God and Suffering
"Then God saw everything
that He had made, and indeed
it was very good."
(The Bible: Genesis chapter 1, verse 31)
For many people, the fact that there is so much suffering and injustice in the world is incompatible with a good and just God. In particular, painful personal experiences such as a serious illness or the loss of a loved one often cause those affected to doubt God's love and good nature. Some blame God for the ills on this earth with-out questioning their own role and res-ponsibility.
The Bible testifies that this world - when God created it - was very good. In this im-maculate world, which the Bible describes as paradise, the first humans lived in peace and harmony with their Creator and his creation, enjoying the carefree life they had in the beginning.
However, if we look at our world today, which is characterized by illness, death and violence, we realize that it is anything but paradisiacal. Now the question arises: How can all the suffering that we see every day be explained against the background of an originally perfect creation? God's Word gives us the answer.
The origin of evil
“For with You is the fountain of life;
In Your light we see light."
(The Bible: Psalm 36, verse 10)
The connection to God, our Creator, has been the light of humanity since the begin-ning, giving meaning and orientation to our lives. Through God our lives have mea-ning. Through HIM we humans have an identity. At the same time, the relationship with God is the basis for a fulfilling life on earth in peace, security and prosperity.
Many people think that God is the one who created evil. But the truth is different: For just as when you remove light from a room, darkness remains, or when you remove heat from a room, cold remains, so when you remove God from life, nothing remains Darkness and emptiness left. Consequently, evil is not something that God created, but merely the absence of good; say: Separation from God. Just as a cut flower without a root that supplies it with vital water from the earth dries up after a short time, so too will a person sooner or later die spiritually and physically without a spiritual and life-giving relationship with God. In other words: Where the connection between cre-ator and creature is missing, neither peace, nor joy, nor life are permanently possible. Because without the relationship to God, human existence remains meaningless (See: Who is God?).
Most people in this world feel this lack, even if they are often not aware of the rea-son for it. This deficiency has a visible impact on all areas of people's lives. The consequences are fear, addiction, loneli-ness, depression as well as discord, selfish-ness as well as malice and meanness of all kinds. That's why people look for ways and means to compensate for the emptiness in-side themselves (such as through work, hob-bies, pleasure or intoxicating ones Suibstan-zen) and in this way give some meaning to his fleeting life. But there is nothing and no one in the world who can permanently fill this lack, except God. Interpersonal re-lationships cannot in any way replace the natural bond between a person and his Cre-ator. And so most people live in darkness, without meaning and without hope, be-cause they lack the light of life, which is God....
The fall of man
"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,
"Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
but of the tree the knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat, for in the day that you
eat of it you shall surely die."
(The Bible: Genesis chapter 2, verses 16-17)
After God created man, he initially gave him only one commandment. This small and inconspicuous-sounding commandment was intended to show whether people trust their Creator and whether they recognize God's orders, which God has established as the basis for people's lives on earth and which are all just and good. God knew that an existence without him and his com-mandments would soon end in suffering and chaos, which the course of human history confirms to this day. At the same time, God announced that violating his commandment would mean death for peo-ple....
Despite God's explicit warning, people vio-lated God's commandment. This event, which the Bible describes as man's fall, represents the beginning of man's rebellion against his Creator. The fall in turn had serious consequences for all of humanity to this day. God's Word tells us how man's betrayal came about.
S a t a n
"Did God indeed said....?"
(The Bible: Genesis chapter 3, verse 1)
In this context, the Bible mentions a being called “Satan” (Hebrew = “enemy”), who is also called the devil (ancient Greek: “Dia-bolos” = “cause of confusion”) and who is described as the author of sin . Even though many people think the devil is a fantasy figure, Satan is a real being. But unlike how people depict the devil today, Satan is described in Scripture as a fallen angel. Angels are heavenly beings with supernatural powers that God originally created to serve Him and us humans. Satan also once served God. He was of a particularly beautiful figure and had one of the highest positions among all the angels.
But Satan's heart was lifted up. His glory and beauty made him proud and made him admire himself and seek his own honor rather than that of his Creator. This led to Satan beginning to strive to be equal to God and to rule in his place. Since he couldn't do this, he declared himself an enemy of God. Satan's pride and his unbrid-led lust for honor and power drove him to seduce the other angels to rebel against God and thus win them over to his side. Satan did this by claiming that God's rule was unjust and that he (Satan) was the bet-ter ruler.
In this way, Satan managed to deceive many angels so that about a third of them joined Satan's rebellion. This is how a battle arose in heaven - in the invisible world - which later continued on earth. After Satan des-troyed the peace between God and the an-gels, man also became Satan's target... Although Satan's accusations against God were unfounded from the beginning and God could have destroyed him in an in-stant because of his rebellion, God chose to allow Satan to do so within a certain pe-riod of time so that it would be clear to all that Satan's intentions -thrusts against his Creator are not true and Satan's intentions are actually evil and selfish.
Satan's deception also brought disaster to the first people God created after the an-gels. Instead of trusting God and listening to His warning, they let Satan lie to them and deceive them into disobeying their Crea-tor. Through their disloyalty to God and the violation of his commandment, people recognized the evil that had previously been alien to them. The personal experience of being guilty led to a separation of man from his Creator. At the same time, man lost his right to eternal life, for which God created him. And so the earth became the new bat-tlefield for Satan's rebellion. This war, which continues to this day, is about who we be-lieve and whose side we are on: Do we trust God, our Creator, who loves us and whose commandments are useful for all people? Or do we listen to Satan, whose intentions are characterized by selfishness and pride and whose rule has brought nothing but injus-tice and death in the world?
Satan's goal
"Then the serpent (Satan) said to the woman,
“You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
(The Bible: Genesis chapter 3, verses 4-5)
Satan's primary goal is to divide people from God and force them to serve him. To achieve his goal, Satan uses every means pos-sible. To do this, Satan takes advantage of people's pride by causing them to take them-selves more seriously than God. At the same time, Satan tempts people to do things that displease God in order to then hypocri-tically accuse them of God, knowing full well that the end of every person who lives outside of God's will is eternal damnation. In this way, Satan has sealed the fate of mil-lions upon millions of people. For this rea-son the Bible calls him the “man-murderer.” The destruction of God's natural order of creation is also on Satan's agenda. This in-cludes the destruction of marriage as a sacred bond between man and woman, the destruction of the traditional family con-sisting of father, mother and children, the elimination of the binary gender as well as the propagation of sexual freedom without moral limits and much more....
In addition, Satan uses every conceivable means in this world (such as money, pleasure and entertainment, sexual stimuli as well as industry, politics, media and science and much more) to distract people from God and to put his devilish plans into action. Music and films with anti-divine content that have a particularly strong influence on people also serve as a means for Satan to manipulate people's thinking and subtly indoctrinate them. Likewise, all religions in which other gods (= idols) than the only true God are worshiped are inven-tions of Satan. The same applies to the sata-nic teaching that God is in every human being or that we humans are little “gods”....
On the one hand, Satan tries to make people believe that God doesn't exist and that it doesn't matter how we live because it would have no consequences for us. On the other hand, Satan sows people's doubts and distrust of God by questioning God's good plans and intentions. To do this, Satan skillfully uses lies and deception to mislead people while simultaneously concealing his true goals. It is not for nothing that the Bible calls him the “father of lies”.
In doing so, Satan makes people believe that the evil he intends is good and the good that God wants is actually unjust and evil and that it would be better if everyone could decide their own lives. The Bible also says that Satan disguises himself as an “an-gel of light.” This means that Satan pretends that his intentions are for the benefit of all, when in reality, unlike God, he is com-pletely indifferent to the well-being of people. Because for Satan, people are only a means to an end. Satan also uses political and religious oppression and persecution to enforce his intentions and to silence his enemies (see:God and church).
By ignoring God and his commandments and regulations, people automatically re-cognize Satan as ruler over them. Because that is exactly what Satan wants. That's why the Bible calls him the current "god of this world". To this day, the majority of humanity follows Satan's example in stri-ving to be independent of their Creator, believing that man has no need of God. Many people try to justify this fatal atti-tude with supposedly positive terms such as “humanism” or “self-determination”. In doing so, they make themselves a willing tool of Satan and his evil agenda. At the same time, they miss the goal of their life and risk being lost forever...
The consequences of apostasy
"although they knew God, they did not
glorify Him as God, nor were thankful,
but became futile in their thoughts,
and their foolish hearts were darkened."
(The Bible: Romans chapter 1, verses 18-32)
The root of all evil, the consequences of which become visible in our world in many ways (e.g. arguments, enmity, murder and retaliation, theft, sexual infidelity, etc.), are pride and the desire to be like God and thus to be at the center of creation -fung to stand; as was Satan's intention from the beginning. The further man turned away from God, the more he lost sight of the meaning and purpose of his existence. In-stead of honoring his Creator and loving his fellow human beings, man began to revolve more and more around himself, increasingly looking only at himself. At the same time, the greed for power and prestige came more and more to the fore. Since then, people have strived to make a name for themselves and to be adored by other peo-ple.
Separated from God and his love, pride and egoism as well as greed and envy determine the thoughts and actions of most people. The apostate people rose one above the other, so that eventually the strong ruled over the weak. So this paradisiacal world, as God had once made it, became more and more filled with hatred and violence. From then on, a few people claimed all of the earth's goods and raw materials for them-selves. While some people were able to live in abundance, the number of those affected by poverty and material hardship steadily increased. The invention of money has made this situation even worse. Social inequality among people is now greater than ever be-fore. To this day, money is the means used by the rich and powerful to rule over other people and influence events in the world to their own advantage.....
Since most people were unwilling to listen to God and return to their Creator, God left them to their own will and the cor-rupt desires of their hearts. Instead of sub-mitting to God's righteous rule, humanity seeks to rule on its own. The result is war, poverty, injustice, disease, terror, moral de-cay and a destroyed planet.... To achieve this, people began to make "gods" (= idols) according to their own ideas and also all sorts of myths and to think up fables that a large part of humanity still believes in today.
Death as the result of sin
"And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed;
to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast
of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in
which there is life, I have given every
green herb for food”; and it was so."
(The Bible: Genesis chapter 1, verses 29-30)
Because of their disobedience, God expelled the people from Paradise. In addition, God pronounced a curse on the earth, with the result that the climatic conditions on the planet changed and the plants no longer produced as abundantly as before. In this way, people should remain aware of their dependence on God and seek closeness to him in order not to finally lose connec-tion with their Creator. In addition, God wanted to make it clear to people that an unlimited life in paradise, as people had in the beginning, is only possible with God.
Instead of immediately destroying man for violating his commandment (which would have meant the end of humanity), God let him live out of grace so that men - even though they were now mortal - could en-joy life and produce offspring. According to God's promise, the savior would emerge from them, who would defeat Satan and thus bring salvation from death to huma-nity. With this, God gave people his promise that one day HE will free creation from transience and restore the earth's paradi-siacal state (See: The way to redemption)..
Immediately after God's verdict, man's phy-sical deterioration began, which would sooner or later end in his death. While the first generations of people lived to a con-siderable age, human lifespan decreased more and more in the following millennia. This is primarily related to people's life-styles, which harm both their environment and their health. Today, human life expec-tancy is only a few decades. The disregard for God's orders, especially with regard to sexuality, led to the emergence and increa-sing spread of a variety of diseases that continue to have a dramatic impact on hu-manity today.... (See: Creation vs. Evolution")
This is accompanied by a ruthless exploi-tation of humans and animals, which comes to light, among other things, in intensive animal husbandry. Globalization and mass production have accelerated this develop-ment many times over. But as in everything else, the selfish actions of man take their revenge in the form of natural catas-trophes and epidemics, which are increa-sing worldwide and which claim dozens of human victims year after year....
Consequences for
animals and plants
"And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed;
to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast
of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in
which there is life, I have given every
green herb for food”; and it was so."
(The Bible: Genesis chapter 1, verses 29-30)
The curse that resulted from man's fall into sin also had significant consequences for all plants and animals. While in the beginning people and animals lived in har-mony with each other and no one lacked food, many animals and plants were now forced to adapt to the changing circum-stances on earth. Although God originally created all animals as herbivores, some of them now began to hunt or kill other ani-mals and eat their flesh in order to survive themselves. So the struggle for survival be-came a sign of a fallen creation as a fur-ther consequence of man's apostasy from his Creator....
Many people who reject God often also show a low appreciation for nature as part of his creation. This is particularly visible in the ruthless treatment of our unique en-vironment, which is vital for all people. As a result, people not only destroy their own basis for existence, but also disregard the responsibility that God has given them to protect and preserve nature.
In the past 200 years since the beginning of industrialization, man's greed for con-sumption and profit has led to increasing destruction of our planet, which has re-sulted in the mass extinction of tens of thousands of animal and plant species that once enriched this earth with their diver-sity within a very short space of time ( See: Creation vs. Evolution).
This is accompanied by the ruthless exploi-tation of people and animals, which is evi-dent, among other things, in intensive livestock farming. Globalization and mass production have accelerated this develop-ment many times over. But as in everything else, man's selfish actions are taking re-venge in the form of increasing natural disasters and epidemics worldwide, which claim dozens of human victims every year....
The bondage of sin
Jesus Christ says:
"Whoever commits sin
is a slave of sin."
(The Bible: John chap. 8, verse 34)
As a result of the separation from his Cre-ator, man became a slave to his own in-stincts. At the same time, his conscience and his feeling for what is good and evil or natural and unnatural became more and more dull. To this day, humanity re-mains under the influence of Satan, trapped under the bondage of sin - the conse-quence of which is death. Sin destroyed people morally and health-wise over gene-rations and robbed them more and more of their dignity as a creature created in the image of God. At the same time, man's pride and stubbornness blind him to the truth and prevent him from knowing God.
Driven by his destructive passions and lusts, man constantly desires more; but his soul finds no rest and his desire is never satis-fied. Man's insatiable selfishness ultimately brought all the indescribable misery to this earth that humanity laments to this day. But instead of understanding the real rea-sons, many blame God for the misery on this planet that we ourselves cause through our rebellion against God and disregard for his commandments...
Man has risen to the measure of all things and has fallen deeply in the process. With-out God's saving intervention, humanity would most likely have wiped itself out long ago in its megalomania. Even the so-called technical "progress" that inspires humanity and of which many people boast today cannot in the least make up for what man has lost since the day he turned away from God.
Man's apostasy from his Creator is the true cause of illness and suffering. God is not to blame for the plight of this earth; it is man who places himself above God and thus follows the path of Satan. All the evil that humanity has suffered up to this day is nothing other than the effect of sin in a world that does not want to know any-thing about God and in which love grows ever colder. And so, in its defiance, blinded humanity continues unwaveringly on the path to its destruction....