God’s presence in suffering


Why do bad things happen? My most simple response: I have no idea. I resonate with the debate: how can an all knowing God permit evil? How can an all-loving God allow it? How can an all-powerful God not intervene? A seminarian friend of mine suggested one has to get rid of one of the omni’s (omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent) for this debate to be reconciled.

I do not claim the ability or the desire to fully comprehend God. And so I wrestle with what I can see and know, and I accept the inner call to do something about the suffering I see.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

What is your view? How do you reconcile the suffering in the world? What is your understanding of why bad things happen?

BronwenBMK
 Managing Editor
& Creative Director

Daily Inspiration

"Hell is in an evil person and heaven in a good person. After death everyone comes into that hell or into that heaven with which they had been associated while in the world."

Arcana Coelestia 8918:4