{"id":845,"date":"2016-01-21T13:25:10","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T13:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/?p=845"},"modified":"2016-01-21T13:25:25","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T13:25:25","slug":"blog-january-21st-t-why-is-there-suffering-in-the-world-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/?p=845","title":{"rendered":"Blog January 21st \u201cWhy is there suffering in the world?\u201d Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_2588[1]\"<\/p>\n

Last week I suggested that there is evil in the world as a consequence of God giving us the capacity to love.\u00a0 Love is not love if it is forced and that\u2019s why God gave us free will. The problem with having free will is that some will choose to harm one another rather than love.<\/p>\n

But what about suffering – why does God allow that? One could hardly say that suffering is always the consequence of evil ,although of course it can be.<\/p>\n

When I first attended an Alpha Course a number of books were recommended, including one by a guy with a great name – Stephen Gaukroger.\u00a0 It\u2019s called \u201cIt Makes Sense\u201d and its chapters include \u201cWhat about other religions? \u201cCan we trust the Bible?\u201d and \u201cScience and Faith – is there a conflict?\u201d\u00a0 There is also a chapter \u201cWhat about all the suffering?\u201d \u00a0Looking through my bookshelf I also found \u201cThe Case against Christ\u201d by John Young that has a chapter \u201cWhy does God allow Suffering?\u201d Alpha originator, Nicky Gumbel has something similar in his book \u201cSearching Issues\u201d<\/p>\n

All three authors accept that there are no easy answers to this most difficult of questions; however Glaukroger suggests that what we can do is fit together some jigsaw pieces in order to get a picture. \u00a0So let\u2019s have a look at some of these jigsaw pieces.<\/p>\n

Jigsaw piece one<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

A lot of suffering is our own fault – it is not fair to blame God when a drunken driver kills an innocent pedestrian of if somebody is knifed over the colour of their skin, religion, or politics or because they looked at someone the \u201cwrong way.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is man\u2019s inhumanity to man \u00a0that condemns \u00a0people to poverty and hunger and even war. \u00a0No doubt we can say that we are not to blame for such horror but can any of us say we have never caused anyone any suffering – have never said an angry word or being guilty of selfishness?\u00a0 Glaukroger concludes that we are all guilty of contributing to the suffering in the world and the only way that God could get rid of all the suffering is my getting rid of us- humankind, or by turning us into robots with no free will.<\/p>\n

But of course\u00a0 not all\u00a0 suffering\u00a0 in the world\u00a0 is caused by us humans and next week\u00a0 I will look at jigsaw piece number two which is \u201cWhat about natural disasters? \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Times of Trouble featuring Lucy Stimpson- Maynard from the album “I Look Up To The Heavens” recorded and produced by John Hodgkinson Last week I suggested that there is evil in the world as a consequence of God giving us the capacity to love.\u00a0 Love is not love if it is forced and that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-shearsmiths-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}