Why Would God Allow It?

I was listening to a podcast the other day where an Agnostic/Atheist Bible scholar was being interviewed.

When asked about why he ultimately lost his faith in a higher power, he said…

“I just can’t reconcile the fact that there is so much suffering in the world with the idea of a higher power.”

This is a common thought that seems to lead people to disbelieve in a creator or higher power.

When I was on a church mission in Taiwan I remember this thought bubbling up on more than one occasion.

It’s a great question and when I heard this Bible scholar express it the other day, I chalked it up as another one of those many items and questions that I don’t really have a good answer for.

But this morning as I was reading Man’s search for meaning, Victor Frankl addressed that exact thought in probably the best way I’ve ever heard it addressed.

He was counseling a group as a psychologist and he asked…

“Would an ape who was being used to develop some important cure for a terrible human disease, and for this reason being punctured again and again with a needle, ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering?”

Unanimously the group replied that of course it would not; with its limited intelligence it could not; enter the world of man i.e., the only world in which the meaning of its suffering would be understandable.

“Then I pushed forward with the following question;

“And what about man?

Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos?

Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?”

What a great question.