How can God exist but allow such suffering and inequality? [duplicate]

Question

I know this question may be have been asked innumerable times over the last 4,000 years but I'm curious to see how serious theists reconcile God's existence with the horrible suffering that a very large amount of humans are facing every day in mid 2023.

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I watched the news and today is 1 year since Uvalde. My heart breaks for a woman who visits her child's grave every day, and asks her picture (which she keeps on her nightstand) to give her strength. God certainly wasn't there for that little girl, and now that woman will have to live the rest of her days in sadness. Is that living? What did she do to deserve that? Why would God allow that?

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On another note, I am miserable and mentally ill. I have few friends and spent much of my adolescence being bullied and made to feel inferior. The girl I fancied decided she needed to punish me for daring to like her and let me know where I belong in the pecking order. That really wounded me. God obviously made me inferior as there was no attraction for me, yet I was attracted to her.

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I really want to know why this is. I've read many theodicies over the last year but none seem to fit in my head.

God not being all powerful: That doesn't make sense. I get that when someone builds a technological device, they may not always know how everything works and how to keep it from breaking; but the universe isn't a thing. Its EVERYTHING. If God created everything, how silly would it be to think he isn't omnipotent.

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God is not all good: This doesn't make sense to me either. He is the first thing that ever was and will likely be the last thing there ever was. Why would he choose to be evil? He can do whatever he wants, and he surely knows there is more value in creating good things than destroying. People are evil because they are angry and/or mentally ill. God would be above those impediments.

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Humans have free will: This one seems the most plausible, but if you dissect it; it falls apart in the water. Yes, God could give us free will, but if he is the narrator of the story, why wouldn't he want to direct it to fit his own designs. Also, does he know what the human will do with free will. What if its something that doesn't gel with him. Also, when you are all-powerful; you likely know what the person is going to do long before they do it; so it isn't really free will after all.

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So what is the answer? Does anybody have any ideas?

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I racked my brains and the only thing that I could come up with is that God favors people who are not selectively moral. Like you could be nice sometimes, but are you truly good? Maybe only God knows that?

Answer 1

There are multiple answers. A God that does not care about humans and their welfare is the most sensible answer to the POE if you add determined on monotheism. This is most commonly expressed as Deism. An active but arbitrary and amoral God is also possible. This is the Clulthu or the Trickster option.

Most Christian apologetics also abandon morality for God. There are postulations of some need to test humans, and a compulsion to punish us, which additionally abandon omnipotence as well. Any God whose morality is “not like ours” or “that we can’t understand” is immoral. In other Christian apologetics God is not omniscient and makes mistakes and changes his mind. The weaknesses of these flawed and unimaginative and constrained God models are no doubt why you seek better answers here. I have not heard any.

The only viable option for anyone who has experienced an Omni benevolent deity is diTheism. God has an Enemy. This is the answer offered by Zoroastrianism. The simplest way this could work is that creation was a joint process, but then conflict between the deities since lead to each others actions being mostly checked by the other. In Zoroastrianism, this world is a zone of moral conflict and each win by God in the soul of a human adds to His strength, while each defeat strengthens the Enemy.

Answer 2

God is not your mom, and also Thou hast a part of God's Spirit inside, that mean you must do Good deeds, to make World better. If you will go the way of Good, God should help you, that is His existing - being in Good deeds.

So, your question, why the evil thing was happened? - is senseless.

You should to ask this: The evil was happened but what Good can i do to fix and solve this problem? Maybe you can help a mother who lost her son, or maybe you can commemorate dead of childs? You can give some your time and work activity for this. And ofc you shouldn't to make this problem self mission, because you didn't evil - it is not your fault. Do Good, but without self sacrificing all the time - pay your time( a minute, a hour, a day) but not all, don't deprive yourself the all of the time.

And ofc Good deeds can't be out of Ten Commandments - killing the killer is not Good deed, but forced evil, they stop the killer, but they didn't stop evil.

True evil is not a killing, but the idea of killing, thoughts about evil, something that can be a cause of following evil deed.

So, don't think a lot about evil, do Good deeds, and God will exist in World.

Good will not exist in the world while you are thinking about evil.

Change your mind.

Metanoia!

Answer 3

How can God exist but allow such suffering and inequality?

I don't know. God doesn't speak to me. I'm not important enough to be part of His plans for the universe. If you trust and believe in God, then its all part of a multi-billion year grand plan in which will bring about something beautiful and wonderful.

My part is to try to minimize the suffering and inequality in the world during my ridiculously brief existence.