Perhaps top at the list of reasons for agnosticism or atheism is what people call “the problem of suffering.”  What is the problem?  Apparently the problem is for the idea of the existence of God, whether it is plausible that God and suffering coexist.  The agnostics or atheists would say that if suffering exists like it does, then God must not or should not exist.  They would say that it is not credible or conceivable, that if there was a God, that He would allow for suffering.  They don’t know if there is a God, but they do know this with their great, superior knowledge.

What’s the Problem?

I could ask, “Why is suffering a problem?”  Or, “Why does the existence of suffering contradict the existence of God?”  As I see it, God is who He is, which is also, He is who He says He is in the Bible.  Someone may not like who He is, but that doesn’t eliminate His existence.  Genuinely receiving God is receiving the truth.  Knowing God, suffering makes sense.  Suffering being a problem is the actual problem of suffering, or the problem of the problem of suffering.  It’s a problem that people judge suffering the way that they do.  They’re wrong.

Why do people or should people think it’s a problem to suffer?  I contend that it would be a problem if there was not suffering.  People deserve to suffer and God created a world with the potential of suffering.  Men are not more righteous or of greater justice than God.  He defines righteousness and justice.  God is the measurement of righteousness, the standard.  Mankind falls far, far short of the righteousness of God.  Let’s consider suffering though, and see if that consideration will help everyone reading here.

Explaining from the Beginning

The only world that exists, the one God made, He records in the Bible.  That book says a lot about suffering and is sufficient to understand it.  Sure, people will reject what it says for their own ideas, but it is the truth about the subject.  Someone who thinks he has a better idea than God is very proud and his rejection of the truth about suffering is evil.  It is rebellion against God.

God created a good world.  He said again and again in Genesis 1, it is good, and finally, it is very good.  The man, male and female, that God created was very good the way He created him.  He created him with a choice.  Adam and Eve could choose evil, just like the angels could choose evil.  Consequences came with this choice.

The biggest critics of suffering reject what God did, even the idea of what He did.  Apparently, if they were in charge, had that power, they would have done it differently.  What would make their way right?  Would it be right to do it a different way than God?  God said it was very good.  They say, no, because if they were in charge, they would have done it in a different way.  However, there is no different way.

God’s way is the only way.  And He said it was very good, so it was very good.  People created by God can’t have a better way than God.  They can’t even think without Him and they are not by nature superior to Him.

Critics of God

Critics of what God did are inferior to Him in numbers of ways.  God knows everything and He has and had the knowledge to create and sustain everything.  People can copy some of what God did, using the materials and the laws He created and sustains.  Still, people are limited to something already here and the limitations of natural laws.  We know from the Bible that God does not function outside of His nature, but He can operate outside of natural laws.

For instance, man, God’s creation, unless God gives him special power, performs within the bounds of natural laws, ones God created.  God works outside of those bounds.  As an example, He is not bound by time.  He created time, and His creatures act within the limits of time, but He does not.  God is supernatural.  With supernatural love, wisdom, and power, God maintains everything.

God’s Superior Knowledge and Justice

Knowledge

Natural laws limit man to one place at one time.  He can go searching under every rock he can search, but only one at a time and at one moment of time.  He can’t be under every rock at every moment.  Because of that, he cannot deny what or what doesn’t happen.  He doesn’t know.  God is everywhere at every moment both past, present, and future, so He does know.

Whatever God says, He has this superior basis of knowledge.  He already knows it all.  When we criticize Him, we can’t say we really know, except based upon what He said, the final authority for all judgment.

Justice

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, disobeying God’s commandment, God punished them.  He alone is Just.  God defines justice.  If you read the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, you see that when Adam and Eve sinned, they hid from God.  They also blamed God.  They did not immediately repent.  Sure, they said, “I did eat.”  They confessed that, but they did not take responsibility right away for their disobedience to God.

Adam and Eve’s saying that they were in this predicament because of God was not true.  The truth was more in line with something David confessed in Psalm 51, that against thee and thee (God) only have I sinned.  None of the suffering in the world is because of God.  He allowed it, but He was not the cause of it.  Even though deserved, God alone alleviates suffering.  He also has a plan of redemption, a plan of salvation, that covers everything into eternity future for those who will have it.  He provides a way of escape from a world of suffering.

God also confined Himself to suffering for man to save Him from his own sin.  The Divine took wholly upon Himself human form.  He became a man to taste death for every man, Hebrews 2 says.  Jesus suffered, the Just for the unjust.  He who knew no sin became sin for man.  This is the love of God, so that even when man gets what He deserves, God provides a means for Him to receive what He doesn’t deserve.  God gives mercy and grace to mankind for salvation.  This is what critics should receive and believe.  It’s true.

Arguments from Atheists and Agnostics

Bambi Argument

The Problem on Animals

I have read two main lines of argumentation from atheist or agnostic critics in recent days.  One common tack of the unbelieving critic is pointing out the undeserved suffering of animals.  It is an old argument.  One could call the animal, Bambi.  I might call it the Bambi argument.  The critics say that, even if the suffering of humans is just, the suffering of animals is not.

It’s tough to argue animals in a world rife with feelings of sentimentalism and nostalgia.  I contend that’s what makes this a good argument.  It connects emotionally with people, because they think of their own animals.  During any political campaign year, some story arises about a politician who maybe mistreated an animal.

An Answer on Animals

B. Kyle Keltz wrote about animal suffering and said this in his conclusion:

While many aspects of the problem of animal suffering seem intuitive and sound at first, upon further investigation, the problem falls apart. Pain feels bad, but it is not intrinsically bad because it needs to be unpleasant for animals to survive. It is bad for humans to experience pain because this is against their will, but non-human animals cannot will to be free from pain nor are they able to be aware of their pain. The only thing that is infinitely perfect is God, so any world He will create to communicate His goodness will be finite and will entail the possibility of non-human animal pain and suffering.

My main point of including the paragraph is to exhibit thoughts on the difference between the pain of people and animals.  Skeptics might agree that people deserve pain and suffering, which is another reason for the effectiveness of the animal argument.  One should consider that animals don’t suffer like humans and can’t because they are not rational creatures.  Like with people, redemption of a sin-cursed earth will also bring relief to animal suffering.  God is righteous and He allows suffering.  It is allowable.

Canaanite Genocide Argument

A second major line of argumentation is the God ordained annihilation of the Canaanites and mainly Canaanite children.  Skeptics use the term, “genocide,” the God of the Bible allows for genocide.

God is a just God.  With His superior knowledge and love, His creation should accept His will.  God knows better about the slaughter of the Canaanites than we do.  If He ordered their death, they deserved the death.  In ethics, this is God wanting the greater good.  Everything operates from the baseline of a sin-cursed world that will last only for awhile.  Death is not the end for any of us either.  God could save a Canaanite like He saved Ruth the Moabite and Rahab from Jericho.

God attaches the annihilation of people to sin.  Everyone deserves to die whenever they die.  This so-called “genocide” brings a mass of people to their death at a time appointed by God with His superior knowledge, love, and justice.

The Book of Lamentations justifies the suffering of Jerusalem in a Babylonian siege.  God was faithful to chastise His people.  If Israel had a problem with its suffering, that was the problem of suffering.  Like Lamentations 3:22 says:

It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.