The Problem of Pain: No this isn’t another article about whether or not fish feel pain…
For a long time, I’ve thought the so-called Problem of Pain was the most persuasive argument against the existence of God. It’s certainly not the most rigorously logical argument, but it’s the one that strikes most deeply at whether or not I feel that God exists. In case you’re not familiar with the problem, it basically states that, given the amount of needless pain and suffering in the world, it’s highly unlikely that God exists, or at the very least, that an all-powerful, all-good, etc god exists. If He did exist, He would not allow these types of things to happen. I have found that I’m not alone in the assessment. I have heard from many that they could not believe in God solely because of all the evil and pain they’ve witnessed and experienced.
There are philosophical arguments, some of them very good ones, that attempt to explain why pain is necessary even if God does exist, but to some extent all these arguments feel “cold.” When we feel pain, we don’t want to hear an abstract argument. We want answers. We want to be comforted. We want to know that there is a reason, a point to all this. The problem of pain is such a difficult dilemma that, did the available evidence not lead me personally to the inescapable conclusion that God does in fact exist, I would probably have never become a Christian on the basis of the problem of pain alone. As it is, I have been forced, both by argument and personal experience, to accept that God exists and that the problem of pain is just something I am not allowed to understand in this life.
We all experience pain in this life. Some much more than others. I have not personally been subject to an abundance of tragedy. I have been very blessed. When most people talk about the problem of pain, they speak of overwhelming examples such as the Holocaust or severely abused children or terrible natural disasters. But when I think about the problem of pain, I see my uncle. My mother and her brother were raised in exceedingly tough conditions. I will not go into details, but it was not a good life. From what I knew of my uncle, he was a good man. He became a Baptist preacher. He was always jovial and loud and kind. He was a big man. That’s one reason why I was so struck when he developed liver cancer. For two long years, the cancer tore at him until he was only a shell of a man. My grandmother and mother were broken right along side him, and neither has fully recovered. This happened many years ago, and I still recall much of it. Even then, as a child, I questioned God angrily. How could He let this happen to someone like my uncle? But He did let it happen. And one day, my uncle died, like so many others.
Before he died, he wanted to go fishing one last time. He had his youngest son take him down to the lake, and he fished for awhile during the late evening. Somehow, perhaps miraculously, my uncle hooked and landed a four pound largemouth on a plastic worm. We have a photograph of him holding the fish with this enormous grin stretched across his face, his son standing beside him. For two years my uncle was in unspeakable pain, and I rarely saw that jovial side I had known all my life. But in that photograph, there he was again.
I don’t have all the answers. Anyone who tells you they do is lying. I don’t know why the world has so much pain. I don’t know why God allows terrible, nightmarish things to happen to innocent children. But I can tell you that I believe there is a God, and I believe he was there with my uncle that day at the edge of the lake. I thank Him for giving me so many good times on the water with my family and friends. I have seen Him in their faces, in the morning sky, in the storm clouds, in the trees as the wind whispers through them, in the beautiful colors on a trout’s side. He has blessed me so much through fishing and the places fishing has led me. All fishermen can be thankful that, despite all the pain we feel and witness in this life, fishing can do a bit to ease the pain for a time. For that reason alone, we can be confident that this sport we love holds at least some intrinsic value.
There are moments when God has granted me peace and a certainty that there is a reason to it all. Even if I can’t see the reason, I can see Him. For whatever reason, a hefty number of these moments have occurred in the outdoors.
My uncle never lost his faith. In fact, his faith was so strong that it carried many of us through his illness.
Take care,
Nathan