People have debated the cause and purpose of suffering for centuries.  Job is the person most associated with this struggle to discover why.

The book of Job is about 4 miserable friends who visit Job to be of some comfort to him.  Instead they only add to his pain.  “Stop assuming my guilt,” he told them.  “….for I have done no wrong,” Job 6:29.

The question of suffering is never solved.  No one has ever been able to say categorically that this or that is the reason suffering occurs.  The best answers are simply a well-educated guess based on the character of God and the evil of our world. That said, I believe that suffering arises from the choices that human beings make in the exercise of their free will.
Continue reading Guilt by Catastrophe →