I just spent a Saturday participating in a “Relay for Life” event which is a fund raiser for cancer research. A most touching ceremony in this event, has hundreds if not thousands, of paper bags filled with sand and a candle and decorated with pictures of individual cancer victims and cancer survivors, my sister being one of them, lined up along the relay track.
As the candles are lit in the growing darkness, the rows of lit bags creates an incredible image and as people walk along the way reading each bag, it dawns on you just how many people have fallen victim to the ravages of cancer, some mere babies.
Inevitably, you hear among the many conversations going on, someone ask, why do such bad things happen to such good people. Actually, there is a book with that title written by a Jewish Rabbi trying to answer how can a good and caring God, allow such things, such suffering and sadness, to occur.
It just so happens that I have finished reading the book “God’s Problem” by my man, Bart Ehrman. The sub-title is “How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question- Why We Suffer”.
This is not a new question but a question that people have wrestled with for many years if not centuries. The usual answer I get is that because we have FREE WILL, shit happens. Well, tsunamis have nothing to do with free will, neither do tornadoes, earthquakes nor hurricanes; they are NATURAL occurrences.
The problem lies in the belief by Christians that their God is all powerful and all good and is also a “personal” God looking out for THEIR personal welfare; why does he allow all this terrible suffering to occur? Please don’t use the old “God works in mysterious ways” on me; that only worked in kindergarten.
I raise this question because I think people really want to know what is going on and how they can rationalize all this with their Christian faith. On the other hand, some people just wonder how this can be possible without ever giving it a serious thought and keep on praying blindly to THEIR all powerful, all holy and good God.
We all know how comforting it is at a funeral when the priest assures us that our loved one that just died is waiting for us in heaven. Or that the child that died a terrible death was somehow called by God for service in heaven and had to leave us – what nonsense BUT very comforting. Is this all an invention designed to make us humans feel better?
I get a kick out of the people that survived the tsunami or any other disaster, thanking God for saving them BUT never thinking to curse God for killing the thousands of innocent people that did not survive – what gives?
It is easy for us AGNOSTICS that look at natural disasters as acts of NATURE; actions reacting uncontrollably to natural forces but in a scientifically predictable and explainable way.
I realize most religious people do not give a thought about why suffering in such great abundance, occurs in OUR world and how it is connected with their God but recently, at this cancer find raiser I was at, I heard one attendee say that she has a problem with her God about what is going on in her world or in our world. I think it would be interesting to examine how suffering was justified in our world, throughout our history, in the face of an all loving and caring God.
See you on the flip side…
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