This is part 9 of a series; Common Sense Miracles — Not Magic is part 1.

Here at Goldenruled.com, we like to talk about the big questions; to give answers to questions most people are afraid to even ask. And probably the biggest question that Christians cannot answer satisfactorily is… why does God allow suffering?

What sort of a “loving” God permits war? How can He live with Himself, presiding over a universe full of genocide, abuse, drugs, disease and suffering of all kinds – when He’s fully capable of stopping it with a snap of His fingers?

These are REASONABLE questions! I mean, He’s all-powerful right? So… why does He allow cancer? I mean, if He IS all-powerful, He can certainly cure cancer. So what sort of a monster must He be, to sit back and do nothing?

Christians like to pin all the blame for these things on the devil, but that rings hollow too… because is the devil stronger than God? I mean, can you honestly call yourself the ALL-mighty if you can’t even control one of your own creations??

These are perfectly rational questions, and they deserve a rational answer. And today you’re going to get one! Because God is absolutely capable of healing all disease, ending world hunger, halting all war, binding the devil, and making sure that no one lives in poverty.

And so if He doesn’t, He’s either a monster… or He has a very good reason. So first of all, let’s consider what God would have to do in order to end war. Given God’s literally infinite power, it still has to be done in some way. What might that be?

If God magically did away with all nukes, tanks, and guns, would that end wars? I mean, man was warring long before he invented guns! Even if God took away all spears and knives and axes, man would still kill each other with clubs and rocks and fists.

But maybe God could just kill the dictators and bad guys who start wars? Sure, God could do that; but whom would He kill? Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin?

How many would-be dictators would replace the vacuum they leave behind? Earth has a nearly inexhaustible supply of power-hungry people willing to take from others to get ahead. If God kills the “bad guys”, how many would be left?

Then we have to ask if the generals who fought for the dictators are guilty as well? What about the enlisted men in their armies – those who supported Hitler and cheered his name? Are they “bad guys” too?

What about the people who feed, clothe, and support an evil empire? Or what about those who merely profit from an evil empire? Are they to blame for genocides and wars just as much, or even more, than Stalin? And if so, must God kill them too?

It’s easy to see that very few are completely innocent of the cause of war, and so to prevent wars by killing those to blame, God must kill more than the wars themselves would kill! So ending war isn’t quite as easy it as it seems!

ENDING SUFFERING

What about ending poverty or hunger? If God waved His hand and made the Earth produce ten times more food than it does now, would that end hunger? Not really; the few mega-corporations who produce most of the world’s food would rather destroy a bumper crop than sell it cheaper than it is right now.

Besides, more food would just encourage people to multiply until they used up all that food too, and once more famine was a problem; we know that, because that’s what happened every time the world food supply increased throughout history!

Rational, reasonable people imagine naively that if God simply blessed mankind with an abundance of food, wealth, and money, that famine, poverty, and war would cease. But God has already done that, many times!

And what history teaches us is that the wealthier the people, the more they start wars; it has always been the richest nations that were imperialistic because there is never enough money! And the less people have to work, the more time they have to bicker and feud and want what belongs to someone else! See: Rome, England, France, America, China, etc.

But surely God could cure all disease; here, surely, is something we saw Jesus do, and something within God’s power. And it’s true, God could do that… but what would be the point? If people never got diseases, they would never die; then what happens to world hunger, poverty, and housing?

But suppose God just healed everyone of what was currently wrong with them. If God cures you of lung cancer, say, but you keep smoking – again, what’s the point? If He cures your liver disease, but you keep drinking, why bother to heal you at all?

You’d live a few more years, true, but you’d wind up back where you started again – needing another divine intervention in another few years. And then another, and another. Where does it end?

Jesus once healed a man who had been sick for 38 years; after he was healed, Jesus said to him “Behold, you are made well. Sin no more, so that nothing worse happens to you” (John 5:14).

Which means if God were to heal all disease, but people keep doing the things that caused the diseases… their lives might actually get worse in the long run! And what loving God would take that risk?

CURE THE CAUSE

So fighting the aftermath of sin is a losing battle, and one God refuses to fight. There are only two practical ways to stop human suffering; two, and only two, realistic ways, even with the power of God, to cure mankind’s social ills.

First, God can take away free will and make you do it His way. God can brainwash you, suck out your individuality and program you to act nice. Program you to vomit at the idea of eating unhealthy food, to faint at the idea of shedding blood, to prefer death to unrighteousness.

Is this a solution you would like? If you’re unsure, there are plenty of dystopian sci-fi movies I can refer you to; the Matrix, 1984, I Robot, the Minority Report, the list is quite long; Is that what you want? To be programmed by God into a zombie-like “good person”? Because that would work. But neither you, nor God, would like it!

The other way – the ONLY other way – is to cure the cause of war. Which is… us.

James 3:1-3 (WEB) Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? You lust, and don’t have. You kill, covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures.

To stop war, God must stop lust. Destroying the guns we use in service of that lust is ultimately pointless. To stop hunger, God must stop lust – because if a corporation didn’t want more money for its shareholders, it would sell its food supplies cheaper.

To stop disease, God must stop lust; for if we didn’t want to eat food that was bad for us, if we weren’t too in love with pleasure to exercise, and if we didn’t eat too much and too often, most diseases would cease to exist.

Not to mention the lust of corporations that overfarm and underfertilize the soil, pick food too green to increase shelf-life and use poisons to kill mold, insects, and weeds; and the lust of customers who want blueberries out of season and peaches without blemishes.

These, and a thousand other things contribute to disease. God cannot end disease without ending things like this. And God has tried to reach us; I don’t just mean with religious prophets, I mean He has sent people to warn of the ills of pesticides, the problems with overeating and GMOs and so on; and the establishment has, by and large, rejected them (Matthew 23:34). As they always did:

Luke 13:34 (WEB) Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, like a hen gathers her own brood under her wings, and you refused!

And so you see, it is not God’s fault that mankind suffers. It is our fault. It is not God’s fault for not healing our ills; it’s our fault for refusing to change the selfish nature that causes our ills. It is HARD for God to watch us suffer and do nothing; but it is literally the only way we can learn.

Lamentations 3:33 (WEB) For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.

LEARNING THROUGH SUFFERING

We are not born knowing what “hot” or “pain” or “suffering” or “evil” means. Until you’ve had a headache or a toothache, no words can convey what it is. You can get the sense that it’s unpleasant, and to be avoided, but not how unpleasant, not how important it is to be avoided!

No one ever learns what it means to burn yourself until you’ve been burned. After it happens the first time, then you learn exactly how important it is, and the next time you avoid hot things. Sin, more precisely the consequences of sin, is no different.

God can tell you “sin is bad”, just as you can tell your toddler that fire is hot, and you can believe Him, and be afraid of sin… but until you feel it for yourself; see what sort of a life it builds for you, and understand exactly how it hurts… only then will you learn to avoid it at all costs; to hate it, and to reject it not because God said so, but because you WANT to avoid it!

Romans 7:13 (WEB) Did then that which is good become death to me? May it never be! But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, by working death to me through that which is good; that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful.

So God gave us free will to choose to do good or evil; then gave us commandments – the golden rule, and its derivative laws – to show us what was good, then left us a devil to offer us alternate definitions of good. So that we could learn, by practice, which choice produced the fruits we liked… and which did not.

Thus, God is not the cause of suffering in this world! And God permits it, not because He is a monster, or because He doesn’t care, but rather the opposite – because we insist on doing the things that cause it! So God permits us to experience the fruits of our choices in the hopes that a least SOME of us will figure out why bad things happen and STOP CAUSING THEM!

God allows Satan to tempt us, just as He allowed him to tempt Adam and Eve, not because He wants to know IF we will choose to sin, but because He knows we probably will! And He wants us to experience the results of that choice, so that next time we won’t!

For it is only through choosing, and choosing badly, and suffering, that we are motivated to choose better the next time. And that is why God gave Israel the Old Covenant laws.

THE LEX TALONIS

Few realize it, but when God spoke to Israel at Sinai, He said nothing about burnt offerings or sacrifices of animals (Galatians 3:19). He simply said “obey me”. Because remember: obedience is better than sacrifice!

Jeremiah 7:22 (WEB) For I didn’t speak to your fathers, nor command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: but this thing I commanded them, saying, Listen to my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.

But after Israel showed themselves unwilling to do that (verse 24), unwilling to rule themselves by the Royal Law of “do unto others”, God made a different covenant with them – what we call the Old Covenant.

They had shown that they were selfish, and thought only of their flesh. So God set up a system where sin was expensive, as a deterrent. When a major sin costs a bull (enough meat to feed a family for months), and a minor sin costs a lamb (enough to feed a family for a week), people are forced to think twice about sinning.

Imagine that a minor sin cost you your cell phone, and a major sin cost you your car – suddenly sin becomes important to you, whether you love your neighbor or not! Because God loves men, He set up a covenant that would minimize the damage selfish people would do to each other!

God knew Israel was selfish; they thought only of themselves, as we, by nature, all do. God knew that asking them to think of their brother’s good was a waste of time. I mean, He did try, but He always knew that most wouldn’t (Leviticus 19:18).

Jeremiah 44:4-7 (WEB)… I sent to you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, Oh, don’t do this abominable thing that I hate. But they didn’t listen … Therefore now thus says Yahweh, the God of Armies, the God of Israel: Why do you commit great evil against your own souls…?

So God had to make a law that would make them care about their neighbor’s welfare by tying it to the only thing a selfish person cares about; themselves! Because as Paul tells us, “no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it” (Ephesians 5:29).

The beauty of this law, harsh though it was, is hard to overstate. God wanted to end suffering, at least in His nation. But the people were selfish, and lustful, and that, as James told us, caused all the wars and strife among them. So God flipped the Golden Rule over and made the Rule Golden; if you care about yourself, you’d better care about your neighbor!

RULE GOLDEN

The purpose of this was simple; if you cannot live by the golden rule, you must live by the rule golden. By that I mean, if you are unwilling to do to others what you want others to do to you… then what you do to others must be done to you. This is the inverse of the golden rule, and hence, the rule golden.

Exodus 21:23-25 …if any harm follows, then you must take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, and bruise for bruise.

This is the perfect expression of the rule golden. What you do to others, is done to you. No more, no less. This is a merciless and brutal law, to be sure. But think for a moment, about the lesson it teaches those who live by it.

If you step on my toe in anger, it’s because you don’t care about the hurt I would feel. Indeed, you may be so angry you want me to feel pain. But if you knew, with absolute certainty, than any pain you caused me will boomerang back onto you, wouldn’t you think twice about hurting me? Since you’d be hurting yourself just as much?

The golden rule advises, but does not require, you to think about what you would want me to do to you before you do anything to me. But the rule golden doesn’t care about what you think; it simply does to you exactly what you do to others.

Psalms 7:15-16 (WEB) He has dug a hole, and has fallen into the pit which he made. The trouble he causes shall return to his own head. His violence shall come down on the crown of his own head.

Under the rule golden if you step on my toe then the judges will step on your toe. This seems harsh, but it is exactly what you did to me; isn’t that the definition of fairness?

Ezekiel 18:29 (WEB) Yet the house of Israel says, “The way of the Lord is not fair." House of Israel, aren’t my ways fair? Aren’t your ways unfair?

Rather than be mad at the law that did to you precisely what you did to others, you should be mad at yourself for what you did to others!

So by requiring you to feel what you made your neighbor feel, the rule golden teaches you that the welfare of your neighbor IS your welfare.

And hence… this is the beautiful part – it teaches you, without you realizing it, to love your neighbor as yourself – because doing good to your neighbor IS doing good to yourself!

And that is why the eye for an eye law, if enforced consistently, without preference for rich or poor, friend or foe, without mercy, will automatically lead to the golden rule!

And it will do it so well that, once people have learned that harming others will always lead to their own harm, there will be no NEED to enforce the law because no one likes to suffer! So although it would be very harsh and unpleasant at first, in just a few years crime AND punishment would all but cease to exist!

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Finally, a good answer to why God allows suffering! First, because we insist upon causing it. And second, because making us feel what we made our neighbor feel is the ONLY way to teach us not to do things that make our neighbor feel bad!

Proverbs 1:31 Therefore they will eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own schemes.

The only way to finish the second half of our Genesis 1:26 creation, to be made in the likeness of God, is to eat the fruit of our own choices; to learn to hate the consequences of sin, and thus sin itself, as much as God Himself does. Not to merely hear about it, as Adam and Eve had, but to know from bitter personal experience that sin doesn’t pay.

Jeremiah 2:19 (WEB) Your own wickedness shall correct you, and your backsliding shall reprove you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and a bitter, that you have forsaken Yahweh your God, and that my fear is not in you…

God gave us the answers in the beginning – live by the golden rule, and you will live happily ever after. But like Eve, we thought we’d found a shortcut; a loophole that would allow us to have our cake and eat it too.

And even when that cake turned out to be, in fact, a lie, we didn’t give up. We kept chasing other cake, and other cake, even though – from the beginning – all of the cake was always a lie and the only way to be happy and healthy and at peace was to do what God told us to do from the beginning:

“Do unto others, what you want them to do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12).

So why does God allow suffering? Because the only way to learn to love the golden rule is to suffer the consequences of the rule golden.

To see for yourself, beyond all doubt, that the cake is a lie.

Continue to next series, Rule Golden Series Part 1: The Selves