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When it comes to the issue of suffering and the fact that there is suffering in this world we have to take that very seriously I’ve seen so many Christians who blow off the question and say we can jump right to the answer this is a question that doesn’t just come from the heart from the mind it comes from the heart and it comes from human experience we have to take the problem of suffering seriously it’s interesting if you look back in the history of ideas the problem of evil wasn’t really considered such till about the 1718 18th century onwards and of course it’s been trawled Oh more and more by our new atheist friends these days being the idea that if there’s a God who is all good and all holy and is all-powerful how could evil exist since if he was all good he wouldn’t allow it it was all knowing you would know what’s going to happen you would stop it and so forth but I think when we look at it this argument from evil is actually an argument points us to ORS also the existence of God evil is a departure from the way things ought to be and if it is that depart from the way things are to be that means there is a way things are to be there is a design plan for this universe and the only way you can have a design plan that is good they’re supposed to be perfect is if God exists so the problem of evil really drives us right back to the existence of God it does not drive us away from him when we think about it from a biblical perspective or even from from a logical perspective if God truly has created this world in freedom then there is always the possibility if it’s truly free for freedom to be both used in good ways and in evil ways so we can explain the human problem with evil because there are times when humans perpetrate evil against their own bodies against one another they use their freedom misuse their freedom really in ways that bring about evil what are those people who are suffering what do they say about this generally speaking around the world those who are suffering say that God must exist that he is their hope he is their reason and this isn’t just a crutch to hold on to he has seen God they have seen God come through for the people around them so the question first off that’s asked how could God exist if there’s so much suffering in this world that’s not one that people who are suffering usually ask of course in the industrialized West they do but generally speaking around the world it’s not one that people normally ask I myself lost my husband and didn’t in a million years see that coming I would say that everybody who’s gone through grief experiences the absence of God from great wonderful Christian people like CS Lewis to myself to others I read in all lots of grief literature that there is that sense that God has abandoned you so I would say I understand where you’re coming from but I would also say in my own process that as I continue to wrestle with God over it to argue with God to pour out my feelings before God even feelings of I don’t like you anymore God it will love you how could you do this to me there is a way in which God is very present in that dark experience and that’s the only way I can describe it as I clung on and as I reminded myself that all who wander are not lost I was comforted by that and recognize that even in those dark places God comes near but even in those places we can trust that God is with us that’s what the psalmist affirms and I think ultimately our experience affirms that as we come to see grace being given to us even in those places that we thought we had gone beyond God’s grace because of what we were suffering but the Christian answered the problem of evil is that the God who made the world also brought the solution he wasn’t staying detached as Dorothy Sears says didn’t stay up in heaven thing oh look at the most suffering or there’s pain and sorrow here and I’m just leaving them to it the creator himself stepped into the equation bored the penalty the price of the sorrow of healing the universe of forgiving the brokenness of restoring the creation and so I feel the Christian answer is a good answer it doesn’t exhaust the answer philosophically but it’s better than the alternatives and I would take it as a credible response you.
