Summer Q&A: "If I was God, I would create a world without suffering."

Once upon a time, I wrote an article to answer this question: “How would the world be different if there were a God that prevented suffering?”

It’s a good question, something we should all wrestle with. A man named P.D. pushed back against my answer, which gave me the opportunity to go even deeper on the subject.

Here’s the article, his pushback, and my response:

“How would the world be different if there were a God that prevented suffering?”

The world would not be full of human beings.

To see what I mean, go on a brief thought experiment with me.

If God decided to prevent suffering, He would have to be our nanny, following us around and preventing us from doing anything that would result in any kind of suffering.

God would have to control everything about us. To prevent the suffering of hunger and starvation, God would have to make us eat. To prevent the suffering of gluttony and its medical dangers, God would have to stop us eating after a certain point, no matter how much we wanted to continue. God would have to force us to eat only healthy things in the proper amounts, so that we didn’t become malnourished.

If we would lie and hurt someone with our words, God would have to stop up our mouths, so that we couldn’t speak those words. If someone would be hurt by us refusing to say something, God would have to override us and make us say those words, to prevent the suffering that would otherwise ensue.

If we would try to hit someone with a stick, God would have to stop us from making that motion. If someone were to hit us with a stick, God would have to prevent them from taking that action, as well as removing the entire event from our minds or preventing it before it ever occurred, because we couldn’t suffer the fear of being attacked.

If we would lose a loved one, God would have to stop that loved one from dying, so that we wouldn’t suffer pain over the loss. Either that, or God would have to make us care nothing for the person so that the loss isn’t painful.

If we’re talking about God preventing ALL suffering, then there can’t even be any meaningful learning or wisdom. We would never bother to learn which actions are better than others, because all negative consequences would be removed before we could suffer them. There could be no possible difference in quality between different answers, because we couldn’t suffer even the inconvenience of a lesser good over a greater good. There would be no meaningful choice possible, and therefore no need for wisdom with which to help make choices.

God would therefore have to control our thinking entirely. We would have to be robots, completely controlled and completely devoid of any meaningful free will, if God were to prevent suffering from ever occurring in our lives.

Therefore, if God did prevent suffering, the world would not be filled with human beings. God could prevent suffering by refusing to create us at all; if there are no people, none of them can suffer. But there is no logical way for human beings to exist and not have the potential to suffer, any more than it is possible to have a round square or a married bachelor.

If humans are to have any sort of free will at all, we must be able to suffer the consequences of our actions.

There is much suffering in this world, and it is an easy thing to blame God for it.

Yet it is only with the existence of a transcendent God that your suffering has any meaning to it, that your life has any meaning to it.

In a purely naturalistic universe, suffering is simply an evolved emotional response to the survival of the fittest and the decline of the least adaptable. It was never intended, being instead the random creation of a cold universe who never sought to create you nor cares that you exist. In a hundred years, nearly no one will remember you; in a few hundred thousand, no one will remember humanity. Your suffering and your life is meaningless, less than the blink of an eye in the universal time scale.

In Christianity, your suffering has worth, because you have worth. You are the product of a God who wanted you, who created you, and who has a purpose for you. Suffering is not a good thing, but it can be redeemed to forge character, to motivate people to action, and to teach wisdom.

Further, with the work of Jesus opening the door to life eternal, suffering loses its potential to have the last say. For those who love God and want to be near Him, life and joy always outlive pain and suffering. Suffering becomes less than the blink of an eye in the eternal time scale. For the Christian, there is always life, joy, and hope to look forward to while undergoing any form of suffering.

Jesus defined His life on earth by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for the lonely, and seeking the lost. He sought to alleviate suffering wherever He could. Those who follow in His footsteps, who dare to call themselves by His name, must do likewise.

If I was God, I would certainly create a world without suffering. Humans would live until they are 100 and then die peacefully in their sleep. There is nothing good about suffering. It doesnt teach people anything, it just makes them sad and frustrated. It doesnt ‘bring people closer to God’, in fact, it is likely to drive them away from God or create such cognitive dissonance as to endanger their mental health.

Hello P.D.,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

You said:

“If I was God, I would certainly create a world without suffering. Humans would live until they are 100 and then die peacefully in their sleep. There is nothing good about suffering. It doesnt teach people anything, it just makes them sad and frustrated. It doesnt ‘bring people closer to God’, in fact, it is likely to drive them away from God or create such cognitive dissonance as to endanger their mental health.”

It’s a false idea, my friend.

You can’t have a world of humans with free will devoid of suffering.

Imagine a beautiful woman. Two men want to marry her. She chooses one.

The one who is denied — how does he feel?

Not good, my friend.

In this example, there’s no sin. No one has committed evil.

Yet the man who was denied feels awful. The chosen man gets the joy of loving with the woman he loves. The denied man does not get this joy.

The only way you can have a world without suffering is to have a world without people. Make a world with nothing but goldfish and plants.

But if you want a world with people, we’re going to make choices. Some of those choices will cause pain, even if they’re not bad choices.

Suffering is unavoidable when we have the ability to make genuine choices.

Thankfully, suffering can be a great teacher, if you choose to embrace it as such.

My high school track coach made us suffer in our workouts. I experienced no end of pain. Yet I emerged stronger, more skilled, more capable.

God is able to do the same with us — if we will let Him.

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