Fr. Richard OMOLADE

Why do people have to suffer? Why would death snatch 241 and leave only one person? Why would God allow two young people to marry and within a month allow death to take one of them? What was He thinking? Why did God leave one? Some people would say "He has a plan for the person". Does He not have a plan for the other? At the end of the day, we are still left with the problem of evil, “Is there a good reason for evil to exist? Or does evil occur in part because there is no God to prevent it? The question that is of concern is why does bad things happen to good people? Or why would a good God allow bad things to happen to the people he created? To this list of questions we must add, why would a religious nation like Nigeria be subjected to so much hardship and poverty? What is God doing about it?

 

Sometimes our responses turn God into a monster that plays with human life. Yet the problem of pain and suffering is a great mystery that we never fully understand. 

God can accomplish his purpose with or without our suffering. But then we should not put all pains and sufferings in God's hands as the cause. Many times we are the cause of these pains but God can still do something with it. Pain exists because we are human beings, imperfect, and prone to mistakes. Our decisions lead to further problems and pain, and our actions are less than perfect. So, when we decide, or act in a way that seems good to us, are we sure than in the overall scheme of life, that these decisions are perfect and capable of accomplishing the greatest good?

No man is able to answer this question, but because God is all-knowing, he sees the situation and if need be, He steps into it and order things in such fashion that some good can still come out of the bad situation. If God redresses all our actions, we will never learn. If God intervenes in such manner that we always and consistently do only what God wants, then it would appear that we are no longer human beings, our freedom or free will would have been taken away, then we will no longer be capable of good or evil deeds. Yet, we know these continue to exist, we must therefore give room for human freedom or the ability to freely make our decision and do what we want.

Sometimes some of the things we want and do are contrary to God’s eternal purpose and will. God remains a mystery and his works are mysterious, how then do we hope to understand fully his mind? Like someone said: “It is a mystery and you do not know what it means; or if you know it, it means it is no longer a mystery.” We must apply this to the problem of evil in the world.

 

Granted that God is supreme and powerful, but it is also clear that God is not our errand boy that we can call at will and mandate to do our every bidding, be it good or bad. In fact, this is what most people want when they question the happenings in the world. Much of the evil in the world are caused not by God but by man. Sometimes, our evil imaginations drive us to the pit of hell and then we begin to blame God. Sometimes it is our refusal to do God’s will, or to allow his commandments to guide our actions. Such failures on our part are not consequence neutral, they in fact attract severe consequences. When Catastrophe strike, human beings want answers and a scapegoat, all in a bid to exonerate ourselves. But the blame must be located in human will and action or inaction. It is a human reality and not divine reality. Ascribing blames to God would not change anything because “bidden or not bidden, God is still God.” Yet there is a profound impact on human operation and our attempt to find meaning.

How do we explain the “Luck” of those who escape such strategy? Is it part of God’s design or just a stroke of pure luck or grace? If grace, why were the whole lot not given the same grace? If luck, how can one person be so lucky, and others suffer bad luck? Again, what answer makes sense? 

 

There are no logical answers to satisfy human curiosity, hence our response must be that “whatever it is, I don’t know, but it is now important for me to enter into the mind of God and follow his bidding and do what he wants. If life has not been intentional up till that moment, from that moment it must be, otherwise we rob ourselves of meaning and the purpose of our existence. God knows, but he is not going to force anything.

 

In the cosmic reality, life plays out, we may consider ourselves very important, so also the rest of creation. Life must play out, sometimes, good, sometimes bad, sometimes the order will be perfect, sometimes it will be pure chaos, but even in the chaos, there is direction, there is purpose, we in our finitude, we do not see, nor perceive.  No answer will unravel the mystery of God or of pain or suffering completely for us, but our response to such acts can change things for good or for evil. Let yours be transformative and liberative.