Philosophy
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It seems obvious to me that if God is all-powerful then He could have arranged things so that human beings would never have to suffer. I think the Bible confirms this supposition in Genesis. It tells us that after creating Adam and Eve, God placed them in the Garden of Eden, an earthly paradise where there was no suffering, only delight. But it also seems obvious (at least to me) that God intended that Adam and Eve should suffer, although the story doesn’t bring this out. After all, an omnipotent God, if He exists, could easily have kept the serpent out of the garden, and an omniscient God would certainly have seen what the result would be if it got in. Having allowed the serpent into the garden and having remained silent while it proceeded to give Eve some very bad advice, God could still have given her the insight to reject the serpent’s line of argument—“You will be like gods.” Or He could have given Adam the moral strength not to join his wife in disobeying the divine command. But He didn’t! In my opinion the only plausible conclusion that we can draw from this story, whether we take it literally or figuratively, is that God wills us to experience some measure of suffering in this life. And this is quite apart from any question of sin or the consequences of sin, as I think is strongly suggested by Jesus’s answer to his disciples when they asked him, Master, was this man guilty of sin, or was it his parents, that he should have been born blind? Neither he nor his parents were guilty, Jesus answered; he is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him. And then He healed the man who had been blind from birth.

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