It is painful to be God

[scotter]

There is this very old theo question: “Why does God allow human suffering?”

 

And the standard response is, “It is human freewill….so on….so on…..”

 

Fine, it is not about the question itself nor the standard answer.

 

It is about a derived thought: God knows, views his own creations and subjects killing each other: wars…Inquisition, Crusade, WWII, Holocaust (His own Chosen People were slaughtered mercilessly), 911, criminal murders…every single minute, every single day. But in order to maintain the principle of not interfering with human freewill, God refrains from doing anything corresponding.

 

If God does possess love, emotion and passion, it must be painful to be God---in maintaining the principle of not interfering.

 

Again another standard Christian response I have heard is, “God is doing something. God sent his own Son Jesus to die for our sins…., those who believe him shall not perish, and shall gain eternal life. He shall take away your pain, wipe off your tears….”

 

However, this is not a direct answer, some may say irrelevant, to the examples, which are still happening everyday, and to the issue of ‘God is feeling painful or not’.

 

It must be painful to be God.

 

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After the “rant”, questions:

 

For an atheist: pointless suffering proves that there is no God. (I have read this point from an atheist website.)

 

A deist can provide the deist point of view: God does not feel painful. He created the world and left it as it is. This answer is itself simple and concise.

 

For Christian members, what is your take?

Either God feels painful – then how do you trust God’s omnipotence and other omni-attributes?

Or God does not feel painful – then how do you trust God’s love?

 

 

p.s. I believe in the Divine also. I am asking a question for quest of theological knowledge, and to stimulate thinking.

[Ouroboros]

So far the only answer I've seen provided that was good enough to answer this question is that God is not omnipotent and not omniscient.

 

So he is fallible and doesn't know everything, and he is learning with time too.

 

The problem with that answer though is that if he's full of faults, how can he demand us to be perfect?

 

And secondly, if he's doing faulty decisions through time, maybe Jesus was a mistake too, and God provided an alternative solution through yet another religion, just like Christianity replaced Judaism.

[scotter]

Thank you Han Solo, and particularly thank you for responding to me.

 

I believe in God (from my personal experience), and some of you may have read my story.

 

Although there are questions, in the present and for sure in the future, unresolved (like freewill and Heaven too), they don’t discount my faith. Since I believe God, the wisdom of asking those perhaps difficult questions are from God too.

 

This is the way I see it.

[Vixentrox]

You must also mention that maybe god enjoys some events becuase they were done for him. Maybe the 911 vicitms were not cuase for pain at all...since Allah sent these men to do his work...same with the crusaders ect...

[scotter]

I asked a "perhaps difficult" question....

 

Miss Vixen your addition makes the question "really difficult"!

[spamandham]

For god to experience anything, implies that he is not already complete, and is thus not omni^3. He can not love us and also be omni^3, nor can he experience pain, or hate, or anything at all. If he is omni^3, then he simply "is". Any attribute other than existence is a demonstration of incompleteness.

[Ouroboros]

For god to experience anything, implies that he is not already complete, and is thus not omni^3.  He can not love us and also be omni^3, nor can he experience pain, or hate, or anything at all.  If he is omni^3, then he simply "is".  Any attribute other than existence is a demonstration of incompleteness.

You know what, I've been trying to put words to that thought too.

 

That somehow, a God that is infinte and omni^3 (cool acronym btw S&H), he could never really think or be a being.

 

Let's put it to a test:

 

If God knows about the future, and he knows what he's going to think and do tomorrow, or next week, or just next minute, then one of two things must happen:

 

1. He doesn't have a choice but to follow what he already knew he would do, and he would know exactly right now what he will do for eternity, i.e. he doesn't have a free will. Since he know what he will think and decide already, and is bound to follow the "prophecies" his mind already told him

 

2. Or he breaks those notions that he had, and do something else than he knew he would do, and that means that what he knew yesterday about today was WRONG! And he can't see the future, since he was breaking it himself.

 

Does it make sense?

 

So either way, a linear mind requires non-omniscience.

 

The other solution is that he doesn't have a linear mind, or a linear thought, meaning he knows about infinite outcomes of tomorrow, but he will never know which one that actually will occur.

 

 

 

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This is a similar paradox as the "Can God make a toast hotter than he can lift it up" for the omnipotent, but this is for the omniscience argument instead.