Smoodock's Blog

What about the proposition that, if God is omniscient, he could have prevented evil and suffering in the first place and controlled everything to a point that would have prevented man from going too far with his freewill, but also allowed him free moral agency within the confines of God’s perfect will for him. In this way seemingly unbearable, cruel and unnecessary suffering would have been prevented and God’s perfect will would have occurred within the parameter of man’s free moral agency, or so the argument is made.

This sounds a lot like a computer game where you can go back and take the turn over and over, until it comes out the way you like. There was a TV program based upon this concept awhile back call Quantum Leap. Yet, all things considered, where is real freewill in this? More to the point, is this an accurate picture of God’s omniscience? Certainly God isn’t surprised by what we do, but what does that mean? I think the answer to this lies in the fact that God created time. Time simply does not exist in his dimension. He has no past or future. He lives in an eternal present. God created time, and it exists for us, enabling us to live moment by moment and to have a past, present and a future. In a real sense, however, God doesn’t know a thing until it occurs, but since it occurs all at once on his level, he knows all about us, because our total being exists all at once for him. Things we have not experienced yet are just as present to him as those things that occurred long ago before we were even born. He interacts with us from ‘time to time,’ and it appears that he can see into the future, but the future exists only from our point of view not God’s.

If one would argue that time exists on God’s level, at what point would he have begun to create? There had to have been a beginning of his works, so how long did he wait before he began to create? When did he begin to exist? If he had no beginning what would that mean in terms of time, if indeed, his existence can be measured in time? I believe the only logical conclusion to this riddle is that God does not live in time. He created time when he created the universe. Time simply cannot measure God’s existence. Therefore, simply saying God’s omniscience could have prevented evil or suffering, or at least the greatest evil and most painful suffering, is simply wrong. Being omniscient, God knows everything, and he takes responsibility for everything in that he has promised to correct all the evil, suffering and inequality that our rebellion has produced. He knows how to do that, because he is omniscient. In other words man’s rebellion has not and really cannot take us to the point where God cannot and will not correct what we have done. In my opinion, God uses his omniscience more to create and correct than as a preventive tool. He has given man freewill, and this seems to be a very important matter in God’s plan, so he doesn’t do a lot of interfering involving that issue—at least up to this point in time.

If we try to make sense out of suffering in today’s secular climate, how could we do so in terms of a benevolent God? If we consider that a lack of faith prevented Jesus from doing many miracles (for whatever reason), wouldn’t that mean that a lack of faith in God prevents his outright assistance in our plight and the suffering involved? How would God then express his love for us without interfering with the “Enlightenment’s” choice to disregard the importance of the Divine in humanity’s plight? Well, we can see that through scientific breakthroughs we have eliminated smallpox, and polio to a great degree, though it creeps up in third world countries. We have made inroads into cancer and heart disease. Has this been truly something we have accomplished on our own, or has God intervened silently and unobtrusively aiding our scientific breakthroughs to eliminate some unnecessary suffering, while still allowing us to choose to disregard him as our helper.

On the other hand, worldwide political pressure has to some extent held war in check and the pain and suffering caused thereby. But, warfare is really caused by men and can be eliminated by men at any time, if and when we choose! Another matter within human power is poverty and all the suffering that it causes. Certainly the world is wealthy enough and there are enough worldly goods to satisfy the needs of everyone on our planet. Suffering, at least from this perspective, is caused by human greed and lack of compassion. We really cannot blame God for our own greed and lack of compassion. Can we? May I suggest, that before we think it our arrogant right to judge the Almighty for what he could but does not do (from our perspective) that we assume the responsibility that is truly our own and eliminate the suffering that we could but don’t do—like poverty and war.