🙂 In response to somebody’s remark about a bad & a good life, here what some points i managed to think through. You may agree/disagree.
The reality of suffering.
It’s one of the most profound and debated topic in all circles. How can a good God allow suffering? Or will God make people suffer? If God in control, why did He allow suffering (the natural disasters, poverties, hungers, diseases, etc)?
There’s 3 ways at least for me to answer that honestly.
1. Suffering is the consequences of this fallen world. As fallen world (bcs of man’s sins), it’s natural to expect disease & disasters. Hence it’s expected thing. And consequences of man’s sins too….that we see crimes, poverties, and hungers …. for the selfishness of the rich some and the jealousies of the poor.
And to this aspect, I give thanks to God who promises of a new world. The world he will create when Jesus comes again. The new world where there will be no more disease, death, disaster, and tears. A perfect world
2. God not only allows suffering as part of human’s life. But He sticks to the rule, and he played this ‘game’ fair. There’s no better description than this fairness. That Jesus lived and experienced sufferings more than most of us ever experience. He was beaten, stripped, nailed, hanged on the cross, pierced…..and those happened as results of people’s conspiracies & betrayals. God allows suffering, and he tasted it to the fullest. He didn’t skip / escape it …..
3. Last, the knowledge that God knows our sufferings, and He cares. I think that’s the last defence i can put up, when all my mind and rationalization has far gone. The fact that God knows (even when a bird falls or a hair drop, God knows) and God cares (when Saul persecuted Christians….Jesus confronted him as he’s actually persecuting Jesus himself).
When i cannot make sense of suffering, the comforting this is that God knows, and He cares (as the book of Job fully answers that about suffering on good people) that God’s wisdom is higher than ours and He knows what He’s doing.
So in the face of sufferings, a Christian view of life should not be pessimistic …. and it should not be cursing & swearing to God. For all this will one day gone, and God cares even in the midst of suffering.
And when good things happen:
1. A people that giving thanks & praise to God
2. A people that acknowledge God as the giver of all good things
That may in bad times or good times …. our lives give glory to God