Ok, God foresee future. He is also omnipotent. Now consider a creation going from a given starting age A to another end age A’. People do things in this period, right or wrong, and feel different, sad or happy, etc. What is matter at the end is the memory of people at later age A’ since time passes by anyhow and we are left with memory only. The question is why then God doesn’t create things at age A’ with the memory between A to A’ rather than create things at age A? People couldn’t possibly know or object about situation since they have memory of their actions anyhow. Why make people to suffer if you know the end result?
While I’m far from having the full answer to this, like everybody else except God, I suppose in the end it boils down to free will, or the effect of sin.
I’m (slowly) reading a book on the problem of evil. It’s a bit technical, but the author posited two incidents, one of which was a real event (the human one), and the other is quite likely.
The first was a real event in which a five year old girl was bashed, raped and murdered by her mother’s boyfriend (moral evil).
The second was a hypothetical event in which Bambi the fawn is trapped by a forest fire, badly burned but survives in agony for a few days after being trapped by a fallen tree (natural evil).
Neither case has anything to commend it from a character building point of view. The little girl was five years old. And Banbi was a fawn. But God decreed, in a sense, that these two things should be allowed to happen.
If some “good” should come out of it, then it’s somewhat difficult to see.
What it does say to me is that Hell must be pretty b____y awful! If God’s prepared to allow the entirely innocent to suffer like this, what happens to those destined to destruction? I say this because I’ve often recounted what happened the night my father died, when he appeared in my room.
I still remember the absolutely terrifying scream just before he disappeared again. It was just sheer terror.
But I’m a long way from understanding the “meaning of suffering” and what seems to me the disproportionate and unequal levels of suffering in this world. And for that matter, eternal punishment in hell for finite sins on earth.
But since God exists, and since God has a plan, then He must think it all worthwhile.
That’s cold comfort when you’re suffering yourself, or you hear about suffering like the two cases above.
and know His Peace. It really is the only way to get it.