God and suffering

Question one:
When someone is suffering and the solution to fix their suffering is very simple, why doesn’t the Creator just tell people how to make their suffering go away?

Answer: (subject to adjustment): Similar to Einstein’s view of God, I think God is mostly a hands off parent (isn’t interfering with agency and natural laws most of the time). He formed/evolved our brains and expects us to use them to figure stuff out on our own. Prayer/meditation, religious ordinances and living morally are activities which can promote conditions of lessened suffering and which can allow us to use our brains more effectively to improve our circumstances if we diligently seek to improve our circumstances. Also, though it may sound heartless, our suffering is less than a billasecond relative to our eternal timeline. God is more concerned about suffering/conditions that will last for eternity.

Question two:
Does God want us to suffer?

Answer: The point of mortality is to allow us to have experiences that were impossible to understand without mortality. Though unpleasant, suffering is one of those experiences. Something occurred (or didn’t occur) which resulted in the defects in human bodies, which was not caused by God, but results in conditions which cause suffering. We were given brains to try and figure out solutions to our problems.

Question three:
Does God cause suffering?

Answer: I’m not sure, but I don’t think so… maybe in the same way that a surgeon “causes” suffering—only if  it leads to a better circumstance as an eternal result.

Question four:
Is suffering meant to make us be better people?

Answer: Maybe. But I think there are different “meanings” behind different kinds of suffering. I have identified 3 types, (but there may be more).

1). Physical suffering at the hands of others/our own agency. (When someone decides to do something bad and it hurts people). God can’t remove this type of suffering without breaking natural laws or removing some degree of agency. So basically, God chooses to allow this kind of suffering as a part of this mortal experience but has plans to fix the consequences of it later.

2). Suffering as a result of ignorance regarding natural laws (assuming that eventually technology can permit the relief of all physical suffering). This is where vertigo fits in. I think they are inherent in the consequences of the “fall”, so apparently our own spirits “fault” for choosing to live in a fallen mortal body, and not Gods “fault”. God gave us brains to figure out solutions to this kind of thing, if we are determined to find answers.

3). Spiritual suffering. Occurs as a consequence of choosing to separate ourselves from God.

Question five:

Since most solutions to suffering are directly from people using the scientific method and not in the form of a dream of revelation from God, does that mean that the solution did not come from God or that all religious efforts have failed?

Answer: If God made our brains and our brains come up with the answer, you could argue that God provided the answer (providing fish by providing a brain that has the capacity of how to figure out how to make a fishing pole), or at least gave us the ability/option to come up with the answers if we diligently seek for them. Who is to say that every significant advancement is not the result of some kind of inspirationally placed thought? Perhaps there is not failure at all. Also, there is pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality. I would never fault science because of a failure of pseudo-science. Likewise, I think people should not fault spirituality because of a failure of pseudo-spirituality.

Question six:
When religious efforts are made and a situation improves, does this mean that the religious efforts did anything at all?

Answer: Besides what was stated above, religion can offer comfort in the form of “perspective” on suffering/death which MANY view as incalculably valuable/helpful. Religion can induce the placebo effect which is a known very effective “pain therapy”. There are rare instances in which people report being healed following a religious blessing. The instances in which this occurs are below the statistical significance, so would not show up on any kind of statistical analysis. Also recall pseudo-science vs science and pseudo-spirituality vs spirituality.