Suffering of Innocence

Suffering of Innocence

Why do the innocent suffer under a God who is claimed to be a loving and all powerful God? This has been a question that has plagued philosophers and theologians for centuries. So how do I answer this question? Where do I start? The beginning would be a good place and by that giving us some background. Also we shall see how other religions and philosophers attack this very question and a personal observation of another individual.

God, whether it is the Christian, Judean or Muslim God, is said to have created man in his own image. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Bible, 2009, p. Genesis 1:27). Man was to wholly good and meant to commune with God as his equal. When Satan tricked man into eating for the Tree of Knowledge, then man eyes were open to what is called sin. “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Bible, 2009, pp. Genesis 2:15-17). So man was made to suffer because he had the knowledge of good and evil. So just by these two passages in the Bible we find that God did not want mankind knowing what good and evil was, he wanted puppets. He said in the subsequent that he would make man and woman to suffer for this. So if he loved man above all his creations then why could he not live with man as equals, and to separate himself from his creation? This seems to be a very interesting point I will make later on.

If we look at the teaching of Buddha, we can also see that we are to suffer in life as well. “’Dukkha’ is Pali, a variation of Sanskrit, and it means a lot of things. For example, anything temporary is dukkha, including happiness” (O'Brien). However, Buddha did say how we are to...