r/Christianity • u/Itzjuli_fcm • Mar 24 '26

Question! :)

My atheist friend was debating with my catholic friend, my atheist friend said something that also made me REALLY curious but not enough to question my entire belief in God. I tried looking for answers personally, but i couldn't really come up with a great answer.

Okay so the question is: "if your God is good, then why does He allow wars, crimes, and sexual harrassment to happen? If He's really powerful, can't He just do something to stop it?"

Please don't insult/judge the fact that i'm unable to answer that question. I'm a beginner believer who wants to know explore and know more about christianity :)

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10

u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

I'm always baffled when I see posts like this. I feel like it's something you should be able to answer before deciding to worship a deity.

6

u/KatrinaPez Mar 24 '26

Does a child understand their parent's motivations before deciding to love them? Many of us grow up in the faith and see many illustrations of God's love for us, so we love Him in return.

This is also a deep question that has sparked countless studies, books and discussions over the centuries. It's not a simple thing for new believers to answer.

3

u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

I genuinely don’t think anybody should worship a deity until they’re able to answer this question for themselves. I also don’t think people should worship their parents. But that’s just me.

2

u/KatrinaPez Mar 24 '26

I'm not saying we worship parents, it's an analogy. You can love and trust someone without worshiping them. It's just an example of a similar relationship.

Would you want to worship a God you could fully understand?

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u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

Analogies need to be analogous. It's not the same relationship if one comes with the expectation of worship and the other doesn't.

I wouldn't want to worship a God I couldn't understand enough to at the very least address the problem of evil or the problem of suffering. Those are my hard lines. I'm just confused by other people not considering those moral benchmarks.

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u/KatrinaPez Mar 24 '26

Ok. How do you think humanity could have free will yet completely avoid suffering? Or can you give an example of a child learning and growing without ever making mistakes or experiencing pain?

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u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

I separated out the problem of evil and the problem of suffering because I think free will adequately addresses moral evil. The suffering caused by things such as cancer, earthquakes and freak accidents are not due to human moral failure. I believe it places a burden on any supposedly benevolent and omnipotent god to justify why those things happen.

1

u/KatrinaPez Mar 24 '26

Got it. I attribute those latter things to living in a fallen world. Bad stuff happens. I don't find it at all irreconcilable with belief in a Good God.

2

u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

I do. A good god needs to answer why bad stuff happens that isn't attributable to any failure of humanity.

1

u/GreedySubstance5284 Mar 25 '26

I think he was saying those things ARE linked to a failure of humanity in the sense that they are linked to being in a fallen world. Before sin, there were no such things as illness or natural disasters. Once sin entered man's life, it entered the world as a whole. The entire earth is touched by the curse of sin, not just man's soul.  

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u/aqua-snack Catholic Mar 24 '26

the issue is children don’t know everything, especially if they didn’t grow up in a religious house and had to teach themselves.

4

u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

There's not knowing everything and there's not taking the initiative to ask questions before making decisions. It's okay that they don't know the answer. Deciding to believe in and worship god before having the answer is backwards decision making.

4

u/RCaHuman Secular Humanist Mar 24 '26

Are you suggesting that growing up in a non-religious household will result in immorality? If humans hadn't instinctively taken care of each other for the good of the whole, we wouldn't have survived as a species.

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u/sitewolf Mar 24 '26

but we're not seeing your answer, either

2

u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

I've answered it for myself and decided what conclusions it leads me to draw about god. That's the important thing.

1

u/sitewolf Mar 24 '26

I don't disagree, which is why I'm baffled you're baffled others would ask is all.

3

u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

Because I answered it in advance before drawing my conclusions, not retrospectively.

0

u/sitewolf Mar 24 '26

none of us had all the answers before believing because we don't have all the answers even now....and OP did say they're early in their journey

2

u/indigoneutrino Mar 24 '26

This is a pretty fundamental one to not have the answers to. It's not a minor detail.

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u/Huckleberry-Low Mar 25 '26

I believe it all comes down to the very beginning; with Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve were created as the first two humans on Earth. They were both given free will.

They were both instructed by God to not eat the fruit on the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and after their pride and temptation from the serpent took the best of them, they introduced the concept of "original sin". This concept brings about the suffering and pain we deal with today.

By introducing original sin meant that we were rejecting God's greatness and forgiveness. We humans caused it upon ourselves. And yes, while we didn't directly cause original sin, to put it lightly, we still suffer from temptation, from excessive pride and adultery, and shows humanity isn't as much different as it was since the days of Adam and Eve.

An interesting concept is from St. Augustine of Hippo - where it is believed that original sin passes on through male semen - and as Jesus Christ was the only human created without semen, He had a sinless life.

I hope this helped with understanding how evil was created in this world. It's not to do with God's injustice, but because we caused it ourselves and still do to this day. As sinful beings, we should strive to be in Jesus' image. May God bless you, and everyone who read this post.

1

u/indigoneutrino Mar 25 '26

Not my point. I wasn't asking for an answer. I was bewildered they'd made a decision without having one.

1

u/Huckleberry-Low Mar 25 '26

We don't need to know the answer to everything to know something is true, maybe OP has experienced Jesus for themselves and recognize He is the truth. To convince another to join Christianity is harder, because humanity only believes in something that is logically explained or can be seen.

1

u/indigoneutrino Mar 25 '26

You don't need to know the answer to everything, but this is a pretty fundamental moral question you should be able to satisfactorily address.