Re: I feel like college is changing my friend
Just out of curiosity, what is your theory on why one person (such as Bela) was granted such a profound miracle by the hand of god, but just a few short years prier Hitler was permitted to exterminate approx. six million jews, none of whom were shown even a fragment of the kindness shown to this one man and his wife?
While it's true that he faced more than enough calamity to be more than deserving of some divine compensation, what made his parents and so many millions of other people less deserving than he was? and what about all the children who either died or were orphaned during that period, perhaps too young to understand God or what was going on in the world to cause there to be no one to hold them when they cried?
Are we perhaps just puppets and it's all a game?
I'm thankful and humbled to have been asked a variant of a centuries old question: if God is good, why does he allow evil? I won't pretend I can honestly do it justice, but I'm sincerely going to try.
First, you are allowing that there is such things as good and evil. You compare the greatness and goodness of what happened to Bela and Marya to the atrocities commited by Hitler and the suffering of countless men, women and children. The one you see as good, the other as evil. the numbers would still be countless even if we shrank them down, because I'm sure, that to you and I, any suffering is vile, and any sudden and violent and tragic death is a loss of a life that has no price but massive value. This is the basis and such a wonderful starting point for what may or may not be transcendent and objective morality. If you don't wish to accept that as true, then you're left with subjective morality, which means that Hitler was only doing what he thought was best for him and his people, which is fine because as long as they get their way... I'm sure you can see where I'm heading with that. The point is that as long as morality can be subjected to our claims one can use it for what we call good, while another will use it to justify their evil. Only by allowing morality to revolve around a perfect, pure and flawless, central reference point, can we honestly make sense of it, lest it be left up to human fallacy and imperfect judgment.
Second, as I'm sure we can both agree neither of us is perfect, I'd like to know, with all do respect to you and anyone else who might be reading this, what you propose God, who is supposed to be perfect, do about such a situation? Every single one of us who has an ounce of decency and a shred of morality wants to eliminate all suffering, but where does it come from? Who causes it? Why is it here? Is it an act of some unknown source or are we all to blame collectively? Do we not all, each and every single one of us, have some sort of trait that hurts someone else? Are not some of us liars? Cheaters? Thieves? Swindlers? Adulterers? Greedy individuals willing to do anything and everything to get precisely what we want when we want it? Even with the best of intentions, I still hurt people! I was just recently reported to the moderation panel for being hateful, when my purpose was anything but! If you can say that you have never in your life caused an ounce of suffering, then I declare that you are righteous enough to both ask of God such a question and bestow upon him the answer, because you will be equall to, if not better than he.
To conclude, I strongly believe we suffer because we must, because free will runs its course as an act of godly mercy, because of love, grace and compassion greater than anything we ourselves have the capacity of understanding. To get rid of suffering, God would have to get rid of all of us. why do people like Bela and Marya Paskin seem to receive what we deem miraculous intervention while thousands of children are left to die daily of hunger and starvation and any other number of ordeals? I don't really know the answer, and am left with the fragility of my faith to push me forward in life, believing that God is just and good and righteous and knows far more than my limited self is able to comprehend, aware that he has promised to use all things for good for those who love him and who do according to his purpose. If christ is truly the son of God, I can rest peacefully to some degree knowing that he said Children would inherit the kingdom of heaven. I cannot fathom why they had to suffer first and wish it otherwise, but since they too are products of free will I can see how it came to be and accept it as such with a heavy heart that crys out for an end to all of this.
”God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
-C. S. Lewis (1898-1963). Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge; The Problem of Pain,
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