How can a good God allow suffering

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: 'I don't believe that God exists.'

'Why do you say that?' asked the customer. 'Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can't imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things.'

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument.

The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop.

Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard.

He looked dirty and unkempt. The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber:

'You know what? Barbers do not exist.'

'How can you say that?' asked the surprised barber. 'I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!'

'No!' the customer exclaimed. 'Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.'

'Ah, but barbers DO exist! That's what happens when people do not come to me.'

'Exactly!' affirmed the customer. 'That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! That's what happens when people do not go to Him and don't look to Him for help. That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world.'

Barber shop conversation is to thinking as dancing is to chess.

I know a lady who never allows her children to suffer if there is anything she can do to keep them from it. They are the most self centered and yet self unaware people you would ever want to meet. They are now middle aged brats.

As much as I hate the expression 'no pain, no gain', it seems to be the way things work.

yet the term "Symposium" roughly simpled down is a bunch a guys drinking together.

Darwin had his Sandwalk.
Newton had his bakery
Oppenheimer had fly fishing

Richd Feynman was a mean bongo plyer

Because suffering is transitory.

The promise of eternal life without suffering is what will last at the end.

So, keep crying with your tooth pain, your losing of job, the dead of your best friend and famine in another country.

The ones who look at God and obey, they will obtain the life without suffering.

What? Do you think that you will have a happy life for free?

In your dreams!

Work for your eternal life without suffering, because the same son of God suffered in order to obtain eternal life, and surely no one will have it for free.

So, if you don't believe in God and have no faith, then... keep suffering, and keep making complaint, you are on your own.

Why should anybody listen to you, with all the stupid pronouncements you make these days.

You need to forgive those who have been trapped by their religion to throw away logic and simple common sense. a) Humans have been on this planet for some 200,000 years, but the christian religion is only 2000 years old. What's wrong with this picture? b) the evidence for human evolution: http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence and c) humans have created many gods. What's wrong with this picture? d) so many gods: Throughout recorded history, we can count anywhere from 8,000–12,000 gods who have been worshiped. But we can only count around 9 different types of gods (based on theological characteristics) that have been worshiped. Every modern god also fits into one of these types, and 5 of them are Hindu types.

I was not attacking him so much for what he says as how he says it. He compounds being wrong with aggression against the ones disagreeing with him (or her).

Every time I see a house somebody built it. Every time a computer does something somebody programmed it. Some of the things that men have built are hard to even prove that they were built by man, like the great pyramid, but we assume that they were. Everything men have built were an idea in some man's mind before it was turned into words, and those words were stored in whatever that man created. That pattern is very consistent. Why wouldn't I assume that everything that is complex was an idea in somebody's mind, man or God, and it was turned into words that were stored in whatever they created. I think you have a legitimate gripe that there could be billions of options on who created what we're looking at. But to say that they weren't first an idea of someone's and then created I think is ridiculous. I have never seen a complex computer program appear by chance. It is impossible because the program requires somebody to build a computer before it can even run. This whole universe is so complex it appears to have taken a lot of thought to organize. It is so vast and consistently built, billions of light-years in size. Just its size and complexity suggest something near omnipotence created it. If that omnipotence or near omnipotence exists, don't you think he would enter the universe and reveal himself, and why he did it?

Looking at human history and what man has been able to invent is really phenomenal. They began by building ships to travel the seas. Next came the automobile, then the trains, then airplanes, and then rocket ships to fly to the moon and mars. The advances in technology has built a whole new industry that didn't exist 100 years ago. Apple is one of the richest companies in the world. Who would have dreamed it would come to what we have today 100 years ago?

Almost 6,000 years ago, God put Adam to sleep (with anesthesia)

Then God made a cut in the side of Adam's chest, and remove a rib.

Later God closed the cut.

After that, with the rib of Adam, God created the woman.

This is a kind of cloning procedure that still is unknown for us.

You are amazed of how much technological advance man has reached in 100 years.

Reading the bible we noticed that God is six thousand years ahead in technological advance.

God doesn't need any rib to create another human. All he has to say is, "appear woman."

What is wrong with this picture?

That you don't know what are you talking about.

Next?

Sorry, you are not to decide what God will do... but God will do the hell of you the day of judgement... lol

No. I don't decide. The foolish people who wrote the bible. It's called "the easy way." Don't get me wrong; I don't believe in any gods. They were all created by men.

This is a good question. We think of God as this being who is full of love and charity toward us as His children. The answer lies in one important gift that God gave to all of us, which is the gift of agency. We are not God's puppets. He has cut the strings from us when we left our presence. I can choose to do anything I want. The choices I make and the consequences that follow are my own.

If I wanted, I could make a choice to allow another fellow human to suffer. I will have to pay the consequences for that suffering, mentally in my conscious and whatever society imposes on me for that action. If God put a shield around or blocked me from my actions, I would never have the chance to feel the remorse of conscious for my actions. I have to learn what is right and what is wrong. I have to learn to seek out the good and reject the evil.

What for? So I can return back to the presence of God. No unclean thing can dwell in the presence of God. This life is to learn to consciously seek out the eternal laws of God and apply them into my life. I can repent of what I did through Jesus Christ. He suffered all things for us. He experienced what we have all experienced. Because of that he knows how to succor us. Sometimes God makes us suffer because we are forgetting Him as someone demonstrated by posting that there is no God. Sometimes he makes bad things happen to us so we can look up to Him for guidance and call upon His name for help.

Also, part of suffering includes the suffering of good people as well. This is a good suffering. If someone is striving to follow the laws of God and draw closer to Him and calls upon Him and seeks to learn about Him and his eternal laws, then God will also try that person's faith. He will see if they will continue to look up to Him no matter what. He will see if that person will glorify the name of God even when the sun comes and scorches on life.

This life is full of material things. It is easy to get distracted with the material things. He wants us to lean on eternal things. Suffering for those that are good is sweet suffering because God is with them. Many people in the past have done horrible things to good people. Prophets have been killed and stoned. Man even crucified the Son of God that came down to save Him.

Why? Because of pride. They liked their lifestyle and their possessions and their stature in society. They were stuck in what this earth had to offer and not what God had to offer. They pretended they knew God in maintaining they had a religion and practiced it but Jesus Christ saw right through their hypocrisy.

There has been a big decline in God-following people in regards to organized religion. A lot of it may have to do with the hypocrisy they see in organized religion and less about whether or not they believe God exists. Hypocrisy is the worst kind of sin but all followers of God have to fight through it instead of give-up because we all have to start somewhere and are all hypocritical in someway or some fashion.

However, if one is a true believer that Jesus Christ can forgive sins and lives in such a way that they can overcome their sins through following the example of Jesus Christ then all their sufferings will be accounted to them for good. If a true believer tries to help the hypocrites or those that don't believe in God no matter what kind of ridicule they are up against that will be accounted to them for good.

When good comes against evil, there is always friction because of the pride of the evil. When evil comes against evil there is always friction because with evil and pride, only one man can be left standing. When good comes against good, there is no friction. There is understanding. There is trust. There is happiness. There is charity. There is a different light in those that truly follow God and his laws. Those around them can feel that light.

I have felt the light of my Father through Jesus Christ. It is a real thing. I know that I am a son of God and that we are all his children. I am able to feel and communicate with my Father through Jesus Christ. Because of my sins, I sever that communication with God. Because of my faith in Jesus Christ and His intercession between the Father and His children I can still feel that connection.

God has a plan for all of us. He gave us amnesia of our life prior to this so instead of seeing he can only feel. He wants us to return back to Him but it is a conscious decision and a conscious choice with our agency. God cannot will me back to Him but He is there waiting any moment to direct me and guide me when I choose for myself to be led by His hand.

In the book of Jeremiah, God says that all the ordinances that he gave Moses were because the children of Israel weren't listening to Him. If they would have just listened to Him they would not have needed all those ordinances.

The Book of Mormon, which is a record of a branch of the tribe of Mannaseh of the children of Israel who left Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah also stated that the Jews eventually fell because even with the ordinances, they used it for their own prideful gain and looked beyond the mark as stated in Jacob Chapter 4.

The Book is an account of a family that was commanded to leave Jerusalem because of the hard-hardheartedness of the people of Israel at that time. Even though they were still righteous, they had to wander in the wilderness for eight years and suffer much until they could reach the Americas. Two brothers from that family was hard-hearted and didn't want to leave Jerusalem and they persecuted their father and their other brothers for following God. Both sides suffered much because of the Good and evil friction.

However, through time, the effects of the brothers of the followers of God and their posterity and those that didn't follow God were seen. Those that didn't follow God, their posterity was cut-off from knowing God. Those that did follow God, still were able to know about the coming of the Messiah and looked toward His coming and his intercession. Then in time, the believers fell through hypocrisy and looked beyond the mark and they were eventually swept off because of pride.

So there comes a time when hypocrisy is so bad and someone's heart is so hard and their pride is so thick that it starts to become a hindrance to those around them and there is an eventual need for there to be a mix-up and a shuffling of cultures. That's why Babylon and Rome had to step-into Jerusalem. That's why the Americas are inhabited with people other than the Pre-Columbus inhabitants.

If an entire nation forgets the Lord, then God has to do something to shake-up that nation. There are great blessings for the Americas for those that remember and follow God as shown in the Book of Mormon. It is a land of liberty a land with no Kings. If the people that inhabit this land remember God and follow his laws then God will prosper them. If they forget God then they will be cut-off.

So I hope that those that don't know God will find Him. I hope those that forgot God will remember Him. I hope those that have become disenchanted with God because of hypocrisy of others will give it another chance. If you find God, he will give you meaning in life. He will give you meaning in the next life to come.

He will teach you about the eternities. He will teach you why you are here, your purpose and where you need to go. He will teach you correct laws and principles that are eternal that you can lean on and never go wrong and never fall astray. He will bring joy and happiness in your life far greater than anything this life has to offer. He will bring joy and happiness to those that you affiliate with and to your family and posterity.

We suffer in this life, but it is nothing compared to what Jesus Christ suffered in Gethsemane. He knows you and what you are going through. He suffered it. He will teach you how to overcome. He wants you to come to Him. He wants you to take His yoke upon Him and learn of Him.

As this happens, fears will start to subside and faith will come in. Death is the greatest fear of those that don't know God. Christ overcame death and has made a bridge to overcome that as well. So essentially, one can overcome all through Jesus Christ and return back to their Father in Heaven who is waiting with open arms and then I can thank Him for allowing me to come to this earth, for allowing me to use my agency and helping me overcome through Him and His Son.

Some material things can be used to travel and see the world. Some people live in one village, and never leave it. I'd rather try to reach the next horizon.

Then I'll see you on the dark side of the moon..

Actually, I wouldn't mind visiting the moon during my lifetime, but the cost will be prohibitive.
I've traveled to 83 countries. That's probably more than over 90% of humanity.