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Ty Gibson asks “If God exists, and if God is good, then why is our world filled with suffering?” See Ty’s video here.
I once visited an elderly widow named Birdie each week for over a year with some friends of mine. We would play the piano and sing for her. She was a loving and sweet woman. During that eventful year after she had lost her husband, she also lost her son, to suicide. Poor Birdie lost it. She couldn’t reject the God she loved, but she couldn’t comprehend her losses, either. Her eyes were full of such fear and pain and profound sadness that I still remember that look as clearly as if it were yesterday. She became as a little girl, dancing and singing with us, but vacantly. She started calling me Jesus, and Lisa, Mary. And she started to wonder out loud why God had abandoned her. It reminded me of some of Jesus’s last words, a cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
There are no facile answers to Ty’s question or to Birdie’s or even to the Savior’s, but I like Ty’s perspective on the matter expressed towards the end of his video.
There is a profound need to include the principles of love and freedom in answering these questions. Philosophically, The Book of Mormon points out the need to recognize that there must be opposites for anything to have meaning. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so … righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad…” (2 Nephi 2:11) In other words, you can’t have joy without sorrow; you can’t have good without evil; and you can’t have freedom without bondage.
Thus, because God is good, he honors our freedom to choose for ourselves. If man did not possess the ability to choose evil, he would not be truly free to choose good. If he did not possess the capacity to selfishly inflict harm upon others, he could not love. And if he could not love, he could never know the good from the evil or possess joy or dwell with God.
So please think again before getting caught in the specious logic that asks if God is good, then why does he let me suffer? That begs the question. Good IS good, and therefore we suffer because God loves his children enough to give us freedom; and in our ignorance or even malice, we often choose evil. Sometimes we suffer because of someone else’s sins; sometimes we suffer because of our own sins.
But to somehow offset the great evil of this world, God gave his only begotten son as a sacrifice to atone for the sins and evil of the world. Jesus suffered more profoundly than anyone ever has, because he not only suffered the exquisite pains of crucifixion, but by being the sacrificial Lamb of God, he suffered the spiritual pain of taking upon himself all of our sins, all of our guilt, all of our shame, and all of our pain.
Understanding these great but mysterious truths is the key to the ultimate joy that overcomes even the most profound suffering…
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Great article in the Washington Post by Michael Otterson, the lead spokesperson for my church – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, specifying that members of the church – including, I presume, Glenn Beck, Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Orrin Hatch, Gladys Knight, Steve Young, Danny Ainge, Jimmer Fredette, the Osmonds, the Marriotts, and many other famous Mormons – are encouraged by the church to “make their voice heard,” but “they do so without any pretense of speaking for other members of their faith or for the Church itself.”
That would definitely include me – if I say something valuable, it must be inspiration. If I say something you disagree with, that must be me. 
Read the entire article here.
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This is a devastating condemnation of the current scientific culture that equates “science” with agnosticism and outright atheism. The genius of Stein here is that he shows that even the top scientists in the world simply cannot answer the most essential existential questions, and yet they condemn the very ideas behind intelligent design without serious inquiry because, presumably, its adherents attempt to address those same existential questions in a rational manner that doesn’t fit the prejudices of those so-called leading scientists.
In fact, Stein shows that the whole debate is in essence a religious discussion with scientists using the notion of “science” as a dogmatic weapon against the heretics – in this case, believers. How ironic is that!
Stein shows how “science” has been hijacked by atheists and agnostics to support their own Godless worldview (crystals? aliens? how is that any more scientific than God?) What’s amazing is how oblivious some of these “scientists” are to the simple fact that science is about seeking the truth, not defending any particular theory or dogma.
Anyway, brilliant movie. Stein deserves an Oscar, which will NOT be forthcoming, because he too effectively devastates the sacred cows of Hollywood and post-modernism. He takes on Darwinism, atheism, and “science” with wit and intelligence – and wins. I love how the apologists for “science” who are attacking Stein with all of the ad hominem indignant vigor of a court of Inquisition.
Remember that episode of the office where Toby can’t bring himself to enter a church and instead wanders around out in the courtyard and finally ascends the steps and addresses his issues with God alone in the chapel? That reminds me of the scientists who can’t bring themselves to even consider the possibility that there is a God, because they have unresolved childhood issues with the church, their parents, or whatever. And when they describe why they are atheists, it seems like they always tell their “conversion story” of how they came to “see the light,” so to speak, and reject the “false notions of their fathers.”
Irony upon irony.
Thanks, Ben, for a stimulating and revealing look at a disfunctional modern cult – atheists who have hijacked science.
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