Pain

inevitably the question persists...why does God allow bad things to happen?

The assumption for me is that God is all-powerful, all knowing, ever-present.

Then why didn't he stop the terrible things that happened to me?
That question screams at me from the depths of my pain, why did he not protect me, as my own mother did not. Why didn't HE intervene?
The inevitable conclusion is that HE didn't intervene because he doesn't care or love me.
However I do not believe this to be true I believe that HE does and did care and that HIS heart broke when he saw what happened to me.

This leads me to the conclusion that HE is not all powerful and cannot stop things-even this is unacceptable to me. God has to be more powerful than I for him to be God and for Him to have CREATED the world.

In a book titled "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner a beautiful story is woven about our humaness that pain and free will are what makes us human and humane. That God did not want puppets on strings.

Kushner quotes that "Only human beings can find meaning in their pain." this is given to us by God which is a relief to me. Kushner also states that "... if Man is truly free to choose, if he can show himself as being virtuous by freely choosing the good when the bad is equally possible then he has to be free to choose the bad also. If he were only free to do good, he would not really be choosing. If we are bound to do good, then we are not free to choose it." I value my ability to choose freely and to choose good most of the time, however I have come to realize that although I may choose things that are good there are many people who will choose evil and this can and does inflict evil upon others.

According to Kushner and I agree "our moral freedom means that, if we choose to be selfish or dishonest, we can be selfish and dishonest, and God will not stop us."..."All He will do is tell us that certain things are wrong, warn us that we will be sorry for having done them, and hope that if we don't take His word for it, we will at least learn from the experience."
God has given us our freedom to do morally good things like help our fellow human beings but the flip side of this is that this is also the freedom to hurt our fellow man. God gives us room to be human "... our being human leaves us free to hurt eachother, and God can't stop us without taking away the freedom that makes us human."

How beautiful.

It is a comfort to know that God does not cause evil. He allows freedom and human beings sometimes do evil things.