I listened to an interesting interview yesterday in the KRCL Radio Active archives* with Bart Ehrman who wrote God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question, Why We Suffer.
He discussed all of the standard answers to the question and why they don't satisfy him. Because the radio program is produced in Salt Lake, I kept waiting to hear someone call in with one of the answers that I'd learned in church and that seems fairly clear in the scriptures.
Bart Ehrman asks: If God is all powerful and loving, why doesn't he prevent all this overwhelming suffering? How can the two character traits co-exist?
I think that God wants us to step up and do what we can to prevent or alleviate suffering (whether caused by mistakes or malicious choices, or natural disaster, or whatever). If we're here on earth to learn anything, it's how to serve others and lift their burdens. Love our neighbors.
So sure, we're tested in our own suffering, but if God is actually testing us by design, I believe it's primarily about what we're doing to help others, not ourselves. (And I personally need to get to work on that.)
No one ever did call in with that take on things. Maybe I'll write him a letter.
* Warning: Radio Active is pretty left of center, sometimes downright hyper progressive. The fact that it's produced here in Utah makes me smile.
1 comment:
I like your ideas here. Yeah, that question that people ask about suffering can catch us off guard because it is, even if we think we have a good doctrine-based answer, a legitimate question. But your answer takes any accidental selfishness out of the picture, which can in turn catch the people who asked the question off guard. Thanks.
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