If God Stopped Injustice We Would Not Have Free Will
67Why Doesn't God Stop Injustice?
The question posed had mutliple parts. The first part was, "If God is powerful enough to stop injustices then why doesn't He?"
I'm an atheist but I understand that free will requires the ability to do both good and bad. If God were to stop anyone of us from doing evil then He not only prevents the expression of free will on the part of the evil doer but also prevents the chance for the rest of us to express our free will.
An Example of the Free Will Argument
Let's imagine a particularly horrible crime where an adult intends to rape a child. We all want this prevented.
Let's consider the crime. An adult, probably a man, wishes to rape, abuse and then murder a child he is already in possession of. If God were to precent the evil from happening then God has not only prevented the expression of this man's free will but He has also prevented the evil man from chaning his mind at the last second. God has also prevented the man from learning to not be evil.
For the rest of us, had God prevented the crime He would also be preventing us from expressing our free will in our response to the evil. A community drawn together is search for the child. People from different idealogies brought together to find the perpetrator. And finally the lessons learned about human nature during the discussions on what constitutes a just punishment.
If God is Powerful Enough to Stop Injustice and Doesn't then Does He Lack the Kindness Necessary to Do So?
To prevent injustice is to prevent man from fully understanding human nature and it completely prevents us from understanding justice. Some may argue that God could allow us to experience small injustices so that we may learn justice with a small price tag. I disagree.
Another Example: Hitler and the Holocaust
Hitler killed millions of Jews in a particularly heinous and cruel fashion. If you could travel back in time would you?
My answer to this is NO. Not because I want to see millions tortured and executed. Not because I am callous or a bigot. But rather because I believe Hitler was an expression of the times. In other words, if it hadn't been Hitler it would have been someone else later on and maybe Hitler was the least bad.
If Hitler had been less manic... If Hitler had listened to men such as Rommel... If Hitler had waited another year to attack Russia... The world would be a much different place than it is today. Millions of Jews had to die for mankind to discover and agree on the concept of a crime against humanity. Today we declare much lesser offenses than Hitler's to be crimes against humanity and we hunt the perpetrators down.
Additionally, Europe and the US became much stronger friends. The global economy that we've enjoyed for the last 50 years is a direct result (good or bad) of WWII. Not only have we learned how to kill each other better because of WWII but we also apply those technologies to medicine and energy production.
Maybe God's kindness is in letting us learn those lessons with Hitler instead of someone more devious, more cruel, and more disciplined.
We Cannot Understand Justice in the Absense of Injustice
We cannot understand hot without cold, dark without light, or justice without injustice.
To deprive man of an understanding of justice would be a crime. So we must experience injustice in little ways and major ways so that we may understand justice in all its forms.
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This is very interesting, and I think could be correct. I've thought about this subject a little, but not very much and I certainly didn't go this in-depth into it. I think it's wonderful how you've described this, and it is a great way to think about things. Thank you so much for this moment of inspiration.
Agreed to the fact that God gives an opportunity for the sinner to repent by allowinh injustice to happen. But if the sinner does not understand at all that what he is doing is wrong then where comes the free will. A sinner might turn away from the crime at the last moment when he has a gulty conscience. For example. Hitler always felt that what he is doing is right so he never had a guilty conscience. In such a scene why does God allow the sinner to go on with his crimes. Why should innocent people suffer due to this. Same is the case of muslim radicalists who feel that terrorism is supported by allah.
@Benson
"But if the sinner does not understand at all that what he is doing is wrong then where comes the free will."
Here's my 2 cents...
Free will isn't about right or wrong but rather the ability to choose. And free will is all or nothing.
Also, consider that regardless of a guilty conscience the rest of us chose to see Hitler's actions as grotesque, horrible, and intolerable. We learned a lesson Hitler missed. We learned a lesson about the evil people are capable of and the vigilance required to prevent it's kind in the future. And we have the free will necessary to forget these lessons.
Let's also keep in mind that Hitler gets the blame but Hitler did nothing alone. There were average German citizens turning in their follow neighbors. There were German police and military shipping people to forced labor camps. There were German guards who shot, starved, and gassed the people in the camps. And much of the rest of the world sat back and let it happen because it was happening to Jews not good white Christian folk. They chose to be bigots. (And I see the same types of men today arguing that designating American Citizens as Enemy Combatants without charge or trial is necessary. At least its necessary so long as those arrested are brown with funny Muslim names and not a white boy named Kevin Walker...) Every one of those people made a choice of their own free will. We assign too much blame to Hitler and ignore the larger, uglier, nastier, more important lessons about human nature and the evil most are really capable of given the proper circumstances and motivations.
There are situations where all available options to choose from are deplorable but that doesn't mean we didn't get a choice. The people of Nazi Germany had choices and many chose to sacrifice someone else instead of themselves and their families. It's understandable but that doesn't negate the choice, its consequences, or the morality of the choice.
Teresa McGurk 3 years ago
This is intriguing. I've often wondered whether people naturally inclined toward evil are exerting more goodness when they fail to perform a cruel action than naturally good people are.