Suffering

There are several reasons why God  allows suffering to occur in the world, but if God is unconditional love, all of them  have to be linked to the advancement of love. If God allows human beings to cause suffering to one another, He does so for reasons of advancing the free appropriation of love; and if God created an imperfect world with natural laws which indirectly cause suffering He did it for the same reason. God does not directly cause suffering, and  He allows suffering  to advance love and to strengthen His invitation to eternal unconditional love.

If God does not directly cause suffering and is only an indirect cause of suffering, what or who are the true direct causes of suffering? There are two major sources beyond ourselves: Other human beings and Nature.

God should be likened to the most compassionate and affectionate of parents who would gladly suffer in the place of their child, but realize that this child must make her own decisions and must deal with the challenges of life as a free human person. An unconditionally loving God suffers with everyone who suffers, and  redeems every scintilla of suffering through His providence for all eternity. An unconditionally loving God allows suffering to occur if it leads to our choice of a more authentic love and life which lasts for eternity. The key is that God has an eternal perspective. He also has an unconditionally loving perspective.

So why does an unconditionally loving God allow human beings to cause suffering to one another? Because love requires the freedom to be unloving and “unlove” frequently causes suffering. Without the capacity to cause suffering human beings could not be truly loving.

If God were to create a creature incapable of not loving, He would also have to create a creature incapable of love, because the very powers of self-consciousness and imagination can lead equally to jealousy or magnanimity, egocentricity or altruism, arrogance or humility, greed or generosity, anger or kindness, hatred or love. To render a being incapable of jealousy is to render it incapable of magnanimity. To render it incapable of egocentricity is to render it incapable of altruism. To render a being incapable of hatred is to render it incapable of love. God does not create the actuality of suffering in the world, but only the possibility of suffering, by creating people who have the real choice. God must create a people with the freedom to love others with a love that is their own.