The most fundamental cornerstone of personal faith in God is the question of divine providence. If I can have a personal relationship with...
The most fundamental cornerstone of personal faith in God is the question of divine providence. If I can have a personal relationship with a person who has divine power over me, why can bad things happen in my life?
It is an obvious fact that bad things that we don't want to happen are a part of life. The answer to this phenomenon of thinking that does not presuppose the existence of God is that things do not happen in the world according to a higher purpose, and therefore there is no need to presuppose a purpose in events ordained by a higher intelligence. Everything that happens, bad or good, is a natural consequence of existing natural circumstances.
An explanation of bad things that excludes the existence of a God is understandable and logical, but thinking that assumes the existence of a God - which cannot be rationally excluded - is obligated to take a different path. The thinking that presupposes the existence of God sees God's supremacy realized in God's creator providence. According to this view, human beings came into existence through the creative involvement of the Supreme God, and therefore the result of creation is necessarily perfect.
However, human life does not seem to be perfect, either from a subjective point of view, since suffering is part of human existence, or from an objective point of view, since the world does not seem to be a perfect place for human existence at all.
If there is a divine Creator, why did He create humans this way, and why is the world imperfect for humans? These are crucial considerations for both worldviews, which seek to deny the existence of God or, on the contrary, to accept God.
Obviously, such an existence of a world is a fact that needs to be explained for the thinking that assumes the existence of God, and different religions, religious thinking, give different explanations. These explanations basically maintain the perfection of creation and consider the origin of bad to be the consequence of the actions of free will in the created world.
This explanation can explain many of the existing bad things, but since not everyone can understand and explain all the bad things that happen in this way, it is always a cause for doubt, for personal rejection of the existence of a provident Creator.
And indeed, divine providence does seem imperfect. Human creativity can explain much that is bad as the result of erroneous human action, but what kind of provident God, for example, in whose world it is possible for a child to be stillborn because the umbilical cord is wrapped around its neck at birth? But even if the human imagination is able to find a reason for this, whose origin is somehow the bad intention of created free will, the explanations depend primarily on the creativity of human thinking, whose final and irrefutable argument is the assurance of the freedom of the divine will, that God's ways are unpredictable, even if this argument cannot be an acceptable explanation for the must be human understanding.
It is possible, however, that the thinking that assumes the existence of a Creator God only overlooks the object of what must be divine providence. Perhaps the object of divine providence is not the individual person, but the whole of human society. If the object of God's providence is human society, that might also make the existence of the hard-to-explain bad things understandable.
Thus, for example, earthquakes with countless human victims are not a refutation of the existence of divine providence. Tectonics, which causes earthquakes, is a necessary condition for the support of life on Earth, and therefore ultimately for the existence of human society. If God's activity was necessary for the formation of the Earth on which human society can exist, then God must have included earthquake-causing plate tectonics in the functioning of the Earth.
In this way, the existence of countless diseases with human victims is not necessarily a lack of divine care, and thus a refutation of God's existence. The biological forms that cause disease are a necessary consequence of the diversity of the biosphere, which happened to make human society possible.
Obviously, these things can exist without the need for divine involvement, but the question we want to answer now is, if God's creation is the reason for human existence, why can there be things that are harmful to the existence of individual human beings? Perhaps it is because God's caring for the destiny of humanity is not at the level of the individual being, but at the level of society.
Of course, the destiny of human civilization is mainly determined by the destinies of individual human beings, so according to the idea, the destinies of individual human beings must not be the purpose but the means of divine providence. The destiny of certain people guided by God may even lead to tragedy, but it can be an active agency of divine providence for society.
In this way, the explanation for the existence of wars, which cause immense suffering, becomes understandable in light of the divine care for humanity. In all cases, human intentions can be seen behind wars. In the case of wars, if God exists, He plays the role of providence not necessarily through personal destinies, but at the level of society. Obviously, if God exists, it cannot be His intention to have wars that devastate people, but it is evident that wars usually end in a way that contributes to the development of humanity.
Humanity has experienced countless adversities, but human civilization still exists. Survival does not seem at all inevitable, since many other species of sentient human beings have ceased to exist over time, and our own species has come close to extinction before. And yet we exist, and we continue to evolve toward greater and greater capacities. If God exists, then the object of divine providence must not be the individual human being, but our human civilization.
So if we are God's creatures, our real mission is to fulfill our potential function in relation to God in the form of humanity. For those who believe in God, such a view might explain providence, which includes personal suffering. Individual suffering, bad things, can be a part of life, and perhaps one of the means by which humanity can come closer to God. It can be a way for us to grow together, and one day, as a united organization, we can reach God. If there is one.
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