"And they brought young children to Him, that He should touch them: and His disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:13-14).
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Suffer and suffering appear often in the bible.
The earth is an environment that is balanced within and without, populated with living creatures. When imbalances exist, nature always must return, establish new balance. The world is just one gigantic set of systemic scales.
Man has been granted free will of choice which creates variables of his own making a world counterbalanced by other men and the environment, within and without. It is nature with its random variables and constants, its physical laws that are challenged by man and then in return challenge man.
The world and men in it are given dynamic motion and events which must not be predictable, can not be programmable, or should not be controlled other wise it would not be a suitable environment to develop the individual soul of man and his unique comprehension of his universe, his physical realm.
The world is defined to elude man’s limits of comprehension. As soon as he is satisfied he knows, he finds out he doesn’t know at all, and he is reminded that he is not God after all. After experiencing the physical realm, the spiritual realm reigns supreme for the souls that survive the suffering of life to know God and be one with him.
Suffering occurs as a result of life interactions, of opposing forces that must be free to engage randomly and variably, and not be controlled otherwise man would have no real choice to determine his destiny and develop his soul. Soldiers in military are trained using live fire, and so too, God trains living creatures with real situations that have varying circumstances randomly occurring.
Suffering in the world is the casualty losses resulting from uncertainty, uncontrollable variables that must and do exist just as variables exist in man's scientific mathematical formulas developed for generalized uses. The physical world is merely one huge mathematical formula having discretely defined randoms in it for reason, rhythm, and rhyme (rime). (Rime ... Meteorology)
God does not dish out suffering. Why suffering? One might as well ask why life at all?
There are those in life who have never suffered or at least not to a substantial degree. I wouldn’t call having a broken fingernail suffering or other such mishaps. I think that I have suffered and know others who also have suffered, but few of us have suffered to the extent that others in the world suffer mercilessly at the hands of a dictator or other misfortunes of life, or the way that soldiers suffer in battle or at the hands of their captors and die so that we can enjoy our way of life. A car pulled up in front of my home yesterday while I was “suffering” trimming the freeze damaged bushes and the man that got out was headed for the ball game across the road. His bumper sticker said “You can thank a vet for being able to enjoy your freedom”.
Suffer is a concept in need of defining it to the degree and limit you are concerned at discussing it. What is the magnitude of suffering or the scope of it? It really doesn’t matter since we all have different thresholds of pain and perception. A hangnail for some is a nail through the hand for others. What is important is how we respond to suffering that we can not avoid or escape. Fortunately, the body has various mechanisms to cope with suffering, death being the ultimate one.
Crucifixion would be the extreme example of suffering. Jesus' words from the cross, asking forgiveness for those who put him to death. More widely, of course, the plea was for all humanity. Jesus knew before hand his fate. He did not seek sympathy or rescue because he understood the nature of suffering and did not question why. We come now to one of the most poignant and important moments in Jesus’ ministry--his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, which immediately precedes his arrest. “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me . . .” Jesus is amazingly candid in expressing his fears to God. He protests, “I don’t want to do this” and he cries loudly as he protests (Heb. 5:7).
There are times in life when we must do what we do not want to do and what we fear to do even though much suffering and pain may be the consequence, but which we are ordered to do either by our moral conscience or higher authority. The life of a martyr, the bravery of firemen, the commander of an army, the future and the past is human history which is our present preparedness for the moment we might be called to serve or be served up for a cause.
It is wise to avoid risk taking that could have suffering as a consequence for self or others, and so some suffering in the world is a consequence of man's unwise choices. Man must learn from his mistakes and do better risk management. When people build houses on high risk earthquake fault lines do they not realize the risk and fate they are courting? When nuclear plants are built, do they not realize that nothing is fail safe? When hurricanes and floods destroy homes and lives, do victims not understand their vulnerability to the forces of nature?
Do you fear suffering? If you do, that is normal just as we all have a natural fear of death, the unknown. You can train a sheep to go to slaughter, but you could never educate one to so act.
Civilized society and governments are ethically and spiritually educated, trained, and expertly experienced to minimize suffering to the extent possible to identify, control, and prevent the causes of it. For the men who with malice aforethought elect the evil choice, or those who don’t know the right choice, they need to seek the wise choice or have it sanctioned upon them, hence our military, police, and justice systems.
We can not expect God to fight our wars for us. He gave us choice. He gave us life. He and he alone is beyond reproach. In God we trust for we must. If we have done all that we can do there is no alternative when there is nothing else to be done but trust in God.
What I write about suffering does not mean that God is indifferent to individual cases, but that because of the reality of the collective and the environment given to us, although he does care and is aware, he must not exempt the individual from consequences of their own choices or he must not separate individually from the collective in which the individual resides.
The Freedom of Choice granted by him to each and every soul mandates non-interference in the resulting outcome of those choices made individually, singlely, by others or in a collective community in which the individual exists. We are, if you would so think, on our own in this world that God created for us expecting us to be responsible, loving, and fully experiencing the environment partially if not totally of our own making.
The individual is accountable for his destiny regardless of what fate unfolds. It is not what we suffer or that we may suffer, but how we can prevent suffering and attenuate it wherever possible. If not possible to prevent suffering, then it is important in how we cope with it for ourselves or for others. It is not that we may have sinned, but that we learn to sin no more.
Consider the concept of guilt by association as in Pogrom. A pogrom (Russian: погром) is a form of violent riot, a mob attack, either approved or condoned by government or military authorities, directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres. The term usually carries connotation of spontaneous hatred within the majority population against certain (usually ethnic) minorities, which they see as dangerous and harming the interests of majority.
The term was originally used to denote extensive violence against Jews in the Russian Empire and a series of anti-German pogroms in Russia in 1915. Pogroms often affect members of middlemen minorities. This can, in extreme cases, result in total or partial genocide, such as that of Armenians or Jews.
God is not indifferent, but because we have Freedom of choice, we have destiny to be what we become via our choices individually and how we influence the collective in which we live. He must not interfere in any way with fate else our destiny would be meaningless and not of our own making in coping with it, admirably or not so admirably as the case may be.
If man destroys the world and all life in it, what God giveth, he does not take away, for God made man answerable, responsible, and accountable for his deeds in his life, and the keeping of his soul and salvation of it, individually and collectively.
The phrase "God help us" is oft said and is an appropriate end, but with this one last thought from Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, gave this encouraging statement: “My faith in God and in His followers rests in the fact that He is infinite good, and that He gives His followers opportunity to use their hidden virtues, to put into practice the power which lies concealed in the calm and which storms awaken to vigor and to victory” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 204).
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