Christian Apologetics - Why God Allows Suffering
Imagine this...
A 6-year-old little girl is abducted by a serial pedophile. While her parents are tormented by visions of what may be happening to her, what the perpetrator may be doing to her, and crushed by the realization that they have thus far been powerless to save her, the man uses her sexually and tortures her without mercy or conscience. Finally, he squeezed her trachea shut until her little heart stops beating.
It isn't hard to believe that, during this horrific ordeal, parents and child prayed to the God they were taught to trust and serve. They must have begged, pleaded, through eyes filled with tears and hearts torn apart by anguish. As the man hurt the child, she must have cried for her mother and asked her God to save her.
But her pleas for her parents could not be answered, for they were only human and thus limited. They would easily have given their own lives to save her if they could, but saving her was beyond their power.
What about her pleas to God? He, according to Christian doctrine, could have saved her. He did not. They question that has been asked for centuries is, Why not? If he loves us and is omnipotent, why would he not save a little girl from her rapist and murderer?
Christians have answered this question in many ways. Here is the answer I used to give as a minister:
God has a much larger perspective and does not see death, or even pain, as we do. To his eternal eyes, these things are not the tragedies we see them as, because in just a short while, once we are transported to heaven, we will see that pain and death were but the pain of a moment. What's more, he is like the parent who knows that not getting that special dress is not the end of the world her daughter thinks it is. To the daughter, the suffering is enormous; to the parent, it is fleeting.
I now see a gaping hole in this explanation, and it is this: The pain of a child who doesn't get a desired dress is minimal and ends there. The pain of a child suffering torture and death does not end there. The lives of parents and extended family are twisted beyond recognition, marriages often end, and the pain goes on and on.
In my opinion, cruelty is only multiplied when people are led to put their trust in a deity who does nothing to help them because he can do nothing, because he is not real.
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