Torture and death of the innocent

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Heaveniswaiting

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For example, North Korea. Many people are still being tortured and being treated in inhumane ways…What about all the innocent animals that are born just to be cruelly sloughtered for their meat…

When I was young, I once asked my mom why God lets stuff like this happen, when she clearly told me before that God wants us to be happy. Yes, He wants me to be happy on earth and not miserable, but what about those kinds of people when obviously they were born just to suffer unimaginably and then die…? Can this still be part of His plan?..does this still relate to free will?
 
Torturing a person is intrinsically evil and always immoral.

Animals have moral standing but are not moral agents. Having moral standing, animals ought not be abused. Using animals for the purpose of food is not abuse.

“In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel" (Saint Teresa Of Avila).
 
I understand your concern - the problem of pain is an important one that has vexed philosophers for thousands of years. How do we reconcile a good God with the immense pain and suffering in the world?

I strongly recommend CS Lewis’ The Problem of Pain, which is a good introductory book in theodicy.

However, I do have to respectfully disagree with your mother when she says that God just wants us to be a happy in this life. While that is true, the Whole truth of the matter is much more complex. Like it or not, pain is an essential part of the Christian life - so saying that God ‘just wants us to be happy’ is a bit incomplete.
 
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Heaveniswaiting said:
why God lets stuff like this happen
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Bad stuff happens because of man’s sins. It’s not something God creates. He allows it to continue due to man’s free will.

As for God wanting us to be happy, as the old Baltimore catechism said, God made us
  • to love him and serve him in this world, and
  • to be happy with him in the next world.
God doesn’t promise us happiness on earth. Life contains suffering for everyone.
 
Some humans experience the cross that they fail to bear.
It reminds me the criminal who was crucified on the other side, together with Saviour.
I read now the writer Varlam Shalamov who wrote a stories about Gulag.
(The prison camps at the early stage of Stalin’s communism.)
He gives factological material about suicides, despair, animalistic treatment for survival.
Humiliation and degradation of human personality, and the desperate desire just to avoid the starvation and unbearable 16 hours hard labour.
According to Varlam Shalamov, (totally opposite to Alexander Solzhenytsyn) the suffering and the prison do not make humans noble, but vice versa, the suffering and that imprisonment experience transform the humans to the lowest degrees of degradation.
Especially the suffering from starvation.
Most of the people in Gulag prisons were innocent, and failed the exam on noble human dignity.
 
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But humans should not loose the hope and faith.
Salvation is through Jesus.
Humans are week.
God has Mercy, its one of His moral features.
 
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If we mentioned animals then I reminded the reaction on suffering( the slaughter) of the two types of animals-pigs and lambs.
Pigs are screaming.
Lambs are silent.
Lambs remind me some saints, honestly.
They deliver all justice and judgement to God’s hands.
 
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