Suffering is the Fault of Humans

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Suffering is the Fault of Humans

There are differing views on the origin of suffering. Many Christians believe that suffering is the fault of humans as we were given the ability to choose between good and evil and if we chose evil this might be how we brought about our own suffering. Corruption and immorality pervade humanity, but are clearly we have a choice . C.S Lewis said, "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." From the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, man made the wrong choice. So it might be said that Adam brought suffering into the world but we still had a choice whether or not to commit sins and the suffering that those sins might cause. God's solution to this is one of redemption through Christ in which  we ultimately escape pain and suffering in the world. This therefore to some extent demonstrates God’s love. Thomas Aquinas stated that you had to believe in Jesus Christ and accept him as your saviour to be rewarded for your faith when you die, thus your suffering amounts to a spiritual reward.

The fact is God did create a faultless world and man chose to rebel and thereby to have introduced sin. The same corruption exists today. Perhaps Gods is seeking to discipline humanity by making it suffer the consequences of sin in the world. St Paul states, For the wages of sin is death...” Romans 6:23. Death, or perhaps more accurately, the process or act of dying is the most extreme form of suffering. Once sin entered the world, as a result of our choices whether or not to commit evil, so did suffering and death, both physical and spiritual. Paul has written in Romans 5:12, ‘through one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so that death passed to all men, because all sinned.’

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Throughout the Old Testament, we are given to understand that suffering can be the consequence of personal sin. God allows us to suffer, due to the choices we make; thus allowing us to experience joy and fulfillment. God will not force us to do anything, but will let us experience the consequences of our own actions. Suffering might be considered to be either God’s punishment or mercy. In effect, it both our fault and God’s that the innocent suffer. Job is a great icon of innocent suffering, Job’s friends tell him that his suffering is the result of his own sinfulness. However, ...

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