Why good people suffer?

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Wretched_one

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Hello,
If you look at Israel and the lives of all the patriarchs and the prophets and I have seen personally very good people suffer a lot, why does God give so much suffering to good people? Perhaps he is asking them to sacrifice for others, but why the all merciful and all powerful God does not have a method to better distribute the work load amongst all people instead of having to sacrifice a few for all?
Thanks.
 
My take on the old testament is that bad things happened to people when they didn’t obey God. Everyone sins and sin causes bad things. In fact, evil is sometimes defined as an absence of good.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book “The Problem of Pain.” Perhaps it would help you to understand.
 
Wretched_one said:
Hello,
If you look at Israel and the lives of all the patriarchs and the prophets and I have seen personally very good people suffer a lot, why does God give so much suffering to good people? Perhaps he is asking them to sacrifice for others, but why the all merciful and all powerful God does not have a method to better distribute the work load amongst all people instead of having to sacrifice a few for all?
Thanks.
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That’s an age-old question. And the Catholic Church has the answer. Good people are allowed to suffer in order to bring about a greater good. We may not see or understand that greater good in this life, but we will in the next life!

I recall the story of a young seminarian who was sent to work, for a short time, with a goldsmith. The goldsmith was an older man, and he would take the gold ore, put it in a crucible and turn the heat all the way up, till it melted. Then, he would continue heating the melted gold, allowing the impurities (called “slag”) to float to the top, whereby he would skim it off and throw it away. This heating and skimming process was done over and over again till the gold was deemed pure. The young seminarian, curious about the process, asked the old goldsmith how he knew when the gold was “done.” The goldsmith said that when he could look at the melted gold and see his own reflection in it clearly, it was done.

God does the same with us. He purifies us, removing our impurities, until He can see His own reflection in us.
 
Scoobyshme said:
That’s an age-old question. And the Catholic Church has the answer. Good people are allowed to suffer in order to bring about a greater good. We may not see or understand that greater good in this life, but we will in the next life!

I recall the story of a young seminarian who was sent to work, for a short time, with a goldsmith. The goldsmith was an older man, and he would take the gold ore, put it in a crucible and turn the heat all the way up, till it melted. Then, he would continue heating the melted gold, allowing the impurities (called “slag”) to float to the top, whereby he would skim it off and throw it away. This heating and skimming process was done over and over again till the gold was deemed pure. The young seminarian, curious about the process, asked the old goldsmith how he knew when the gold was “done.” The goldsmith said that when he could look at the melted gold and see his own reflection in it clearly, it was done.

God does the same with us. He purifies us, removing our impurities, until He can see His own reflection in us.
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I like this answer. Also I would add for another piece of reference is to visit Fr.Robert Barrons YouTube channel. I know he talks about this because it’s of the top questions.
 
Suffering is redemptive. It’s actually an opportunity. Suffering is a small price to pay for the gift of eternal life. So really God, through suffering, offers us the deal of a lifetime. 😉

Every time we suffer, Christ suffers with us. This is why we as Catholics offer up our sufferings. What an honor and a blessing to share in Christ’s suffering for the gift of salvation.
 
Plus the honor where Christ is suffering with us. I really don’t think he has to but it just shows how much he loves us.
 
I say that suffering breaks the heart and God is near the broken-hearted. There is no overcoming the pride of life without genuine humility. I know that without suffering I would have remained haughty and deaf to God’s Word. It is only after suffering I cried out to God and repented.
 
Wretched_one said:
Hello,
If you look at Israel and the lives of all the patriarchs and the prophets and I have seen personally very good people suffer a lot, why does God give so much suffering to good people? Perhaps he is asking them to sacrifice for others, but why the all merciful and all powerful God does not have a method to better distribute the work load amongst all people instead of having to sacrifice a few for all?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Assuming God has a plan, and acts of God (carrying out this plan) are moral, then people suffer for a greater good. Whether or not any of these people that are suffering will experience this greater good on earth is debatable. I am sure that for some, life is constant suffering then death.
 
Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut, but I have a related question. At the cost of sounding a bit of an accountant in the matters of sacrifice, I just want to know academically that God is supposed to be just then why did he in the parable of the labourers pay the same amount to all the labourers though some worked more than the others? How to justify that? It seems that God is making a few people take the load of others. Is it possible that some people are root of the tree and some stems and branches and the root suffers more than the brances and nothing can be done about it since that is how they were created and how can the pot question the potter why was he created in such and such fashion and not in any other?
 
People suffer because God holds us responsible temporally for Adam’s and Eve’s sin.

Not spiritually - Jesus Christ took care of that.
 
Wretched_one said:
I just want to know academically that God is supposed to be just then why did he in the parable of the labourers pay the same amount to all the labourers though some worked more than the others? How to justify that? It seems that God is making a few people take the load of others.
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Isaiah 55-8:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
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Although it may seem unfair to you, to God it was not, and that’s the only person that matters when it comes to fairness. Assuming God dictates morality, why does God need to justify anything?
 
Scoobyshme said:
That’s an age-old question. And the Catholic Church has the answer. Good people are allowed to suffer in order to bring about a greater good. We may not see or understand that greater good in this life, but we will in the next life!

I recall the story of a young seminarian who was sent to work, for a short time, with a goldsmith. The goldsmith was an older man, and he would take the gold ore, put it in a crucible and turn the heat all the way up, till it melted. Then, he would continue heating the melted gold, allowing the impurities (called “slag”) to float to the top, whereby he would skim it off and throw it away. This heating and skimming process was done over and over again till the gold was deemed pure. The young seminarian, curious about the process, asked the old goldsmith how he knew when the gold was “done.” The goldsmith said that when he could look at the melted gold and see his own reflection in it clearly, it was done.

God does the same with us. He purifies us, removing our impurities, until He can see His own reflection in us.
Click to expand...
I’m wondering why God never created us pure in the first place that way he wouldn’t have to do all of this. And we wouldn’t have to be suffering.

If God made us perfect (as perfect as a mortal can be) then we wouldn’t have to suffer.
 
Also, look at something like rape. How, if a person is trying to live a good life, trying, struggling to believe in God, can a good and just God allow a girl in this position to be raped?! I believe that God has a plan for us all. I believe that we all suffer. But how can I tell this to a person who has just undergone something unbearable? I don’t know what to say here.
 
Wretched_one said:
Hello,
If you look at Israel and the lives of all the patriarchs and the prophets and I have seen personally very good people suffer a lot, why does God give so much suffering to good people? Perhaps he is asking them to sacrifice for others, but why the all merciful and all powerful God does not have a method to better distribute the work load amongst all people instead of having to sacrifice a few for all?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
“God give so much suffering”? One, that’s truly incoherent, one does not “give” suffering. If anything, He ‘premits’ it and even then that’s a stretch, we create our own suffering and because He respect our free will that He created he doesn’t intervene. Two, the onus is on you to demonstrate specifically how He inflicts suffering on us. Three, everyone suffers, good and evil people, what matters is how it affects you; will you cave into sin like a weakling or hold true to virtue with strength?
 
The old testiment. There is a way to look at it methodolically… or how ever it’s spelled…I can’t find my dictionary…

Anyways… look at the concepts.

Look at the old testiment comared to the new. Look aqt God’s perspective on what he was trying to do.

This is going to take forever…

The Bible is like a test book. It’s the test book on how tyo love God and love each other…anjd God’s way to make understand this. So, our salvation is on how to love God, Love our neighbors obey this to find heaven… right?

OK.

Let’s go into the Old testiment…

Go to the the start of the Bible. I am throwing you a Methodolical view of it all. It’s this view. That;s it.

At the beginning, man was at one with God. Man failed. The knowledge of Good and evil corrupted them. So, we now live in the world you see. God’s world… but, flawed.

Within the old testiment throughout you will see a recurring theme. Who God tried to contact his people, the ones he loved… and failed. After the flood…

Abraham. Even he was not perfect. But, God loved him because of his strength and said to him, your descedents will be my chosen ones…

The birth of the isreal and the people. The chosen race to, experiment on? YOu bet he did. This was the race he was counting on to worship and love him back and love each other.

Moses, great man… but, still the problem… God showing himself visibly… but still they went astray.

KIngs… why kings? B ut, the Lord said… OK… So, David, Solomon… and destruction even though he said all you need is me?

Judges… prophets… and, God took a new role… ambiguious… no light shows no nothing just a bunch of isrealites hoping for better times and he got more followers than he ever did.

So at the end of the Old Testiment. Way no fireworks… been there done that! It never worked.

But, God is Omnipetant. He is all powerful, seeing time like you see in the OLD testiment and seeing it as a blink of an eye.

Prophets. Let’s go to them to see the Lord’s will…and the did what they were supposed to do, becasue The Lord filled them with what they needed to know… The messiah.

Jesus. The man/God who came to us and died for our sins and took them all… everylast person who will ever be on this earth… just to know him… believe in him gives you grace and a ticket to heaven so you can proclaim to others of what you have found.

Revelations… guess what… at the end of days he will come down… free those who live and fight for rightiousness and everyone of uis souls that are at the right hand of God… and in the end… be reuited with our bodies on a NEW earth, NEW Heaven… no sorrow no tiol, no longing, no pain… just what you have found becasue of him. The greatest existance of them all./

There the Bible in a small concept! And this is the key to understandfing the Bible. The bible can be looked at as each individual word or as a giant concept. Each has it in it’s meaning. But if your looking for why you suffer? It’s in the concepts.

Why do we all suffer?

It starts at the beginning. When we… know that we is a dirdectly attributed to adam and eve who decided to be God…with the knowledge of Good and Evil. Hear we learned we have a choice. To TRUST in God, Not Trust and be like GOD… our own GOD? Being our own God didn’t work…, we lost the Garden and found ousrelves in this world. An image of parradise… but just an image of what God wanted to give us… we can’t live in that world for we corrupted it and destroyed it.

So the world you see outside is beautiful, yes and has many of God’s lovely things, yes… but, it also has something we see everday. The ability of man to be like GOD. We try to be that way…

Everything evil is a result of us trying to be like this… hunger, shelter, money, wealth, power…all to keep us ontop so we don’t devour ouselves in the worls. But, God is still in our world… beauty…love, kindness are all things not of the world but we bring into the world.

So we suffer. We suffer many things. But I can tell you this, if you suffer in this world for some reaqson or another, you are not alone. We all suffer. And suffering is no small matter.

Why is there sufferering? Becasue we made the world as it is and there is always suffereing. How do we deal with suffering. By understanding God’s perspective on suffering.

Imagine, you are suffering. A man loses his father at age 3. He is angry… pissed… and blames God for all this. It the world you live in and the world we created and God? instead of just sitting there pretending you don’t see. He is crying for you and with you… ever tear you make…becasue if he just could pu down is hand and make us in automitons… like robots… it would be alright…right… or will it?

NO free will to come to him. No will of yours to love him. Would you like to be a father of a child who is completely perfect like a robot… “loving” you. "I love you, DADDY!’ EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU ASK FOR EVER?

He wants you to have free will. And, that makes the world the way it is… imperfect…

But the answer is in Revelations. As we believe in Christ and go to heaven, because of his grace and our constant asking for forgiveness for our sins, we have inherited the Kingdom of God. Ask for forgiveness from Christ, our slate of all sins in our life is comletely wiped clean. Does this mean you can justr sin until you die? NO. It frees you to be a loving person… and, when it is all said and done you are with Christ.

Do you suffer now, Do others suffer? Yes, we live in a world that is not perfect and we must suffer like all the rest and take up Christ’s cross and follow him to be able … to be with him and be reunited with the rest of us Christians who live , pray and meditate on this stuff. (Sorry for the spelling errors.) A long post… please forgive:)
 
To test if they’re fair-weather friends or if they’re truly committed and loyal and to use them so as to atone for the sins of those who don’t know God or don’t love him. If I/we truly had our/my sights set on the prize (celestial bliss beholding the Beatific Vision), money, women, power, prestige, the dream of an easy life on a private island in the Exumas would lose a great deal, if not most, of their enticing powers.
 
My grand father used to tell me, "Good people go to heaven, the rest live good"… Yes he had an excellent life here but out of the sudden he got sick with a crazy bacteria that does not have any cure yet. I dont know if it is related or not but at the end he became very religious after a whole life of not very good actions we can say.

So I dont know good or bad I have seen both cases actually…
 
Maracuya said:
My grand father used to tell me, "Good people go to heaven, the rest live good"… Yes he had an excellent life here but out of the sudden he got sick with a crazy bacteria that does not have any cure yet. I dont know if it is related or not but at the end he became very religious after a whole life of not very good actions we can say.

So I dont know good or bad I have seen both cases actually…
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That’s a good quote from your grandfather. Thank you for it!

Deo gratias.
 
The good suffer because they are willing to sacrifice themselves rather than allow others to suffer. They are bound to suffer more because their compassion enables them to identify themselves with the poor and afflicted. They expose evil and injustice by the way they live and incur the hatred of those who exploit others. If Jesus hadn’t condemned anyone He wouldn’t have been crucified…
 
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