There are many great mysteries of faith for us. There is only one mystery that is used to disprove the existance of God. This mystery is suffering. The only argument against God's existance is that human beings have pain. For modern philosphers this is a blaring argument against the existance of a benevolant God. This argument is dependent upon the how the terms happiness, good and power. The argument goes as follows: If there is an all-powerful and all-good God, then He would want his creatures to be happy. And if He is all-powerful, He can do whatever He wants. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, power, both or does not exist.
To most all Christians the problems with this arguments are blairing. But to most everyone else who lacks trainning in theology and philosphy they are must more subtle because this argument is logically true. Logically true cannot be confused for being true. This argument has a few hidden assumptions, which create problems for the truth of this argument. One of the major assumptions is that the terms good, power and happy are the equal for God and man. For man these terms depend largely on feelings and states of life. Happiness more often then not depends on nothing bad happening to a person at a given time. Human perception of happiness is very relativistic, but real happiness is not a feeling. Happiness is a state of being. The argument against God's goodness based on happiness being a feeling. Feelings changing from happiness to misery seemingly shows that God is not able to make His creatures happy or does not want them to be happy. This is only a superficial glance at what happiness is really. Happiness is not a feeling that changes but a state of being in which we exist.
God could simply make us exist in a state of happiness by a sheer act of power, but this would negate our freedom and eleminate our ablity to love Him. The true meaning of life is to know, love and serve God after all. This is what we created for. God could by a miracle remeedy all sin, in fact did this, but by an act of power the meaning of love is lost. Rather God chose to empty Himself and become like us in all things but sin to show us what the true meaning of love. A love that does all things in the law and becomes humble to God's will. A love that dies to self in praying that the cup pass from them but your will Lord be done not ours. God answers suffering by submitting to all humiliations, hunger, thirst and the death of a criminal so we may live. In Christ we find the answers to why we suffer. The Law is only a burden when we sin and take ourselves out of comformity with the mind of the One who wrote the Law. The Law itself is a great gift to show us the love of God and how God intended us to live. Happiness comes when we coninutally live in total unity with the Law; heart, mind and soul. Each of us must choose to be humble enough to conform to the Law and through the Law find a Joy that is unspeakable. In the Spirit of Joy we find that humanity are much more then monkeys but we are the children of God. When it comes to suffering we must remember always that the Cross is the rule not the exception, because Christ is the rule not the exception.
I hope these ramblings make some sense. I just have one more not about God's power. God is all powerful, meaning He can do all things. All things that are not nonsense and contradictions. As CS Lewis puts it, "Nonsense does not cease to be nonsense by putting 'God can' infront of it." This was in answer to the question, "Can God make a rock so big that He cannot lift it." This statement says nothing at all about God, but is used to trap Christians in a contradiction. It has no meaning whatsoever.
