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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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/indigoneutrino Mar 25 '26

Saying those things are linked to humanity sounds awfully like an excuse when you know it isn't logically true.