God and Suffering…
…Where, or what, is He.
I provided a casual response to an interesting article of Dan Foster’s, Stupid Theological Explanations for Suffering where he wrote about “…reasons God allows suffering” to which I replied ‘…or perhaps God doesn’t control suffering; this then begs the question who, or what is God?’
This comment generated more activity than I anticipated. As such, I wanted to go deeper into the topic.
The age-old question is Why Does God Allow Suffering?
My question is, does He?
In a show I watched recently (The Sinner, Season 3), some students were debating nihilism and Nietzsche in a philosophy class and one of them, whom the teacher thought wasn't paying attention, provided a thought-provoking response to the instructor’s pointed question about God. The teacher thought he’d expose the student’s inattention and absence of thought. The student offered a riddle on God.
“Could God make a rock He couldn’t lift?”
If the answer is no he couldn’t make it then God is not all-powerful. If the answer is yes, then he is still not all-powerful because he cannot move the rock.
He is a “he.”
This is a paradox in the context of God, particularly the Christian God we know from the Bible.
However, are we asking the right question? What, or who is God? Possibly God is only spiritual; not physical, metaphysical, controlling, or grantor of miracles.
I’ve always felt and believed God is not a puppet-master adjusting and orchestrating the strings of ones’ life journey. He is a spiritual partner, a soulmate; a source of knowledge, wisdom, and inspiration — a compass.
The spirit of God is within us. We control our suffering, not Him. More specifically, we control what our suffering is in how we respond to life’s hardships. We define our suffering, as such we control the suffering — though not the hardship.
God is with us through the hardship and sufferings we may encounter. He does not fix it for us, nor should he. He is not there to judge us. He is there to be there with us, in whatever way we let Him.
Years ago I had a dream, more of a realization or epiphany, as to what heaven is and what happens to us when we die.
At the very end, the very moment of our last heartbeat, or even just after that, when our brain is sending its last signal — our life passes through our consciousness. At that instant, we see our life; the good and the bad of all we encountered over our lives. Not our thoughts, but our experiences and our actions. Our last fleeting thought, the one we then depart with is either positive, good, and peaceful or negative, bad, and turmoil. This is our Heaven or our Hell that we experience at the very end. And, since it is at our end, it becomes our eternity.
God doesn't judge us, we do. We are either at peace or at war with ourselves.
