Hermione:
I am having trouble understanding why God does nothing to stop this. God loves us, Jesus died for us, but why doesn’t He do anything to help those innocent people who are suffering so terribly?
I can think of a number of possible reasons but in the end since God’s mind and perspective is so much – indeed infinitely – greater than mine I can’t know for certain and certainly not fully why He does what He does.
It’s like little children who don’t understand why their parents do some things, including things that may cause them some suffering. A little child who is sick with a fever may not understand why his parents would bring him to a hospital where he is treated in part with ice cold water or medicine that tastes bitter. But the little child should trust his parents and so also we should trust our heavenly and eternal Father.
The gap in perspective and intelligence between God and ourselves is much greater, infinitely greater than the gap between ourselves and little children. So it is only to be expected that there will be some things even many things that we don’t understand about God’s providence. In fact if there were no such things then that would be evidence against God. So while it may seem counterintuitive, the problem of evil actually serves as evidence for God.
St Anselm said I do not seek to understand so that I may believe but rather I believe so that I may seek to understand.
I don’t understand how an infinitely good and loving God would 1) tolerate all the horrible things that are done to innocent human beings, many of them children and 2) why these same human beings could very well be on their way to ETERNAL TORTURE because they did something like have premarital sex or used birth control or seriously disobeyed their parents.
Where
we are, that is, from our position as pilgrims and wayfarers on earth the best response is just to trust in God. We can entrust all these people to God whose mercy knows no bounds and has no limits.
But let’s examine it intellectually also. It may interest you to know that according to the Catholic Encyclopedia:
newadvent.org/cathen/07207a.htm
“In itself, it is no rejection of Catholic dogma to suppose that
God might at times, by way of exception, liberate a soul from hell. … But now theologians are unanimous in teaching that such exceptions never take place and never have taken place, a teaching which should be accepted.”
It may also interest to you read the following words of Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ:
firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0305/articles/dulles.html
“In a “reverie” circulated among friends but not published until after his death, the philosopher Jacques Maritain included what he called a “conjectural essay” on eschatology, in which he contemplates the possibility that the damned, although eternally in hell, may be able at some point to escape from pain. In response to the prayers of the saints, he imagines, God may miraculously convert their wills, so that from hating Him they come to love Him. After being pardoned, they will then be delivered from the pain of sense and placed in a kind of limbo. They will still be technically in hell, since they will lack the beatific vision, but they will enjoy a kind of natural felicity, like that of infants who die without baptism. At the end, he speculates, even Satan will be converted, and the fiery inferno, while it continues to exist, will have no spirits to afflict. This, as Maritain acknowledged, is a bold conjecture, since it has no support in Scripture or tradition, and contradicts the usual understanding of texts such as the parable of the Last Judgment scene of Matthew. But the theory has the advantage of showing how the Blood of Christ might obtain mercy for all spiritual creatures, even those eternally in hell.”
We won’t know all the details and intricacies and wonders of God’s providence until Christ’s second coming. Until then we can only trust in God’s love as a little child for to such belong the kingdom of God
