God Testing Research Paper

Even in the midst of suffering, God is aiming for your ultimate good (Jer. 29:11-13; Rom. 8:28; Gen. 50:20).

As a result of having imperfect parents, we all have a somewhat distorted view of God.

Most "bad" things which happen do so because God gives a radical freedom to God's people; we are free people, not puppets on a string. But God does not cause "bad" things to happen. God loves us and grieves with us in our pain when "bad things" happen.

Some times the question of “Where is God” surfaces with all the adversities, and I find myself asking “what is God doing for all these people who are suffering?” But however amidst all the issues I know that He is there, and all these problems and conflicts do not change the fact that God exists, and I still have hope for change for these suffering people no matter what the circumstance.

Therefore, the suffering and sorrow that you and I face today isn’t because of a “bad God”, it has come down through our generational line and we suffer because we are sinners. Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Some people may say “ I lead a good life, I am not hurting anyone, I give to charity… ”But this isn’t good enough in Gods eyes, people need to overcome sin and selfishness which is within all of us. We are all born into a nature of sin, which has been passed down from Adam and Eve.

When life hits us with problems and obstacles, we ask: “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” If we believe in God, we direct these questions to Him. In Classic Christianity, Bob George shows an example of this when he talks about a man preparing himself for a wildness trip. Each day he pushed himself harder to get ready. He wondered what his body would say about his preparations. “Why are you doing this to me?” “What have I done to deserve this?” Were the two thoughts that came to his mind. We do the same thing with God. We wonder why the Lord is punishing us. The Lord doesn’t punish us; He loves us unconditionally. The Lord is preparing us to face even greater challenges in life with perseverance and faith.

Being a Christian we fail to understand sometimes why God allows bad things to happen to good people or bad things to happen in our life when all we are trying to do is live it the best we can. Or like that old saying goes “when it rains, it pours”. Why does evil exist in the first place if God created the world to be holy and sacred? Honestly we have all asked ourselves this question at least one in our life if not multiple times a week!

I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He’s a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says that God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a “mystery.” In 2 Thessalonians 2:7 it talks about the mystery of iniquity. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” He asked that question, “Who can understand it?” And that’s one reason we each need God in our lives.

“Sometimes when we are hurting, we feel all alone and that, of all people, God has no idea what we are experiencing. This is a lie. Two thousand years ago, God stepped out of paradise so that He could experience our pain. He not only saw our suffering, but He tasted it, He wore it, He lived it, and He died as a result of

… I cry out by day, but you do not answer" ( Psalm 22:1-2 ). We often feel distant or disconnected from God. Even Jesus felt this way—and quoted this Psalm—when he was on the cross. However, it is important to remember that our God is not only a reasonable God but a listening one.

Seems like each day we turn on our televisions, open up our Internet browsers or turn on our smartphones we’re confronted with some disturbing news of people doing unimaginable acts to each other, to animals, to our planet or horrible things happening to people all across the globe. At some point, possibly even to the non-believers, the questions of a higher power and its existence comes into question as we debate on how or why if God is All Powerful, All Knowing, and All Good, how can He allow such atrocities to befallen mankind and the world?

I completely agree with Stronel's answer. God loved us so much and wanted us to experience the greatest value in the universe, which is love. Therefore, as a result of love God gave humans the gift of free will, the ability to choose our way. God knew that the only way we could experience and express full love without restraints is humans free will. Human Free will is this one thing that makes humans a unique creature but also what allows our own suffering and pains. With free will, humans has chosen to do good and to evil since we first existed. As a results, humans have created our own evils, pains, and sufferings in the world. On numerous occasions such as now or in the past, we have decided to turn away from God. As we

God is a God of justice and goodness punishing those who do not live an ethical life. It seems, from reading the "bible that His existence is intertwined with the lives of humans and (acts in history by destroying the sinners and causing the righteous to prosper. That God will ensure that the good accrue fortune and the bad suffer. In the words of Isaiah, “I will requite to the world its evil, and to the wicked their iniquity.” "but if this is what the "bible tells us of God, why does He not put a stop to the bad? For the faithful it is often difficult to reconcile this portrayal of God with the acts of evil we witness and read about in history. Why does fortune accrue to sinners and unwarranted suffering to the innocent? Why do God’s people - the Israelites - continue to suffer throughout all of time? How did a good and omnipotent God not interfere in the extermination of six million: or one third, of His people during the Holocaust? In the words of Richard Rubenstein, there is an apparent “conflict between faith and reason.”

Bible and theology aside, if one examines the situation, it is very easy to understand why so many people are at odds with the question. But I think that this is due to a very large misunderstanding. The main flaw in the logic of God-loves-us-so-why-does-he-make-us-suffer is that humans try to define God by human perception. The very concept of God is so unfathomable that in order to relate with God religious people begin thinking of God as having human characteristics. Love, wrath, sadness, joy, all of these emotions have been closely associated with God. It is easier to think of God this way, because it is something not quite so foreign, and it explains God's actions toward us...most of the time. But as the question illustrates, not all of the time. This forces us to drop the pretense of defining God by human terms and accepting the fact that God is a totally unimaginable entity, which humans could never describe. I use dimensional theory as an analogy. Imagine you inhabit the second dimension, a completely flat horizontal surface, try to imagine, having never been able to experience anything with height. In fact height would be a mathematical impossibility in the second dimension. There is no frame of reference within the second dimension with which to relate to the third dimension. Just as the (hypothetical) inhabitants of the second dimension are oblivious to existence of the third dimension, so are humans obilvious to the concept

Yet, God’s justness means that he rewards good and punishes evil. Thus, God indeed causes some suffering through punishment, but he is not the cause of evil actions themselves.