Why is Suffering in the World if God Loves us?

If God truly loves us, if He is powerful; why is death, depression, emotional oppression and every other kind of suffering even existent? These are a few questions I want to answer in great detail. I think it very important to know why the world is the way it is. It is not wisdom to believe in something that has ‘loop holes’. Nor is it wise to believe in something and not know why. Though these questions are complex and might even provoke doubt in ones mind I believe there are clear answers to them. That we can know without doubt the truth regarding this subject. The Bible says, 
“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” (Proverbs 25:2) 
 Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. (Eph 5:17)  
 Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you (Matthew 7:7 )”

Lets begin here, with a few other questions.

1. Where did sin come from, did God create it?
I have heard many people ask this question, as I myself have. 
We must look at all sides of this subject in order to get a clear answer, so lets present another question that will challenge us to think.
God created all things, and it says He is the giver of good gifts.  (James1:16Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. 17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.)  It says in the book of Genesis, after each day of creation, He saw that what He brought into being was good. (Genesis 1:4 God saw that the light was good) But He created Satan, whom we all know as evil, so how is it that God creates only good? 
The Lord created all beings innocent and pure from the start, but He instilled in us choice, our choices are either to obey and follow Him or to disobey and walk away from Him. Everything apart from God is evil, everything the opposite of God is evil, and when we do the opposite of what God would do, we sin. 
For example, arrogance, conflict, hate and impatience are all the opposite of Humility, peace, love and patience, which are all traits of God that He commands us to have. 



2. Has Suffering always been in the earth and where did it come from?
No, evil and suffering have not always been in the earth. How do we know this? Let’s examine Genesis 1-3. As I said before, after God created each thing it says, “He saw that it was GOOD”. God created only good things, He created a perfect and uncorrupt world.
It wasn’t until after Adam and Eve sinned (by eating the forbidden fruit) that the earth became cursed (Genesis 3) therefore bringing suffering.


3. Who is responsible for suffering inhabiting our world?
If we go over all of our information we will find that humans are wholly responsible for the way the world has turned out. Every individual is responsible for their actions. From the beginning there have been consequences. God commands us not to do things for our own good.  Just think of this, if man had not sinned then there would be no hurting, death, worry, grief or any other kind of evil. We would be walking in the garden with the Lord in complete and utter peace. 
We can sit and complain blaming it on the devil all we want but it is a foolish waste of time to do so, Satan did not corrupt the world with evil until we allowed him to. It is the same today, he tempts us but it is not sin until we give in and do what he wants us to do. 

A friend was telling me about her college’s philosophy teacher, he had actually brought this topic up in class and was mocking Christianity, which prompted me to write this post and explain the answer.

One of his points was this:

“I once asked a district attorney what the worst case he had ever seen was, and he replied, ‘”a young girl disobeyed her father, so her father punished her by beating her with a metal pipe cleaner which ripped her skin away, then he filled a bathtub full of chemicals and made her sit in it. She eventually died of pain.”’ The mother was there the whole time and did nothing to stop it.” He then asks her classroom, “If the mother was there, had the power to stop the torture and eventual death, but didn’t, wouldn’t that make her guilty?” The whole classroom immediately conceded that she was guilty for not stopping it. The teacher then goes on to say that since God is all powerful and has the power to quell all suffering that ‘if He were real’ he would be guilty of not stopping our suffering.

My reaction was, ‘wow very good argument,’ but honestly it isn’t. If we have relationship with Christ and truly understand His ways and goodness, then we will know that this ‘idea’ stems from the mentality of not owning up to, or taking responsibility for anything we do. The horrible crime, that is stated above is the result of a slow degeneration. The world walks away from the Lord more and more everyday, as we do this we allow more and more evil to take root inside of us, the more we sin, the deeper the evil goes and the further we get from God. So in the end it is our fault, again we are responsible for everything we see today. 
(Isaiah 24:4-6
4The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the exalted of the earth languish. 5The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. 6Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth's inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.)

4. If God is powerful and He truly loves us, why doesn’t He snap His fingers and make it go away?

a. God is a God of choice
We have already established that the Father is a God of choice, but allow me to elaborate on that. The Lord was building a family when He thought to create us, those were His first intentions. Just like any human, The Lord wants to be loved genuinely. 
The reason I am saying this is because many people think and say that God set us up for failure from the beginning, by allowing us to have a choice between disobeying and obeying. But I want to ask this, would you want to go about your life doing everything someone told you, doing only what you were forced to do, and loving mechanically? No you would absolutely hate it and rebel. We know that we were created in God and Jesus’ Image, (Genesis 1) so by knowing this we can see that God doesn’t want robots to do what they don’t want to do.
Yes, He wants us to come to and love Him but He will not force you.
Just know that if you do the opposite of God’s will there will be no protection or favor over you. Therefore you will be subject to the enemy and your flesh.


b. God knows our hearts
God sees our wicked desires. Would you buy your child a new toy right after he/she walked up to you and said, “I hate you, get away from me, I don’t want anything to do with you.” My guess is no, the child is clearly undeserving and needs a good spanking. These are the very words earth’s heart is uttering. Rebellion, denial, arrogance, deceit all of these things have invaded our hearts and filled the place that God is supposed to be filling.  The Lord does not reward evil.

Romans 1:24-32 (CEV)
24So God let these people go their own way. They did what they wanted to do, and their filthy thoughts made them do shameful things with their bodies. 25They gave up the truth about God for a lie, and they worshiped God's creation instead of God, who will be praised forever. Amen.
26God let them follow their own evil desires. Women no longer wanted to have sex in a natural way, and they did things with each other that were not natural. 27Men behaved in the same way. They stopped wanting to have sex with women and had strong desires for sex with other men. They did shameful things with each other, and what has happened to them is punishment for their foolish deeds.
28 Since these people refused even to think about God, he let their useless minds rule over them. That's why they do all sorts of indecent things. 29 They are evil, wicked, and greedy, as well as mean in every possible way. They want what others have, and they murder, argue, cheat, and are hard to get along with. They gossip, 30 say cruel things about others, and hate God. They are proud, conceited, and boastful, always thinking up new ways to do evil.
These people don't respect their parents. 31They are stupid, unreliable, and don't have any love or pity for others. 32 They know God has said that anyone who acts this way deserves to die. But they keep on doing evil things, and they even encourage others to do them. 



 c. God sent His Son into the world to take back our authority
God has sent us a way, to get out of the mess we made.
Most people think that Jesus only died to restore our relationship with the Father and eternal life, but that is wrong. 
Jesus took back our authority, (Revelation 1:18 and the living one. I died, but now I am alive forever, and I have the keys to death and the world of the dead.)
He gave us the ability to cast out demons, heal the sick and bring back the dead, He even said we would do greater things than what He did while He was on earth. The problem is, nobody seems to be using those gifts, the Church should be functioning in these every day but we aren’t. We have been given the remedy to our wildly spreading disease and yet we don’t use it. 

God did in fact make a way for us to ‘defend that little girl’ when He sent His son to die on the cross. The way we do that is by abstaining from sin and resisting the temptation of the enemy. Look at it like this, had the man never gone so far down the road of sin and walked away from God, the thought of doing such a thing would never have enetered His mind. As it says in (Romans 1:28 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice… NIV) 
God is not responsible for the things WE do. He gave us the earth to rule and subdue, we took it corrupted it, and now we will have to live with it. 


Also remember this, the Lord is going to, ‘snap his fingers and make everything go away,’ just not yet,( Revelation 21:4 “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.") (Revelation 21: 6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”NIV)

    d. When will God relieve our suffering?
In Revelation it explains why God hasn’t remade the world and when He will remove suffering.
Revelation 6: 9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10 They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” 11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters, were killed just as they had been.

Revelation14:14-16 14 I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, “Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.




5. The summary
                               
I think most people forget that God does not only love, but He also has a ‘Fierce wrath.’ Although He loves us He will not be looked upon as unholy, He will not have his grace and mercy trampled on. My God is not a push over; He is a strong and fierce leader. He will discipline His children, He will pour out His wrath on those who refuse to listen and obey. Your life that you have is a gift and the giver can take it back at any moment. Fear the Lord. 
It’s time to stop blaming the decisions you make on the person next to you. In God’s eyes it’s all the same, He knows what you have done in the secret and there will be a punishment for it, you can blame God and waste all the time you want, but in the end you will answer for what you have done, you will not deny them.
I am not saying this to scare you, I am telling you this because firstly, I am tired of people viewing God as just another Human who is unholy, who can be trampled on and insulted. And also to help you to understand why He doesn’t snap His fingers and make it all go away. Just thank the Lord that He has such a great deal of love, patience, mercy and grace with us or we would have been done for in the Garden of Eden.

I encourage you to sit, or even get on your face before the Lord and ask Him to open your eyes to see, He wants to show us things; He just wants us to put aside our old ways and love Him genuinely. 
It’s not a burden to worship God; it’s not the end of the road, it’s not the ending of freedom. The love of God is the beginning of freedom and wisdom! Cast aside all the distorted images and views you have of God, because I can guarantee that they are 100% wrong, all it takes is giving yourself up for a few minutes and saying, “God, I want something bigger than myself, I want wholeness, show yourself to me.”