How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Before we read

Q1. What is your view on suffering and its relation to a higher being?

Part 1.

Read from the beginning to the second paragraph of page 23.Discuss this question with your group:Q2. Think about a terrible event (or catastrophe)-- either personal or from the news--when people asked “Where is God?” or called out for God.

Read privately to the 1st paragraph under "Evil and Suffering Isn't Evidence Against God" Q3. What do you think about the argument that evil and suffering means that God doesn't exist? Come up with 1 argument for and against this view.

Part 2. Evil and Suffering Isn’t Evidence Against God.

St. Bernard

No-See-Um

Joseph: King of Dreams

Chinese Saying about suffering孟子曰：「天將降大任於斯人也，必先苦其心志，勞其筋骨，餓其體膚，空乏其身，行拂亂其所為，所以動心忍性，增益其所不能。」

"When Heaven is about to place a great responsibility on a man, it always first frustrates his spirit and will, exhausts his muscles and bones, exposes him to starvation and poverty, harasses him by troubles and setbacks so as to stimulate his mind, toughen his nature and enhance his abilities.",said Mencius.

Romans 5:3-53 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

QuestionRead until the last paragraph before "Evil and Suffering May Be (If Anything) Evidence for God" and discuss the following with your group...Q4. If you were God, will you design the world differently? Will you take away suffering and evil?

Part 3. Evil and Suffering May be (If Anything) evidence for God

Merely Christianity-C.S. LewisMy argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I com-paring this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: A fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.

Continued...Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: Just as, if there were no light in the uni-verse and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Lastly…Or take home questionQ5. How does today's topic relate to your own life? Write it down and discuss with the person next to you...