“If there’s God, why is there suffering? Especially of children?”

How can we witness the suffering of children and babies yet still celebrate an omnipresent God?

Most of us have thought about free will. We’re free to choose what we do in every situation, even where our choices appear limited; we can apply for this job or that, allow this person into our lives or not, obey or die, heal from life’s circumstances or remain emotionally broken. God creates us capable of being and doing almost anything. We’re capable of creating a world of great kindness, ingenuity and love... but love can’t be forced. It requires genuine freedom to give a heart wholly, willingly and joyfully. The freedom to be and do anything also naturally means the freedom to be cruel, neglectful or violent.

So, free will explains a lot of suffering but you may be asking about things that aren’t caused by any perpetrator's moral choices, such as childhood cancer, earthquakes or babies born with painful medical conditions. In order to make our free-will choices, we require circumstances in which genuine choices can be made. Sometimes those circumstances involve the actions of others but living in blame keeps our attention on what has happened to us rather than on who we’re becoming. Blame doesn’t lessen our pain and it prevents us taking responsibility.

Which brings me to an important point, we’re here to grow up. Taking responsibility is an intrinsic part of that.

What if Earth is not primarily a place for comfort; it’s a place where souls grow through experience? To do that, we’d need challenge, whether it’s pain, fear, loss or failure. Sometimes we’d need that challenge to feel overwhelming, we’d need it to seem inexplicable. In order to learn, we’d sometimes need to be flailing around clueless.

Because when you can’t point the finger outside of yourself, you have to look inward. You have to say to yourself, ‘Who am I, without this job?’ or ‘How powerful am I without the power to help?’ or ‘Where is God while this child suffers?’ You learn what’s left when everything else is stripped away, whether it’s money, control, dignity or simply the polka dots you wear everyday because they’re so me!

They are not you. You’re also not your car, your script, your past or even your thoughts. Almost nothing of you is you. You are only your soul. You are so much more than you think.

Ask yourself, who am I, when everything else falls away? Because what remains is what we truly are. That is the part of you that deserves love, that’s what’s worth loving. And there; you’re not alone.

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There’s a stillness, when you release attachments and step back from the pettiness, fakery, smallness, judgement and beautiful agony that affects our daily lives. That still place, where you’re totally and completely free, is vast. It’s calm yet fun. It’s bliss, which is a difficult feeling to comprehend in this material world, although some manage through prayer, meditation, service or other spiritual practices. When you reach it, you know you’re standing in the presence of God. There are no doubts, just awe-inspiring majesty and love. You’re connected so totally that you understand we’re all one. And that every soul has equal worth in the eyes of God, that every soul is equally experiencing the exact challenges they need to grow and every souls experience serves a purpose. Even when those lessons hit straight away, in childhood, in babyhood, in the womb. Experiencing life doesn’t start at eighteen years old.

That is not to say we shouldn’t prevent harm where we can; we definitely should. We should always bring comfort and healing to any situation we’re able to, to rescue and protect our vulnerable. It means though, where harm is happening that we can’t prevent, God knows it, feels it and is allowing it for a souls greater good. We may not understand whose souls are being shaped or how; perpetrator, victim, rescuer, onlooker. Faith is trusting that God does, that it’s part of His love. It is a painful part of faith.

To mange the pain; cultivate selflove. Not self-indulgent, hedonistic, selfishness, not love at the expense of other people, but loving who you are. Embrace wholly your good, bad and ugly aspects, your cowardice and your continued hope; love them all equally because they are equally important parts of yourself. It’s not about personality or even about character, it’s about levelling up the very essence of what you are.

Loving our more difficult aspects doesn’t mean indulging them, just as loving children doesn’t mean giving them everything they want and letting them say up all night eating sweets. When we love ourselves or others, we support and nurture and sometimes say no. We grant freedom, allow mistakes and we gently help clean up afterwards.

Choosing to love and care for yourself allows you to show up fully for the people and purposes that matter. When we love and accept all aspects of ourselves, we’re able to love others and allow them to have those aspects and fully be who they are, while retaining the strength we all need to navigate life and be the rescuer and hold the light.

God can be seen the same way, as total love, as accepting our greediness and wanting us to do better. Sometimes that might mean letting us eat ‘til we’re sick so we learn not to do it again. It means He has to experience His children’s suffering, so we learn what suffering is, so we learn not to make others suffer, so we can grow as loving souls. The purpose of suffering isn't simply to produce virtue; it's to strip away false identities until only your soul remains.

Love,

Jen 💜