11 How Could a Loving God Allow So Much Suffering?

Index post : Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book

Giving men freewill involves giving them the possibility to chose wrong, not just within themselves, not just in relation to God, but also in relation to the neighbour.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out in The Problem of Pain, it would be pointless to allow people the freedom to chose doing ill to the neighbour if all the effects of such choices were annulled, and the neighbour never really suffered anything as a result of such a choice.

People are diverse in the power they wield over others.

Parents wield more power than other people, and yet, when people try to save children from bad parents, the results are even worse childhoods.

The extreme example of parental power was Adam's choice.

If he had overcome the temptation, whatever would have happened to Eve, somehow mankind would have been well as a whole. We would have been born good (in fact we aren't, it's just that when we are born we have very little means to make our bad inclinations effective on others). We would have been born into a good world, not just the basic goodness of promoting life, but a perfect goodness of promoting no suffering. When we were born with nothing wrong with us, we would need nothing wrong in our situation as a warning signal.

He did not overcome, he shared Eve's death penalty, we are not born good, we are born in a half good and half bad world, the basic goodness of promoting life yes, but the perfect goodness of promoting no suffering, no, that's lacking. As we are born with something wrong with us, we need something wrong in our situation as a warning signal./HGL