Why does God allow suffering and why do we keep asking?

As promised, I mull things over slowly - over a year from the previous post.  That is a little longer than I had intended, but what's the rush?

I have been roused from my stupor by the new year, and by an article that asks yet again "if a loving God exists, why do the innocent suffer?"  It is a perennial question (appropriate to a new year), and has been revisited often. Why don't believers have a commonly accepted response?

As posed, the question frames the possible answers  - God does not exist, or God cannot prevent the suffering, or God does not love humanity. Often, the rejection of any of these answers is presumed to be rejection or avoidance of logic.

Examination of the underlying assumptions reveals more nuance, unsurprisingly.  Implicit to the last point, whether God loves humanity (and more critically, me) is that God's assessment of my well-being is essentially identical to my own perception. In this case, things such as physical and emotional pain may be counted as unimportant, while other aspects are critical.

This solution is more commonly embraced in the severe theologies. God's love equates to the preservation of souls (from the ravages of eternal damnation to which the loving God will assign you) with little regard for comfort, safety, or enjoyment outside the pursuit of that goal. However, it brings us back to the original question - if God wants souls saved, why are they in peril at all? If existence must be this way, then God is not omnipotent. If existence could be some other way, why does God choose to put souls in peril?

Another solution embraced by more modern theologies posits that a person's "negative" aspects (fear, anger, hatred) are jettisoned when they enter the afterlife, while the positive aspects continue. Suffering, then, becomes a method of teaching or enhancing those positive aspects, which only becomes apparent once the afterlife is attained. Aside from the difficulty of reasoning about a state of existence that no one has experienced, this model defers but does not answer the core question. If God is omnipotent, why require this suffering? Why not create these beings as complete? Or teach them in a way that does not involve suffering? Is it because God does not exist, or cannot, or does not want to?

For the record, the article that prompted this post found its answer by postulating that God's understanding of suffering is different than our own. Viewed from the perspective of eternal existence, it says, God sees our suffering as a brief event, which we also adopt in the afterlife. Having been soothed and comforted, the afflicted will someday say "I guess that wasn't so bad."

I have difficulty with that answer because of suffering that shapes a person's entire life. If we exist in a life and afterlife, and life contributes in some way to our essence, then early traumas that make us fearful or perpetually angry shape that eternity. If they don't, then what reason would there be for this bifurcated existence? Why not just exist in this pure essence, in comfort and truth, from the beginning? If that shaping is necessary, then the idea that God holds an understanding of human well-being similar to my own is doubtful. For many, the way out of this conflict while retaining the benefits they find in belief is concluding the plan is incomprehensible to humans, but that they trust God is working it out to the greater good.

Rejecting the other premises can also settle the question. The most obvious is to reject the existence of God. Obvious, but unsatisfying for many, whether due to social pressure, the reluctance to abandon a source of comfort and strength, or an internal sense of something both intrinsic and greater than the self pervading the universe. Others find it completely consistent and then seek comfort, strength, and wonder in other sources (to varying degrees of success).

Positing a God that is not omnipotent also addresses the question. The deist's clockmaker, who lets the universe run as it will, or the God that lets Satan run amok on this plane of existence, both modify the ability of God to intervene. Even so, these formulations simply push the essential question to the next level of analysis. Why wouldn't the clockmaker God intervene if it was possible? Why would Satan be allowed to cause suffering? Invoking the Fall of Humanity is an additional solution that does not answer the central question - why permit a choice that  condemns billions to suffer, if God loves each one and loves in the way we understand it? The issues inherit in these answers only return us to the core question. Examination of the reality we inhabit, and the nature of God in that reality might provide useful insight into a God that is not omnipotent and yet is still God. Another post for another day.

Oddly enough, possibly the easiest solution yet least chosen, is that God does not love us. The abundance of good in the world simply inverts the question. If God is hostile, why would such delight and wonder exist? An indifferent God is possible, and is much in the character of a deist God - suffering is allowed because, well, so what? While logically consistent, this is probably the least appealing solution to most people. It does not reject God entirely, but it would be difficult to sustain a congregation around such theology.

The question continues to be asked, then, because the initial set of assumptions that create the question are easily understood, comforting, and infrequently challenged. But they do not hold as a whole when suffering is experienced either personally or in a personally meaningful empathetic response. Suffering presents a reality that requires a change in understanding. Assertions that the suffering of innocents is consistent with an omnipotent, loving God, whose love matches our own experience, come either from someone that has concluded the condition cannot be understood or from someone that has not dealt with true suffering. Those unwilling to abandon understanding will either ask the question perpetually or come to a different understanding of God.

Believers, then, have no single accepted response because each individual comes to his or her own understanding. Which aspect of God is the most disturbing to surrender? Or which aspect of myself?

My own answer? Well, that will be part of that future post I promised.

Welcome

Branch water. Well, it could be worse.

I have inflicted my musings on my wife, friends, and family for some time. Why should everyone else be spared?  But that first step, choosing the name for this blog,  is a bit like trying to write the first sentence of the Great American Novel. How can you know where it will take you? What if I get it wrong? I would hate to call it "My Favorite Things", then find I am motivated to write about rooting out cruelty and injustice.

But "Branch Water" has potential. If you believe Wikipedia, it can mean several things - water from a stream; water added to whiskey; water steeped with the branch of a Douglas fir, believed to be cleansed and purified.  Each is an appropriate metaphor for where I would like my words to flow.

I naturally reflect on big topics - life, mind, spirit, love. But I like to follow them upstream - where does an impulse come from? What makes me feel strongly about a topic, and how is it other people can feel differently but equally passionate? This brings additional context and complexity to the musing, but can also bring clarity. These are not thoughts that fit on bumper stickers or in sound bites.

These are thoughts best mulled slowly - in a rocking chair, on a porch, in the evening with a close friend and a glass of bourbon and branch. Thoughts to be explored, not argued.

This first entry can be considered the pouring of such a drink. Not the drink itself, but a necessary step to the slow, reflective, and important work of contemplating the universe, being human, and being me.