into cancers and kill young children. However, God called all his creation, “Very Good.”
We want to scream, “God did it wrong! A good God would never have done it that way!”
On the other hand, what if all those frightening and deadly things are good for something. Plate tectonics makes the earth a living world capable of making continents and shallow oceans. That makes volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis good for us. Mutation kills some individuals, but it also helps sculpt life forms into an array of variations. Bacteria infect too often, but we also use them to make medicine, bread, and wine. Maybe, to get to the really good stuff, one must go through a bit of hell.
God asked us from the beginning to be good. That one thing would alleviate so much suffering. He asked us to understand the good in the earth and the good in the plants and animals. Understanding these lets us anticipate the dangers and utilize the resources. Humans keep resisting the goodness within ourselves. We do things the hard way because that is how we always did it. Maybe, just maybe, God does not answer every prayer because he wants us to grow up and learn to understand why Father said, “No.”
