Ravi Zacharias gave a talk about suffering where he discussed the story of Job and God's purposes. He mentioned the trilemma of God being all-powerful, all-loving, and the existence of evil. Zacharias also stated that suffering allows us to realize what is evil and avoid sin in order to be saved by God. The document discusses why we experience pain and suffering, and how it can strengthen our faith and lead us to follow God.
Ravi Zacharias gave a talk about suffering where he discussed the story of Job and God's purposes. He mentioned the trilemma of God being all-powerful, all-loving, and the existence of evil. Zacharias also stated that suffering allows us to realize what is evil and avoid sin in order to be saved by God. The document discusses why we experience pain and suffering, and how it can strengthen our faith and lead us to follow God.
Ravi Zacharias gave a talk about suffering where he discussed the story of Job and God's purposes. He mentioned the trilemma of God being all-powerful, all-loving, and the existence of evil. Zacharias also stated that suffering allows us to realize what is evil and avoid sin in order to be saved by God. The document discusses why we experience pain and suffering, and how it can strengthen our faith and lead us to follow God.
Ravi Zacharias gave a talk about suffering where he discussed the story of Job and God's purposes. He mentioned the trilemma of God being all-powerful, all-loving, and the existence of evil. Zacharias also stated that suffering allows us to realize what is evil and avoid sin in order to be saved by God. The document discusses why we experience pain and suffering, and how it can strengthen our faith and lead us to follow God.
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Gabrielle Catalan
The Freedom from Pain and Suffering
Ravi Zacharias, an author and a Christian apologist, held a talk about
suffering. He explained the story of Job, as well as Gods purpose a creator, designer, revealer, comforter, mediator, savior, strengthener, and restorer. He mentioned about the trilemma which consists of three assertions that God is all-powerful; God is all-loving; and evil is a reality. Also, he explained why we need to feel pain and how God can save us from this suffering. There is quote made by Zacharias that says be good and be blessed, be bad and be cursed. What does this mean? In doing something good, we, in turn receive a blessing or a prize as a reward. However, if we go against the good deed, we get punished. This punishment serves as our suffering. But why do we suffer? If God is all-loving and the loving thing to do is ease the pain of someone you love, why does he still make us suffer? If God is allpowerful and he could do whatever he pleases, then he could just take away all the suffering in the world. Yet evil and suffering is a huge part of human experience. This is the trilemma, as Zacharias said. But as Zacharias also stated, why couldnt it be a quintilemma, where the other two would say that God is all-wise and that God lives an eternity. If God is all-wise, then he there would be a rational explanation on why suffering is not removed. And if we consider the fact that God lives an eternity, then time would be a factor on understanding suffering. For instance, if we suffer today, maybe tomorrow we realize that God allowed this to happen in order for us to be better ourselves. If our purpose is to follow Gods ways and we go against our purpose, then it is a sin. Sin is a violation of purpose. As a punishment for this violation, we experience suffering. And together with suffering, we feel pain. The pain we feel is not only physical but emotional, mental, and spiritual as well. In my own understanding, pain is inflicted upon us so that we learn that we did something wrong to have experienced this. It is a manifestation that we have gone against our purpose. Pain and suffering make us realize what evil does. And by this realization, we learn to avoid committing sins again, hence leaning to God. Through this, God saves us from suffering. Once we are saved, our soul and faith are strengthened and restored. It is better to feel pain than not feel it at all. Some people cannot feel pain physically, which is dangerous because one could bleed to death without even knowing it. And some people cannot feel pain emotionally, which is also dangerous because one could keep on killing people without feeling bad about it. Pain is important because freedom from pain is one of an indication of whether or not something is beneficial.