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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

World Suffering... Why?

59 replies

Burgoo · 20/03/2022 12:19

I wanted people's thoughts on this as I have wrestled with it recently.

I went with a family member to a church she wanted to attend. I am atheistic though went to church from 10-15 years of age and wanted to be supportive and find out whether it'd feel different as an adult.

The minister started by mentioning Ukraine and then moved on to how God has a master plan, that he is good, he is almighty and he is merciful. He went on saying that children of Christ will be with him and the rest of us will perish.

I sat there thinking "God is merciful? Tell that to my Aunt who died horrifically of cancer, or the kids being bombed in Yemen and Ukraine".

So! Firstly, what do people think? Is it a reasonable response to have or am I missing something? For those who are church goers please do feel free to explain because I feel that either 1) god isn't real 2) god is real and can't intervene (in which case what use is he) or 3) god can intervene but opts not to or actively harms children.

Thanks in advance!

OP posts:

twinkletoesimnot · 20/03/2022 12:22

This has always been my problem with 'believing' in God.
If he's so wonderful, then why do little children get cancer, why do the loveliest people die too soon etc

If this is all part of his 'plan' then I want no truck with it anyway!

If heaven is only for those who never sinned, it must be an empty place.

Flowersandhearts · 20/03/2022 12:31

Hm I'm agnostic, I used to be Christian. I feel better believing in no God or in one that doesn't intervene. It all makes my head hurt really! I don't at all agree that a kind and merciful God would happily let non-christians perish but I don't really know anything!

DogandMog · 20/03/2022 12:44

I believe that God is an all powerful healer, but only post-hoc. Humans have free will to fuck up the world and each other, which we do in spades as we jostle for money, power, land and resources with little care and regard for each other. Only love will heal us and regenerate us in the end and return us to grace with the source of love and oneness.

This powerful quote sums up my thoughts on suffering:

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov

MartinMartinMarti · 20/03/2022 12:55

I agree OP.

I cannot get an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, and earthquakes, into my head at the same time.

People make arguments about god allowing us free will (they have on this thread) and that includes the freedom to fuck up. Which sort of allows for man made suffering, like in Ukraine.

But for totally natural suffering like earthquakes, or your example of cancer - I’ve never heard a half way convincing explanation.

Freddiefox · 20/03/2022 12:59

Yanbu, all the ‘pray for Ukraine’ are they not praying enough? Does the person not deserve to be helped.

A friend of mine was able to in the end have a natural birth rather than a c section. She claimed it as a A miracle because I had prayed so much.
Does that mean that others who have to have a c section didn’t pray enough? How many more prayers were needed? It’s quite tasteless and offensive.

Freddiefox · 20/03/2022 13:00

She

ComtesseDeSpair · 20/03/2022 13:16

I’m atheist but have always assumed it’s figurative and “mercy” is what you experience when you think about the human experience as a whole and how God has supposedly interacted with it. So understanding the trials and tribulations of humankind through scripture and recognising that you and the right now are just tiny flickers in a much longer history of struggle and overcoming and how humankind interacts with God, are what is supposed to soothe you and give you a sense of peace. Rather than believing that God can directly cure your cancer if you pray hard enough etc, which I don’t think is a very mainstream Christian belief anymore, is it?

Davros · 20/03/2022 13:24

Can you live a good life without god?
Yes, of course you can.
That's the humanist motto.

lemmein · 20/03/2022 13:25

I find it bizarre that in 2022 people still believe in god - for me it's akin to believing in fairies 🤷🏻‍♀️

BrightYellowDaffodil · 20/03/2022 13:26

I don’t believe in a Christian god but I do believe in deity as part of a different faith. I don’t believe that gods/deities bring about the suffering because humans do that, and we have free will.

girlmom21 · 20/03/2022 13:29

@BrightYellowDaffodil

This. I'm not religious but I do sometimes wonder if 'God' created what we needed to survive and then left us to our own devices - like surely it's not God's place who decides who gets to live or die; they've given us the materials we need to create cures etc, we just haven't found them yet.

Eloradannin2nd · 20/03/2022 13:33

I think I really stopped believing at a grandparents funeral. The vicar said that they were in "a better place" . What, a better place than here surrounded by their family who loved them and grieved their loss?

CorneliusVetch · 20/03/2022 13:34

I’m not especially religious, but theologically this is wrong:

If heaven is only for those who never sinned, it must be an empty place

It isn’t for those who have never sinned; Christianity teaches Jesus died for our sins, and by faith in Jesus Christians can enter heaven.

BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation · 20/03/2022 13:40

God believers tie themselves up in knots trying to explain this, but it never makes sense.

My sil used to believe that praying for a parking space would mean that God would grant her one 🙄 presumably because she really deserves to have her prayer wish granted whereas all the starving, trafficked, abused, neglected, sick and stricken people out there, don't.

You couldn't make it up......Only it is made up, so there's your answer. 'God' is merely an extension of a humans ego.

Loopytiles · 20/03/2022 13:55

Am an atheist so would just regard in the light of the person leading the service seeking to make sense of awful things. I’d disagree with their analysis!

axolotlfloof · 20/03/2022 14:00

I remember someone who survived the same illness that my Mum recently died of saying "I feel that God has saved me".

Does that mean God looked at my Mum and decided not to bother?

TheKeatingFive · 20/03/2022 14:02

Humans desperately want to believe that there's a righteous, kind, all powerful person in the sky directing operations, but pretty much nothing about the reality of human existence suggests that it's true.

stairgates · 20/03/2022 14:05

I wonder if God created the earth, and if you follow his rules and go to heaven, did all the cavemen go to hell because they couldnt read and hadnt been given the book yet?

Theworkhouse · 20/03/2022 14:07

No, God as invented by humans does not exist. All religion has been invented by humans and therefore is nonsense.

However I do believe in some kind of life force, or Chi, or the Universe, or Mother Earth or something that we don't understand. And I do think that the soul or spirit or whatever carries on after death. I just don't think that as humans we can possibly understand it. But I don't believe it goes around saving people or curing cancer.

RandomBasic · 20/03/2022 19:07

If you were sitting on a bench and saw a baby drowning in the pond next to you would you just watch and say, 'so sad.'?

If you saw someone come up to a little old lady and push her over as they snatched her purse, would you just watch her lying there for 3 hours until she died?

If you saw an infant being abused would you just sit and watch?

That's what the so called God does. Sit and watch. Because there's a plan.

Yeah, no thanks. Take that plan and shove it.

Ownedbymycats · 20/03/2022 19:20

@DogandMog
What a beautiful and thought provoking quote.

secretllama · 20/03/2022 19:24

Agree... i just cannot understand someone who can believe in an all loving/all powerful God that let's children die slowly of cancer.

GreenNewDealNow · 20/03/2022 23:32

Suffering is a mystery. That's true whether you believe in God or not.

Tryingtoexplain · 21/03/2022 00:26

Ok so Christianity in a nutshell.
Our world is broken and it’s not as God intended it to be as a result of our rebellion. We have free will to choose how to behave and the further we move away from Him and live for self the worse it all becomes.
Christianity is not a religion it’s a faith - in all other religions you are the one doing things to try and get into heaven, or achieve acceptance, and who knows if it’s good enough. We can never be good enough, or behave well enough for heaven. It’s a perfect place and we are all essentially flawed. With Christianity it’s different in that a thing was done for us out of love- Jesus who was God in human form was a sacrifice to pay for our wrong doing should we choose to accept him. He came to seek and save the lost and the broken -to save us from spending an eternity separated from God.
Suffering in this world is inevitable because of the brokenness of it all and that includes disease, war, famine the whole lot, but it’s what happens after this life that is the important thing. We are here for such a short time compared with eternity after.
I know that people are likely to come back and say look at all the bad things that have been done in the name of Christianity, and you’d be right to say that, but these are essentially evil people using the name of Christianity for selfish gain. Again living for self.

RicherThanYew · 21/03/2022 00:50

@Tryingtoexplain That was nicely said, thank you.

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