Why do humans suffer

StephaneLaliberte

While talking with my wife, it occurred to me that the JW’s idea of why humans suffer doesn’t make sense. The idea is that humans suffer so as to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they cannot rule themselves.

Now, the bible states that Satan is the ruler of this world. So just how letting time pass by supposed to answer the question about the humans’ ability to govern themselves when they DON’T GOVERN themselves? And worse: How is the fact that God threw Satan down to earth (with a great wrath) in 1914 supposed to help settle the question?

adamah

Not only that: why would God even need to put on the pretenses of testing or conducting trials, when God supposedly is prescient (knowing the future, needed in order to bestow his servants with the gift of prophecy)?

The standard response is God is doing it to show his creation (humans and angels) who's the better leader, but as you say, he's interfered with humanity and Satan's rule from the get-go! A fair judge would've declared a mistrial for cheating!

Besides, who is serving as jury on this trial? Oh, that's right: there isn't any, and righteous and just Jehovah gets to render his decision (but forget that lame trial analogy: apparently it's going to be settled on the battlefield of Armageddon anyway, so once again: what happened to the trial aspect, and why not just summon the forces NOW?).

The REAL explanation is the doctine of Universal Sovereignty wasn't even part of early Judaism when the Torah was written, and to this days Jews don't believe in it; it arose later in the intertestamental writings (circa 300BC, IIRC), but Xianity picked up the idea of Satan challenging the right of God to rule, and ran with it.

Adam

Billy the Ex-Bethelite

Watchtower taught me that humans suffer because a naked lady ate an apple that she got from a talking snake.

snare&racket

Exactly ecan6

also, once humans decided to rule themselves, the biblical god made them imperfect and inclined to do wrong and sin, also he made life difficult and childbirth treacherous.... Hardly a fair test of human rule, god bodged the experiment to make them fail... IF you decide to believe this ancient Jewish myth.

So why do humans suffer?

Do animals suffer? Animals attack each other, animals suffer the same illness and disease as humans.

Animals fight for territory and for dumb issues such as alpha male contol as seen in humans.

Life would not be diverse without genetic mutations, but genetic mutations also cause disease.

The planet is great for life, but a bit of knowledge explains alot. We cant live without water so unsurprisingly we live near water as do animals, that we eat. So we all congregate around water. Water regions often are formed at tectonic meeting points making them somewhat treacherous. This along with huge population growth in these regions, huge tall buildings and populations in less surface area AND 24 hr news = apparent mass human suffering when we have natural disasters, wars, conflicts, disease.

I dont have time to spend to cover all of this in detail, but you get the idea... knowledge is power and our Watchtower education was devoid of so much information amd therefore also self empowerment. But we live in a society that thankfully respects knowledge for its empowering nature, so go get the books out and enjoy finding your answers buddy xxx

Billy the Ex-Bethelite

"Animals attack each other, animals suffer the same illness and disease as humans."

Animals also suffer because the naked lady ate the apple from the talking snake.

And billions of animals were destroyed in the flood because angels were having sex with women and people were violent.

This stuff used to make sense... was I smoking something back then?

snare&racket

Maybe that white powder we put into the air vents at the start of the meetings had something to do with it?

Probably not, the meetings were simply moreish because they were just so damn interesting...,,

abiather

According to Jesus, humans suffer because of the scientific principle of ENTROPY. Everything was good in the beginning, then it began to decline in quality. See what he says categorically:

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.” (Mathew 13:33) And it was “new” for some time, then it became “old.” (Mathew 13:52)

Again its pure science, nature’ law, that there will again be new creation, growth, decay and regeneration.

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time (Ecclesiastes 1:9, 10)

pacloc

This was the topic that eventually led me out of the Watchtower. They have the worst reasoning on the purpose of suffering.

Why do humans suffer

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