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God Involve Evil And Suffering In The World Essay

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Yeah, well that's a good argument and one people have used for a long time.

It's a classic question in theology that asks how can a loving, yet omnipotent God permit evil and suffering in the world? The argument goes as follows: A God that allows suffering to continue is either a) not all-powerful (not omnipotent) and is thus unable to prevent the suffering; b) not loving because this God has the power to prevent suffering but is unwilling to do so; and/or c) not all-knowing (not omniscient) because God only is aware of the suffering after it has already occurred and it’s too late to prevent it. This problem of evil and God’s inability or unwillingness to do anything about it is known in theology as “theodicy.”

Two of the most common answers to this question are that God’s ways are “mysterious” or that God has an overarching plan that we cannot know. Put simply, His ways are above ours and our own finite understanding of life.

I find it fascinating that …show more content…

God does not permit anything other than the creative state of being, which by its very nature includes freedom. Freedom is what leads to sin and consequently evil. Freedom also leads to growth and life itself. We can thus read the story of the forbidden fruit in Genesis as a metaphorical explanation of the inherent freedom within the world and our knowledge and experience of this freedom as the ultimate cause of suffering.

God, when understood as Paul Tillich’s “ground of being,” rather than a supernatural being who intervenes occasionally in the universe, allows for a power that supports all existence as its creative ground but does not make a choice as to which unfortunate events to intervene to change. The nature of existence (as grounded in God) is such that humankind is free. To be free, we must have the ability to do evil, to turn away from God, the true ground of who we are. Thus, the possibility (and reality) of sin is built into the very fabric of

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