A GOD ASKING YOU TO GENERALISE, "SUFFERING IS PART OF A GOOD PLAN" IS ABHORRENT AND WORSE IF HE GETS OTHERS TO TELL YOU FOR HIM
What if God asked you personally to do the above?
That is bad enough.
If he tells others to do it for him that is terrible too for something so serious should not be put into human hands like that anyway. That people might lie or somehow use the message to do harm or to gain some advantage is another matter and another reason why that is a disgrace.
What happens is that he does not neither and people take it on themselves to speak for him. I'll change my mind when I get the first believer with a letter of authorisation or a certificate.
Suffering can be horrendous. There were billions of creatures who suffered more than we can ever begin to imagine. And more than we even want to imagine - ie we don't want to really sympathise properly. It is terrible if we make it about what we want. Religion says God is master and knows what he is doing. If suffering looks gratuitous the religion will gaslight and say, "It only looks that way. Time will show that." There is no way to distinguish this from a man telling his wife, "I have a plan. My seeing this woman is not the affair it seems to be. All will be revealed one day."
It is a form of abuse to make a person feel that they are wrong to feel gaslit. Or to risk it.
"It will take time to unfold or bear fruit" is only an excuse for why help is not there. God's plan is to make us better people and then make us happy and healthy and safe forever according to the Christian faith. The excuse is all they can say when you ask why we are not in a Paradise right now. It is something that evidence should say. We should not be saying it for words are easy and words are cheap.
God has no right when people are suffering to say, “I am dealing with it.” That is not an answer but a fob off. Respect demands concrete specific answers. Only God should tell you if he is taking his time with a PARTICULAR issue. Generalisations, ie "This is one example of how he usually or always acts eventually", are not enough when it involves people's lives. Who are you to generalise or get involved in a conversation of generalisation? Generalising cannot risk being about what you want to think not what you should think. It can’t risk about being too lazy for a proper answer and accepting a non-answer worded like an answer. People suffer so it is not about what you want. Barring his testimony then what if we have not got it? He could tell us through evidence. So evidence then should tell us that God takes his time. As we know, it is the only way to avoid making this about what you want to believe. You cannot "steal" other people's horrible suffering to turn it into a point like that!
Standpoint epistimology has its critics but it applies when somebody is suffering and especially if they will not be getting any better. People need to realise that somebody else’s suffering is not their experience or their story so how dare they presume to judge it as fitting the love and care of an all-powerful God! Only the sufferer gets to speak and only the sufferer knows how they suffer and how they are oppressed. Assuming is a form of judging. If I assume you are a childkiller-to-be I am judging. If I have evidence I am judging.
When you see somebody in the most unbelievable and inexcusable pain admit that pain is so inexcusable it should not happen God or not. We should assume the worst when there is enough pain for the person might need help and understanding and to the best of our power. If a person is suffering from an agony that is meaningless don’t degrade them further by saying the meaninglessness is in their heads. Don’t disgrace yourself for the God theory by saying that.
Too often the religious conversation about suffering does not mean suffering but whatever class or version of PARTICULAR suffering, the suffering of PARTICULAR groups the speaker has in mind. Suffering that does not affect you or your group but is particular to another group is treated like a mere theological instrument or tool to be declared to have meaning in the sight of your idea of God. Suffering is personal and individual and in that sense it evaluates and defines itself. It's not your place to evaluate it unless you are the one suffering. Shut up when it is not your group that is suffering. That is the other group's story.
Point out how much suffering was confined to certain groups in certain places and certain times. Take women in some cultures. The argument that God has a plan is saying that God has made it right for them to be in a culture where they are abused and raped. The argument claims and infers that it was right in particular for this to happen to them. Focus on the in particular. It amounts to saying that whites enslaving blacks was God’s plan. Why them? It's easy for us in our relative comforts to say it is his plan!
People who say they mean general suffering and the suffering of no particular person or group are talking nonsense. Of course they have to have some person or group in mind. How else are they going to know that there is suffering there? And needless to say it is going to be favourite persons and favourite groups that they are going to think about most. Talking about particular suffering shows just how much this is about the talker not the truth. The talker may care about the suffering but not enough to deny it shows the love of God.
To maintain hope, religion teaches that evil is not a thing or power. It's nothing anybody can make. In other words, there is no pure evil. Pure evil would be an evil thing that exists just to be evil. So religion says that evil in fact is simply a good that is not there and should be there. In other words, it is good that is not good enough. This is thin when you realise they are saying good is a thing and real. It is not. You cannot weigh compassion for example. The fear is that if evil is a thing then God is its creator and is evil and so evil will never be overcome. It is a circular argument. "I don't want evil to be anything but a temporary parasite that feeds on good that God is dealing with and God is dealing with it for I don't like the thought of evil having any real power". It's not about your ego and here it you show faith based egoism again.
Besides, a circular argument is a lie for it is worded to make the person look like they have not already made up their minds when they have. They are presenting evil as a problem for faith in God's love but not as a contradiction. They are saying, "We assume there is a God planning all things. So we know what should be in us and in our lives. Whatever falls short is evil so God exists because evil is a mere problem and evil is a mere problem because God exists." That is pretending you are arguing to show you are right when in fact you have already made up your mind. If evil needs a lie to defend it as a valid concept then evil is dominant in the universe!
Another circle is, "Evil is not a real thing for God exists and God exists though there is evil simply because evil is not a positive but a lack." That is a lie too and nobody gives anybody the right to talk about a huge ocean of suffering they will never understand like its something to make a point and that is all that matters. It is vile to lie about people's suffering like that.
Religion says God is master of evil though he does not cause it. He permits evil to happen for the sake of a good that is worth it or to prevent some equal or greater evil. Permits means tolerate in this context. Permit conjures up a God who is separate from nature and who is an observer. But the idea that God makes and sustains all things is saying that if you fall into a well and cannot get out God is the reason you cannot get out. He has to take responsibility. There are many prisons around us. When you think about it you have a lot less freedom than you think. You are in a well right now.
Now to say that somebody is in the pits of incurable depression and there is nothing but dark and pain is permitted to face this is obscene. Holding a person down in the water is not permitting them to drown but drowning them. Many of us are drowned by things in our lives that are beyond our control. God makes that handcuff. He is active in the circumstances that cause and lock you in depression.
Also the experience is a thing and is created. The suffering is a power. To say it is not God is to tell the depressed person they do it to themselves or Satan is doing it. Neither of these show the remotest respect for the person.
Religion calls evil a lack of good when the good ought to be there. But it is plural. It's lacks. No two lacks are the same. The lacks in evil may be noticed but one can be wrong, Maybe they are neutral things and maybe they are even good. And there will be lacks one is not aware of as well. Maybe a lack you take for one kind of evil is another! It could be worse than what you think. Calling evil a lack allows religion to over-simplify. That allows it to generalise. It allows it to hide what evil really is to get it to fit its picture of a God who loves all.
The argument is that evil is a lack and it is that simple and it is not wrong for God to let the lack happen. But it is a case by case thing. John lacking medicine for his sick tummy is not in the same category as somebody in unimaginable depression for five decades. Even if evil is a lack and that solves God and evil, religion is evil for lying about it and being cold and dismissive. Again don't generalise for that erases the terrible cases and people only see the moderate cases.
If lacks happen and that is not God's fault then fine. But if a lack is too big that is sheer negligent. Religion will ask who you are to say if a lack is too much? They say that nobody knows how much suffering God should allow or where he should draw the line. Ask it if I rob a bank for $100 then does that mean it is as good or as bad as taking a trillion $. While there is a bit of a blurry edge there is still an edge and we know suffering that should not happen when we see it. Ask them if they can speak for God and tell somebody with lung cancer in the right lung that at least it is not in the left and there are people worse off?
Religion says, "Evil being a defect means the gold is good it is just your greed for it that is bad and this does not effect how good the gold is." This tries to make you think only of how we make the lack not God but the fact remains a kitten lacking health is not the same thing. God is causing its defective health. It's a cruel trick to blame people not God.
We have seen that religion's account of evil does not agree with itself and does not take account of how talk of evil triggers human nature's violent side. It is not consistent with something that really wants to do something about evil. It is not consistent with something that has the right degree of empathy.
If evil is not there then, what is there is the good that is not good enough and which is hated for not being good enough. You cannot see evil without seeing the good in it. You see evil in reference to the good. For example, the evil genius. You see the genius ability as good and how it is using itself as bad. The paradox here is when you demonise this good that is not good enough as evil and hate it you are hating good and well on the way to letting evil into your heart yourself. It is the evil of persons who use morality as an excuse to hurt others. Or the persons who are moral for they think morality is painful and hurts people and who revel in that. If you are a role model or preacher and want people to be moral for it will be hard for them you are weaponising morality. You may not even know you are using morality like that. The blind spot we have with morality is so bad that we will play innocent even in the obvious proof that we are far from innocent.
Even when we hate evil, we hate it in such a way that we deny we have done it when we have. Hating evil is seen as a virtue but the evidence does not support it as much of a virtue. We hate evil but when we see it in ourselves we go into denial and start to hate those who tell us we are guilty. We use our hate of evil to serve evil.
You know you can have a hatred for a person that just won't go away. Morever, there is that and there is the question of what puts hatred for evil in you? Is it just nature? Or God. Both? Why does it matter? Nature if it is just an undesigned pattern rules out any need for God if it puts the hate in you. If it is both God and nature then why would a moral God let a thing have some say in how we see evil? Why does he want such a dubious source to direct us? How do we know which part of our perception of evil is from him or not?
We cannot avoid saying if there is a God that he causes hate. Nature does program certain responses into us some of which are misleading. It is like when it makes our bodies crave junk food as if it is real food. We cannot really diagnose evil to deal with it for we cannot tell what nature is putting in us or a God. Thus we cannot generalise that suffering exists to do God's will. We cannot even say it for how can it exist to assist God's plan when we are not able to see clearly enough to fight evil properly and conversely do good properly.
Religion fails to show that God and good are necessarily connected or that God and morality amount to the same thing. People want to hold that an ontological realm of morality that is independent of human experience and opinion exists - ie moral principles are real and not just opinions and rules. But all this is about is trying to avoid people fighting over what is right and wrong and saying perhaps, "I want to rob the bank to feed my children therefore it is just and fair and moral for me to do so." Morality should be independent of what anybody thinks or wants and that includes God. If morality is real then it is independent of anything and anyone's experience and opinion. That includes God.
Believers decide that God is right and then say morality is whatever God tells us for he knows but whoever talks about their God is talking about themselves. They evaluate him and give him godhood so it is about them. God is not your God unless you enthrone him so it's about you. They use these tricks to get started with "morality" and then work out that gives them the right to say that suffering that they will never experience and that belongs to others should be seen as fitting the love and morality of God.
The notion of a divine plan says too much about human religious nature and what it says is far from flattering or inspiring. It is too much of a generalisation and too much about quick "answers" than genuinely helping.
