Bible Questions and Answers
Published 05/23/2013
Why did God approve of murder in the Old Testament? Why did God destroy entire nations in the Bible if God is so loving?
How did He command the Israelites to wipe out entire nations, including innocent children, from the face of the earth? The commandments say “thou shalt not kill,” but what about the genocide of an entire people? And as a consequence, the question is: why does God show such preference to the Israelites, and at the same time, such disfavor to other nations? Isn't that what the New Testament forbids you to do?
Answer:
Why do the innocent suffer?
Why does God allow the innocent to suffer? Does this make sense? How can one reconcile faith in an all-powerful, loving God and such blatant injustice?
Screenshot from youtube.com
Bishop Panteleimon of Orekhovo-Zuevsky reflects.
Suffering fills the earth
When you meet people who have experienced a terrible tragedy, it is difficult to talk about suffering. If I were now looking into the eyes of a mother whose child died, a husband whose wife died, a son whose mother died, I don’t know what I would say... Although I myself experienced similar things and understand how difficult it is. My wife died, three of my grandchildren died in infancy. The world becomes black and white instead of color. Food loses its taste when you are close to a loved one going through the experience of dying. I would like there to be no suffering, for everyone to live happily, cheerfully, joyfully, so that no one gets cancer or multiple sclerosis, so that people never get into car accidents, so that planes do not crash. But nevertheless, no one can escape suffering and sorrow. They exist in life. How should we treat them?
Recently one person came to me - very good, very religious. He said that he could no longer pray and could not go to church. A terrible thing happened to him. He had a friend of twenty years old whom he had known since childhood. This poor girl had long periods of depression and was seriously mentally ill. He and his mother were unbaptized, non-believers. One day this girl disappeared. They couldn't find her for a long time. But on the phone they were able to determine that she had gone into the forest, to where there were towers from which in the summer you can jump down on a rubber rope - such an attraction. When my friend was looking for her, he prayed very fervently. It seemed to him that God heard him and that she would definitely remain alive. But he found it himself. She was dead. The girl committed suicide by jumping from the tower. It was scary. And he could not accept that God allowed the death of this girl. It is clear that the world is imperfect. But as the omnipotent God who created this world, how could He allow this to happen? And how can you believe in God when this happens on earth?
Deserved suffering is easier to accept
Van Gogh, At the Gates of Eternity (1890). Image from wikipedia.org
It is probably easier to die for a high idea, perhaps it is joyful to die in the name of love; you can calmly go to your death if you have committed a serious crime and understand that you are worthy of punishment. It happens that criminals themselves want to be punished. In the lives of the saints there is a story about one robber who killed many people, including children. In those days, criminals sometimes hid from justice in monasteries. The monks lived separately, wore special clothes behind which they could hide. This robber also went to the monastery and was accepted by the monks. At first he deceived them, but then he repented and received forgiveness from God - every sinner receives forgiveness from God if he sincerely repents of his sins (among the saints there is one who killed 400 people). But having already received forgiveness, he still decided to surrender to the authorities and was executed. Although no one kicked him out of the monastery, no one demanded that he surrender - the priest to whom he repented could not hand him over, otherwise he would have violated the secret of confession. But this robber himself, approaching the Chalice, saw one of the babies he had killed and was greatly tormented. His awakened conscience did not allow him to live in peace; he wanted to be punished.
If a person knows what he suffers for his sins, then he accepts this suffering. The prudent thief, who was crucified with Christ, said: we accept what is worthy of our sins. I recently read a story about a woman who took upon herself the sin of her son. Her husband severely abused her, and her adult son, unable to bear it, killed him, and this woman took her son’s blame upon herself and went to prison in his place. She told her cellmates: “I know why I’m in prison, and every day I’m glad that I’m serving time for my son, and he’s living free.” This happens if a person understands why he is suffering. But what if he doesn't understand?
Humanity is a single organism
We must remember, dear friends, that when this world was created, there was no suffering in it. God did not create suffering. How then did they appear? Some say: “God knew that Adam would sin. Why didn’t He create Adam in such a way that he would not commit sin?” The answer is simple: God created us free. We are not programmed, like machines, to be good. We decide for ourselves where to go, what to do, how to act, how to live. We can even decide whether to believe in God or not - this is the greatest freedom we have been given. God exists, but some people are absolutely convinced that He does not exist.
The beginning of suffering, the beginning of sin lies precisely in the fact that a person in his freedom can choose the path of evil. Animals, birds - they have relative freedom, but do not choose between good and evil. A wolf can, of course, be shot for killing sheep, a man-eating bear can be killed, but still you cannot put him in prison and give him a sentence for what he did. He doesn't understand what he's doing. And the person understands.
But why do we suffer because Adam misused the freedom God gave him? We didn't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, did we? Although some of them probably already ate... Well, the babies definitely didn't eat. Why then are children born with heart pathologies, with deformities incompatible with life? Are babies to blame for anything?
We are created by God as a single organism. The sin or holiness of one affects all others. It just seems that we are separated from each other by space, we have different intelligence, different appearance, different skin color, different preferences. In fact, humanity is a single organism created by God in His image - the image of the Most Holy Trinity, united in Love. That is, we are all individuals of a single human nature and are connected very closely. We are all relatives, we are brothers and sisters. And those who lived, and those who will live, and those who now live throughout the whole earth - we are all one. And therefore, what is disrupted in one affects others. Since Adam is our common forefather, his action, like some kind of genetic disease, is passed on from generation to generation, from generation to generation.
Why doesn't God put things in order?
Photo: artvolkoff.livejournal.com
But then you can say: “Why doesn’t God, in the end, restore order? After all, he knows who sins more and who sins less. There may be future criminals among us who will commit serious crimes. So maybe it’s better to eliminate them right away so that they don’t interfere with others?” We don't know this, but God knows. Why does He allow these people to live?
The fact is that you and I live in time, which is the path to Eternity. The life we are living now is not the real life for which we were created by God. In this world where you and I are, we were expelled from paradise after committing a sin. And our stay here is temporary. This is not a place where we can settle down well, buy ourselves beautiful furniture, a dacha, a car, find a wonderful wife or husband, settle down forever and enjoy all these benefits.
Life is a road where we cannot collect many things, it is a road that will end one day. God is waiting for the end of history to draw a line. After all, if we start to figure out right now who is right and who is wrong, I’m afraid we will all be in trouble. We all have sins, and I am far from a saint. If a person is a priest or goes to church, this does not mean that he is a saint, as some people think. To carry out judgment, you need to end this world altogether, stop time and deal with everyone who lived and who is still living. And this will definitely happen, but God is waiting for people who have not yet come to the consciousness of sin to repent.
Some even think that God, as it were, wound up some kind of clock, and now we are ticking here on our own, and He is watching from above and does not interfere. But how does He tolerate so much evil? Why doesn't he intervene? God turns out to be kind of cruel, you say. Where is He looking? Where is he? And here we come to the most important thing.
God on the cross
Crucifixion of Christ. Fragment of a modern icon
One wise priest, when asked where God is, said very simply: God is on the Cross. God comes to earth, becomes a man and lives human life with all its difficulties, even taking upon himself the consequences of original sin, although He is purer and more sinless than a newborn baby. It is very difficult for a sinless person to live among us sinners. Have you read "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky? This was an attempt to show the image of a holy man in our sinful world. And how did it end? The hero just went crazy.
When the Lord was on earth, He was so tired that He slept on the stern of the boat, which was literally drowning in the waves. Before taking on the sins of the whole world, before suffering on the cross, the Lord prayed so fervently in the Garden of Gethsemane that his sweat was like drops of blood.
He suffered a terrible, painful death. Survived many humiliations. The people whom He healed - and not a single person left Him without help - shouted: “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” Although these people could have freed Him, they freed a robber.
Death on the cross is a terrible death, death-torture. When a person is nailed to a cross, he is forced to lean on the wounds on his hands or on his nailed feet. A crucified man dies of suffocation. This is terrible torture, terrible torment. They even conducted the following experiment: people stood for a long time simply with their arms raised - they began to suffocate because their chest was raised up. And a crowd of people stood at the cross, they laughed and shouted: “Save yourself, if you are God.” As is known from modern studies of the shroud, Christ was flogged with terrible lead-tipped whips that tore off the skin. The shroud shows that His entire back was striped with them.
He was so beaten that he himself could not carry the cross; Simon of Cyrene helped him. When He carried the upper crossbar, which was tied to His hands, and when, exhausted, He stumbled on the way to Calvary - He fell face down into the dust, particles of this dust were found on the shroud. They put a crown of thorns with sharp thorns on His head; they dug into the skin, and streams of blood flowed down His face.
Physical suffering was also aggravated by moral, spiritual suffering, which is incomprehensible to us - He uttered a phrase on the cross that always brings me personally into a state of internal trembling; on the cross God the Son turns to God the Father: “My God, my God, why You left me?"
My friend, who thinks that God has abandoned this girl, is experiencing something similar. This is unbearably severe suffering, and it was experienced by God himself. This suffering is what God did to defeat evil, to destroy suffering itself. This is the way to get rid of suffering. Suffering is healed by suffering. Death is killed by death. Dying on the cross, enduring suffering, He destroys its power. Now everyone who suffers can turn to Christ, and be with Him, and receive help from Him. Such help is coming. Because now suffering does not have the same power that it had before Christ. Now suffering has meaning. And every sufferer now sacrifices himself and suffers with Christ.
You can't put up with evil
Bombing. 1941 Photo by B. Yaroslavtsev
When we are faced with injustice, with old age, with death, we can turn to Christ in prayer, remember His suffering for us, and help will come, although perhaps not immediately.
This does not mean that suffering will end instantly. It was allowed by God to cleanse us from sin. Our soul, defiled by sin, cannot be cleansed otherwise. Just as it is impossible to clean out the ingrained dirt without a brush, so suffering cleanses the dirt of sin that has ingrained into the soul; it has a cleansing meaning for us, it makes a person perfect. After all, when a person suffers, he shows his love, and this is another meaning of suffering.
I will end with a story about a book that reveals the mystery of suffering. This is the book of Job: it tells how one righteous man lived on earth, he was rich and had many children - his name was Job. And the devil said to God: “Job loves you because he has everything, take away his wealth, let’s see how he will love you.” And now everything collapses for Job, his children die. His wife tells him: “Curse God!” And Job answers her: “God gave, God took away.” Then he fell ill with a serious illness. His wife tells him: “Curse God and die.” And he says: “We must accept everything from God, good and bad.” His friends came to Job and said: “This is all for your sins, you repent, and everything will pass.” But Job did not know his sin. He accepted his fate, his suffering, and in the end God revealed Himself to him and revealed a certain secret. The mystery of reconciliation with God is revealed to man in an incomprehensible way.
You cannot put up with evil, you must definitely try to ensure that there is less suffering in the world, you cannot step aside, you need to help people. We have young people who volunteer to help at the regional children's hospital. There are children from orphanages there, and no one visits them. Volunteers visit them every day, play with them, pick them up, and take care of them.
If a person does not agree that there is suffering in the world, then he should try to make there less suffering in the world and more love. You need to not just think about it, but start working on it yourself, praying and compassion, helping others to increase love in the world. In this work and in prayer to Christ, crucified and risen, the mystery of suffering is revealed.
№27 (168) / October 1 '01
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Holy righteous Simeone, pray to God for us
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October 14 - Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary
How does God tolerate war? Just like any matter of human freedom. But this is not enough. The Lord draws spiritual benefit for humanity from disaster. “There are few individuals in the human race who would not be at all carried away by private forms of self-interest and self-indulgence; On the contrary, the majority of strong leaders are carried away either by a passion for conquest, or by seeking their own pleasure - and, however, from their passions, seeking only their own, no people are upset for several centuries. Even the actions of the conquerors themselves, excited by ambition or other passions, turn into the common good, so that, under the control of God, the actions of the scourges of the human race become an involuntary instrument of plans for punishment and pardon. Where wickedness and corruption of morals increase among the people, these scourges are allowed to cause destruction, exterminate many people, and change the borders of states. This cleansing punishment continues for a while, then the order of common life is again restored. Terrible conquerors act in human societies like storms in nature. Although storms produce many shocks and upheavals in nature, they purify the air, so that after that it becomes more beneficial. Similar things happen in the political world after the destructive actions carried out by the conquerors.”
If we call peace only the absence of military action, then we can confidently say that not all peace is good. The world can be maintained by people united for evil purposes, for example, robbers, jacks of hearts. Sodom and Gomorrah were peaceful before their destruction, Nineveh before the preaching of Jonah. The world is also bad when representatives of the true faith reconcile themselves with all the irregularities of public and state life. God hates that world when, from the least to the greatest, everyone is devoted to self-interest, and from the prophet to the priest everyone acts deceitfully; They heal the wounds of My people lightly, saying: “Peace! peace!”, but there is no peace” (Jer. 6:13–14). Scripture does not command peace at any cost, but it inspires: if possible, have peace with all people (Rom. 12:18), that is, be peaceful, but not at the expense of truth and piety. Woe to you when all people speak well of you (Luke 6:26). Indiscriminate man-pleasing is betrayal of Christ. He himself says: I have come to bring fire to the earth. Do you think that I came to give peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but division (Luke 12, 49 and 51). I did not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34). Here the Lord speaks about that division, about His name according to faith and life, which first of all resonated in His family life, then a discord occurred about Him among the Jewish people (John 7:43:12; 9:16; 10:19) ; further this division went beyond the borders of the Jewish land to Greece, Rome and Egypt, covered the entire earth and continues to this day. This struggle of light with darkness is necessary in order to turn the false world into the true world. This struggle is not always expressed in the form of an international war, but it must be said that it is rare that a war is completely devoid of a religious character. At least, the Russian soldier was still sure that he was fighting for the faith, the tsar and the fatherland.
Archpriest Stefan Ostroumov
In other rooms:
Tough questions: Why does God allow suffering?
Olga Sakun – Vatican City
“Suffering is present in the world in order to release love, to awaken acts of love towards one’s neighbor, in order to transform all human civilization into a “civilization of love,” writes Saint Pope John Paul II in the apostolic letter “Salvifici doloris”, signed on February 11, 1984. Thus, Papa Wojtyła talks about “why” suffering is present, but he also notes that any answer to the question “why” will be incorrect or insufficient. Let us remember the words repeatedly spoken by Pope Francis that suffering is inexplicable: the Holy Father repeats them every time when visiting seriously ill people, especially children, when meeting with people undergoing severe physical and moral trials.
“The suffering man,” states Pope John Paul II in Salvifici doloris, “remains an unsolved mystery.” But “Christ allows us to enter into this mystery and discover the meaning of suffering,” answering from the Cross on Calvary. However, sometimes it is necessary to wait “a very long time for this response to become noticeable.” “Christ does not explain in the abstract the meaning of suffering, but first of all he says: 'Follow Me! Come!' By your sufferings, take part in the work of saving the world, carried out by My sufferings, by My Cross. When a person takes his cross in his hands, uniting spiritually with the Cross of Christ, the saving meaning of suffering opens before him... And then a person finds inner peace and even spiritual joy in his suffering.”
In the book Memory and Identity, published shortly before his death, Saint Pope Wojtyła returns to the theme of suffering: “By suffering for us all, Christ gave a new meaning to suffering, introduced it into a new dimension, into a new order: the order of love. It is true that suffering enters human history along with original sin... But the passion of Christ on the Cross endowed suffering with a radically new meaning, transforming it from the inside. He introduced into human history, which is the history of sin, suffering without guilt, endured solely out of love.
It is this suffering that opens the door to hope for liberation, for the final removal of the thorn that torments humanity.
It is this suffering that burns and destroys evil with the flame of love and even brings out from sin the diverse flowering of good.” Saint Pope John Paul II concludes that the answer lies in love: “Jesus Christ, being innocent, takes upon himself the burden of the suffering of all people,” thereby defeating the author of evil, Satan. The Cross of Christ has become an abundant source of living water, and everyone can reach it. Thus, “to suffer means to open oneself to the saving powers of God given to humanity in Christ.” The source of joy, the Pope emphasizes, is “overcoming the feeling of the futility of suffering,” which “not only burns a person from the inside, but can also make him a burden to others... The discovery of the saving meaning of suffering in unity with Christ transforms this depressing feeling.” The pain experienced with Jesus is truly necessary for the salvation of brothers and sisters. According to Pope Wojtyla, “When the body is plunged into serious illness and is incapacitated, when a person is practically unable to act and live, then most of all his inner maturity and spiritual greatness are revealed, teaching healthy people a touching lesson.”
In his encyclical Lumen Fidei, Pope Francis also touches on the theme of suffering. He writes: “Faith is not the light that dispels all darkness, but a lamp that guides our steps in the night, and is sufficient for the journey. To a suffering person, God does not give all explanatory arguments, but offers His answer in the form of an accompanying presence, a story of goodness, connecting with any story of suffering, so that a stream of light illuminates it. In Christ, God Himself wished to share this path with us and offer us His perspective so that we could see the light on it. Christ is the One who, having overcome tribulation, became the “author and finisher of faith” (Heb. 12:2).”
The stories of the saints testify that suffering can become a way to grow in love for God and neighbor. In addition, suffering motivates a person to conversion, helping to look inward and overcome attachment to sin, like the son in the parable of the merciful father. The suffering we see around us generates compassion, softening even the hardest hearts. God gives His answer through the crucified Christ, calling us to join His work of saving the world, for the conversion of sinners, for the sake of completing in our flesh the redemptive work of Jesus. The mystery of suffering is inextricably linked with the mystery of salvation.
