Why does evil/sin exist?

  • Thread starter Thread starter nkelly
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I’ve read through three pages of this thread and no one has really offered what I’d consider a sufficient answer. Some have insisted that anyone who sees a problem with the existence of evil and suffering must be a bad and a selfish Christian. Others have seemingly cut and pasted material from theology books that merely sounds impressive but doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. So I’m just going to make a few observations–in no particular order.

Saying the current order is “the way it is” or “the way God designed it” is not even a bad answer–it’s no answer at all.

I was rereading the Book of Job recently, supposedly the final word on the problem of suffering and pain, but I found it answered nothing–for me anyway. Job starts out righteous and successful, God allows Satan to torture him to settle a bet, Job’s false friends come by to make his situation worse and falsely accuse him of being sinful, then God appears at the end and asks everyone how that can dare to question anything He does. That’s not much of an answer.

Lots of contributors to this thread keep going on about free will, as if that’s more important than anything. (“Hey, that’s a shame God let your whole family die horribly, but at least He respected your free will.”) Well, it sure seems to me that free will is over-rated. If I could rid the world of pain, evil, and suffering by getting rid of free will, I would.

Anyway, I don’t feel I have much free will as it is now. I feel like that “robot” everyone keeps talking about. All our lives we are bossed around–by parents, teachers, employers, the government, law enforcement. And then we have the CAF Holier-than-thou/More-sanctified-than-thee crowd, who love telling the rest of us what lousy Christians we are, who insist we should have no desires, no wants, no feelings, other than to take orders from God and the Church. (Sure, you have the free will to reject God–and then you’ll burn in hell.) I feel compelled to do most everything in my life–so where’s the free will there?

It seems we have three choices. 1) We can live in the hell that is life on earth, endure pain, evil, and suffering, believe in God and pray that He will end our pain, and hope maybe to get some relief in the next world; 2) we can do all the same things as Group 1, but also develop an attachment to suffering and elevate it to a cult status, and convince ourselves through word games and mental gymnastics that suffering and pain and evil are great things, and that maybe we’ll get relief in the next life; 3) we can reject God now, continue to suffer and then burn in hell for eternity.

Do we have free will only to the extent we are ignorant of God’s determinism?

(Continued)
 
(Continued from previous post)

Now God created me with certain information pre-programmed into me: if I’m hungry I know to eat, if I’m sleepy I know to eat, etc. It doesn’t take anything away from God’s glory that I already have this information and haven’t had to learn this through trial and error or hard-won lessons. So why must I jump through hoops and deal with pain, suffering, and evil just to learn certain things?

God is great whether He has one creature glorifying Him or billions or none. God’s glory doesn’t wax and wane. He doesn’t become greater because I read about a case of genocide and it motivated me to give a homeless man $5. Hey, what’s thousands dead if I learned to give spre change to the poor?

Do we really mean our praise of God or are we just afraid of the punishment? Is there any glory in the praise of frightened supplicants?

Various posters have claimed that pain, evil, and suffering “always” produce greater good, but I’m not convinced of this. Has the good we’ve derived from learning about the Holocaust, for instance, proportionately outweighed the evil, pain, and suffering of the 6 million people who died then? Doesn’t that seem like overkill to make a point? Could the same point not have been made with merely 5 million people dead or even 1 million?

Can’t great lessons be taught without pain, suffering, and evil? I mean, I can train a dog to go to the bathroom outdoors without beating him senseless with a club in the process, and I’m not much of a teacher.

Benedict XVI said that evil is a by-product of our freedom, a parasite that feeds on human freedom. But why didn’t God realize that design flaw when He created freedom?

I admit I have a problem with the masochistic Catholic cult of suffering and pain–especially the long-standing practice of mortifying the flesh. It seems to me to be no better than the flesh-cutting the priests of Baal used to practice. Does hurting ourselves please God or make Him happy? Self-mortification seems to me to send the signal that we don’t believe Christ did enough on the Cross–that we have to add our two cents to finish it.

Now having said all this, I must add I keep my faith. It just would be nice if God sent me some answers to some of these major questions.

I dread the responses this will generate, but I had to get all this off my chest.
 
Grace & Peace!

Hipster (you’re no doofus, by the way), the questions you’re asking, and the questions Exalt is asking, are all grounded in a compassionate response to suffering. I fear the impression’s been given that that, in itself, is not a noble thing. It is, and it should be recognized as such.

What I, and I think a lot of people here, are trying to suggest is not that suffering helps God be more glorious. You’re absolutely right that God’s glory doesn’t ebb and flow with our suffering and our responses to it. Our apprehension of that glory may ebb and flow, however–consider this: cleaning a dirty window lets more light into the room. A compassionate response to suffering lets more light into the world. To believe that even a small act of compassion is meaningless in the face of a wave of suffering is problematic and only increases that wave. Regardless of the perception of suffering, it is still valuable to respond to it with compassion, even against the odds. The alternative is despair.

But this doesn’t get to the purpose of suffering–it just describes a possible (though desired) effect of suffering.

It is my contention that suffering is necessary for growth. If we are to go beyond ourselves in any capacity, that going beyond occassions suffering. Compassion itself is movement beyond our own borders–we see suffering, we suffer with, we respond. That whole process is movement beyond ourselves.

But how is it that growth should involve suffering? Because suffering is consciousness of that movement of growth. Why is consciousness so important? Because we must be conscious in order to be self-giving. In order to love. Without consciousness and without suffering, we might as well be insensate stones.

And this desire not to be (not to be human) is what I hear when people say, “why can’t there be no suffering?” Without perception of suffering, there is no perception of joy. Without joy, there is only varying degress of suffering. Why is it not so that without suffering there are only varying degrees of joy? Because ultimately, the movement from a greater joy to a lesser would be experienced as pain. Why, then, can we not move only from lesser joys to greater?

The answer from Christianity would be our fallen nature. We have a tendency to move down, into ourselves, rather than up out of ourselves. We have a tendency towards involution, isolation, and self-aggrandizement. And while there is a joy to be found in ourselves, that joy in ourselves is God in us–that is, it comes from outside of us, it is not ours by nature, but by grace. But so often, our inward movement is a search for the us in us. This constant tying ourselves into knots is sin. Finding the joy in us, finding God in us, leads us out of ourselves to find the joy beyond ourselves, in others, in nature, etc. And the movement towards this joy, in our fallen state, in the midst of our clinging to ourselves, can be painful. Can involve suffering.

But why are there natural disasters? Why is there abject affliction? It may be understandable that growth involves pain, it may be understandable (insofar as it’s possible) that people choose to do horrible things to each other for the own aggrandizement or entertainment as a result of poor choices occasioned by our fallen nature–all that’s very well and good–but what about tornadoes and hurricanes and plagues and droughts and other things?

The church’s response, again, goes back to the Fall–man was made to be the sum and summit of creation. When man fell, the whole universe fell with him.

(CONTINUED…)
 
(…CONTINUED AND COMPLETED)

Such a mythological explanation may be unsatisfactory, however. But the alternative proposed (that God step in to prevent disasters every time they occur) is equally unsatisfactory. Why? Because it asks that laws of nature and physics be constantly broken or suspended for our comfort. It is to suggest that the whole of the universe be ordered according to our comfort. But don’t we believe in miracles? Doesn’t God do miraculous things? Didn’t Jesus cure the sick, walk on water, didn’t Moses part the Red Sea by God’s grace?

Miracles, however, are the conscious and willing participation in the omni-present grace of God. As such, they are signs of grace. Their purpose is not our comfort. Their purpose is revelation. Comfort, if there is any, is a by-product.

The truth is–and perhaps this is cold comfort, perhaps it isn’t–the truth is that we were made to be in relationship–with each other, with the world, with God. Christian mythology (and I understand the word mythology not as “silly story” but as describing a linguistic vessel of truth) suggests that we spurned our purpose. We suffer the consequences in ourselves and in nature. It wasn’t meant to be like this. But it is like this, because we wanted it to be. That we do not like what we chose is understandable, is regrettable, is sad. But that’s the choice we made.

What Christianity attempts to do (as Weil suggested above) is find a supernatural use for the suffering of affliction–attempts to wrest from it a drop of the good, the true, or the beautiful. The suffering of growth is it’s own good. But affliction (colloquially, evil) obscures the good–which is merely an invitation for the good to be discovered. And in order for the good to be discovered, the affliction must be completely engaged. Not resisted. Completely engaged. And thereby completely exhausted. Perhaps this is why you believe the church valorizes suffering?

Hipster, none of this may have been satisfactory to you. I hope it’s been helpful, nonetheless. Your compassion (which, by the way, means “to suffer with”) is a gift. As is Exalt’s. I don’t take either of your questions as merely academic or disinterested–I see them as an active mourning of the state of the world, of our fallen humanity. Whether you respond to what I or anyone else here has written, I’ll just say this that Our Lord said many years ago, “Blessed are those who mourn. For they shall be comforted.”

Under the Mercy,
Mark

Deo Gratias!
 
Hipster_Doofus said:
…{snip}…

Do we really mean our praise of God or are we just afraid of the punishment? Is there any glory in the praise of frightened supplicants?
Click to expand...
M=====s are frightened supplicants, Christians aren’t.

Did I say that out loud…? How rude of me. Oh, I muffled myself. How fortunate…!
Various posters have claimed that pain, evil, and suffering “always” produce greater good, but I’m not convinced of this. Has the good we’ve derived from learning about the Holocaust, for instance, proportionately outweighed the evil, pain, and suffering of the 6 million people who died then? Doesn’t that seem like overkill to make a point? Could the same point not have been made with merely 5 million people dead or even 1 million?
Click to expand...
Apparently it took what it took to make the impression that it took, or it wouldn’t have taken what happened to do what that did.

Basically, I’m saying, “Who are you to make this judgement?”
Can’t great lessons be taught without pain, suffering, and evil? I mean, I can train a dog to go to the bathroom outdoors without beating him senseless with a club in the process, and I’m not much of a teacher.
Click to expand...
Not, apparenly, when the lesson requires pain, suffering, and evil.

And, you have to remember, WE (humans) are the ones who chose to prompt this lesson of pain, suffering, and evil.
Benedict XVI said that evil is a by-product of our freedom, a parasite that feeds on human freedom. But why didn’t God realize that design flaw when He created freedom?
Click to expand...
God is incapable of making “design flaws”, therefore, He can’t very well realize something that isn’t there, which you mistakenly interpret as a “design flaw”.
I admit I have a problem with the masochistic Catholic cult of suffering and pain–especially the long-standing practice of mortifying the flesh.
Click to expand...
Then you don’t undestand what you’re talking about, or those whom you describe as “mortifiers” aren’t “doing it right” giving you an incorrect impression.
It seems to me to be no better than the flesh-cutting the priests of Baal used to practice. Does hurting ourselves please God or make Him happy? Self-mortification seems to me to send the signal that we don’t believe Christ did enough on the Cross–that we have to add our two cents to finish it.
Click to expand...
Then it’s probably BOTH. You’re not understanding the concept, and those who you’ve “observed” are doing it somewhat wrong.
Now having said all this, I must add I keep my faith. It just would be nice if God sent me some answers to some of these major questions.
Click to expand...
Who around here isn’t SICK TO DEATH of people saying, “Oh, if God would just answer my questions!”

Just check the freakin’ catechism. When you find out what the “official” answer is, pray about that, and listen intently for what it REALLY means, to you.
I dread the responses this will generate, but I had to get all this off my chest.
Click to expand...
Fear not, good spouter-of-words…! Your ludicrousness and hilarious stupidity, which I myself am MORE than full of, is great fodder for conversation…!

Thanks for playing. Would you like to buy a vowel. I suggest “e”.

🙂

Mahalo ke Akua…!
E pili mau na pomaikai ia oe. Aloha nui.
 
Dear Deo Volente,

Thanks for the comments. I must mull over them before making a fuller response. I’m just glad not to get chewed out over them. (I witnessed some cruelty the other night that really brought the problem of evil into focus, making me angrily ask where God was in all this.)

But a few comments of my own: 1) I believe in miracles, or at least I suppose I do. I believe they used to happen at any rate, though I’ve not seen any modern miracles outside the everyday kind we associate with nature; 2) my religion gives me strength, though not really anything resembling comfort. When I go to Mass I usually sit there feeling miserable, thinking what a sinful screw-up I am. Fortunately I am in the process of looking for a Spiritual Director/Confessor. Maybe he’ll help out.

Ah, but I spoke too soon, I see Keikiolu is here with his usual uncharitable response…
 
And yes, I consulted the CCC before I ever posted on this topic. And it didn’t answer my questions adequately. (Edited by Moderator)
 
While I would object to my postings being called ‘extracts copied from theology textbooks’ I would agree with Hipster most philosophical attempts to develop a theodicy are unconvincing, both emotionally and rationally. There comes a point where one understands in the eyes of faith that sin and evil in the universe are in a way mysteries which are beyond rational comprehension, as Kant wisely argued, because the human mind cannot get a ‘God’s eye view’ of all things and ultimately work out the fine details of the divine mind and its plans or creation.

I firmly believe though that the universe is a good place and it is awash with the invisible glory of God made visible in terms of the beauty, truth and goodness of all created things; only someone with great blindness in both an aesthetic and intellectual sense could notsee the wonderful beauty in things. I have to admit one major attraction of Catholic thought and tradition is the very strong affirmation that God can be made know to a certain extent by matter and visible things, both the cosmos and scriptures and also the sacraments. While not a total and final answer to the great mystery of evil in all its dark forms, I think it is still possible to find grace and transcendant value in even the small things one encounters in everyday life, to the largest structures that are visible in the universe.

In considering what evil is we can’t really ignore the human subject. Evil inevitably raises the mysterious question ‘What is man’ and a lot could be written on that, and that is another topic.
 
Well Greg27, I was reading Benedict XVI and, oddly enough, Hans Kung as well, the other night on the problem of evil, and both had some helpful perspectives about God’s clear and obvious solidarity with us in our suffering, how He reaches over the vast gulf to help us. Although read the wrong way that might make some conclude God is not all-powerful, that evil is bigger than He is, which I don’t believe.
 
Hipster_Doofus said:
Dear Deo Volente,

Thanks for the comments. I must mull over them before making a fuller response. I’m just glad not to get chewed out over them. (I witnessed some cruelty the other night that really brought the problem of evil into focus, making me angrily ask where God was in all this.)

But a few comments of my own: 1) I believe in miracles, or at least I suppose I do. I believe they used to happen at any rate, though I’ve not seen any modern miracles outside the everyday kind we associate with nature; 2) my religion gives me strength, though not really anything resembling comfort. When I go to Mass I usually sit there feeling miserable, thinking what a sinful screw-up I am. Fortunately I am in the process of looking for a Spiritual Director/Confessor. Maybe he’ll help out.

Ah, but I spoke too soon, I see Keikiolu is here with his usual uncharitable response…
Click to expand...
Well,… heck yeah…! 🙂

Where’s the fun in being “nice” to the point of incomprehensibility?

…does that make you “feel bad”…? Poor boopie… er,… Doofie…
 
(Edited by Moderator) but you DID read it incorrectly, obviously. 🙂

Did you check the index?

Did you do a search on one of the online versions? : (CCC)

Did you ask someone here about where “your question” might be answered in the CCC?

Did you check the ancillary documents referenced in the “inadequate” answer(s) you DID find in your searching of the CCC?

Just some thoughts. 🙂

Mahalo ke Akua…!
E pili mau na pomaikai ia oe. Aloha nui.
 
Why don’t the moderators do something about obvious bullying sociopaths and trolls like Keikiolu? How do their self-absorbed antics contribute in any way to CAF?
 
Hipster_Doofus said:
Well Greg27, I was reading Benedict XVI and, oddly enough, Hans Kung as well, the other night on the problem of evil, and both had some helpful perspectives about God’s clear and obvious solidarity with us in our suffering, how He reaches over the vast gulf to help us. Although read the wrong way that might make some conclude God is not all-powerful, that evil is bigger than He is, which I don’t believe.
Click to expand...
It seems you either have to limit God’s power or His desire to use His power. Either God shares in our suffering and is not omnipotent or God chooses to allow evil and not exercise His power. There’s support for either position (at least in Judaism).
 
Hipster_Doofus said:
Well Greg27, I was reading Benedict XVI and, oddly enough, Hans Kung as well, the other night on the problem of evil, and both had some helpful perspectives about God’s clear and obvious solidarity with us in our suffering, how He reaches over the vast gulf to help us. Although read the wrong way that might make some conclude God is not all-powerful, that evil is bigger than He is, which I don’t believe.
Click to expand...
I’ve read some of Hans Kung’s works, including ‘Does God exist?’ I agree he offers very good and insightful analysis into the problem of evil. So far I haven’t read as much of Benedict’s works (as while he was a good theologian before becoming Pope, he was only one of many very good theologians in the church such as Balthasar, Rahner, Bouyer, Congar, etc). I will try and keep tabs on what the Pope’s explanations on theodicy are.

I think my original point I was trying to make is no theodicy will be satisfactory to everyone. There are clearly possible answers to the problem of evil, but if we look at it from a philosophical standpoint, so far no solution every philosopher could agree on has been given, just several good and plausible arguments. Clearly though as one approaches it also in the light of faith, some of these doubts are resolved, especially when one existentially encounters God in faith.
 
Hipster_Doofus said:
Why don’t the moderators do something about obvious bullying sociopaths and trolls like Keikiolu? How do their self-absorbed antics contribute in any way to CAF?
Click to expand...
Hmmmm…

Well,… apparently,… the mods aren’t fascist ninnies here as they are in so many other places.

You might try actually reading what I’ve written, as opposed to what you think I’ve written, and learn to converse like an adult, as opposed to a 3 year old.

But then again,… while I would actually expect free speech to be appreciated by an adult, I’m not overly expecting a fascist leftist juvenile (possibly in emotional age only) to even understand the concept.

How does one “bully” in a venue such as this? That’s ridiculous. I have no way, and wouldn’t want any, to threaten anyone with any sort of “harm” whatsoever.

If you want to turn me in to the “powers that be”, go for it dude, or dudette, whicever the case.

If you simply aren’t interested in what I, or anyone else, has to say, use the /ignore switch on the objectionable party in question.

What do they say, “Don’t feed the Trolls!”…? Then don’t.

Anyway,… have a lovely day,… and please don’t try to cross the street without mom’s help, okey-dokey…?

Mahalo ke Akua…!
E pili mau na pomaikai ia oe. Aloha nui.
 
Hello all, any chance we could get back on track?

I’m still looking for an answer to my original question i.e. Why are we all born with original sin?

Is original sin an encumberance or is it simply a lack of God’s grace? Why does our proclivity to sin exist after baptism? Why can’t we all be like Mary, full of grace and sinless?

God bless,
Noel.
 
There is a midrash which tells of four great rabbis/sages who entered paradise, which in this case is a metaphor for delving into questions of theodicy, i.e. why does evil exist. One died, one went insane, and one became an aprokis (heretic). Only one emerged unharmed.

The moral being that these types of questions are very dangerous for even the wisest of people.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top