Trust, the Lord and the Problem of Pain

Trust, the Lord and the Problem of Pain

I believe in G-d. To clarify, I believe in a Cosmic Organizer outside of creation. I do not believe in creation. I do not believe in any part of creation, or that any part of creation ever was G-d. To believe in creation is to be an atheist. To believe a part of creation is G-d in either the past or the present is idolatry. To believe in the Force behind creation is to believe in G-d. However, I am without trust in G-d. This is mostly due to my own personal health problems, especially when I was in college. I did fairly well in high school, but slowly over the four years of high school and my first three years of college, my health declined. Yet, this isn’t just about me. The centerpiece of this essay is an analysis of the problem of pain. Pain is such I consider that humanity aught not trust in G-d.

Though I exhibited many overt actions that indicated that G-d was at the very center of my being during the years of my decline, the truth was that my heart did not seek G-d. I believed in G-d, but I was very much lukewarm in my faith. Certainly, I was very involved in my local community, and even in international outreach projects, but my heart wasn’t where G-d was. I did these things because I thought it would be a good idea to do them, yet I had an evil sense of self which did not allow me to delight in the service G-d as I did them. This is especially interesting to me because my health did not begin to recover until I reached out to G-d.

It was not until I committed my heart to G-d that things started looking up for me. Before I committed my heart to G-d, I was a junior at Rutgers and very unhealthy. The worse I felt, the more I would blame it on G-d. I had lost my faith, and G-d was but a symbol of the things that plagued me. Yet, despite all this, I am reluctant to attribute my recovery to G-d. In the dark days, it was as if an evil spirit of the Lord had come upon me.

I understand that G-d may work in mysterious ways. Really, it was a matter of getting the right tests, the right doctors, and the right medications that improved my health, but that is not to say that G-d did not have a provisional hand in it. In fact, one could go so far as to say I prayed about it and my greatest problems vanished, neglecting to show the operation of the Lord as a Motivator of the Cosmos. In fact, one of my counselors, whom was a faith based counselor, declared, “You are a Job,” where Job is a biblical character whom overtly acts good, but blasphemes G-d internally. In the story, G-d entrusts Job to Satan, Satan causes much suffering to Job, but eventually Job proves himself innocent, such that what is taken from him is restored. This does sound very similar to the story of my life so far. The only thing that needs to happen to complete the story is that I have to live to be over 100yrs old, as Job reportedly did. In fact, it was during my worst times before I had known any real recovery that I spoke with this counselor, and it came only as a surprise to me that my life years after he said that has become filled with abundance. When the counselor told me this, mentally I shrugged it off thinking I would only suffer more and die, never having hope of a cure.

It occurs to me that actually what I have is a great fear of the Lord, gained through my own personal knowledge of the gravity of which humanity is capable of suffering. I do all in my power, most of the time, to observe the upright teachings of the Lord, yet even though he has given me the desires of my heart, a wife and a son, I still to not really trust the Lord. I still remember those days of suffering when it seemed that things could not get any worse. I question, how could a loving G-d allow that to happen? I question how can a loving G-d afflict children? I question, how can a loving G-d permit something such as the Holocaust to occur? These things wear on me, and when I think of them, I am bitter toward the Lord. I question, was it by chance that my health improved, such that I consider that it was not my wholehearted obedience to the Lord that brought me salvation from suffering, but that this happened only by chance? And yet, I am wholehearted in my obedience.

I do not believe that there are good answers for such things. The Bible says that God can be both good and evil, and if God can be both of these things, why should I believe in G-d at all, except for out of fear? This is such that my eagerness to obey the Lord wholeheartedly is philosophically weak. By the scientific method, I would need to repeat this experiment for the rest of my life before being able to show any significance. However, I have resolved that for me there is no other way but to trust in the Lord. It worked once, and that is enough to last me for a lifetime of wholehearted obedience. If the Lord forsakes me, then I believe it is best to question: Why? However, even if the Lord forsakes me, possibly again, as I believe that there is nothing I could have done to merit the amount of suffering I experienced; my idea of the Lord will remain unchanged. The Lord is sovereign.