What is the Reason for Suffering?

Much human suffering comes about because of things that unwise, inexperienced, or even wicked people do.  What, though, of tragic events that cannot be directly blamed on people? For example, why are there accidents and natural disasters?  Why are some children born with congenital defects?  Allan Kardec viewed such things as punishments.  He wrote:  "If we are being punished then wrong must have been committed.  if that wrong is not of the pesent life then it must come from a past existence."  Scientist are taught to  pray:  "Lord, you are all justice.  The illness You saw fit to send me must be deserved . . .I accept it as an expiation for my past and as a test of my faith and submission to Your blessed will."-The Gospel According to Spiritism.

Did Jesus teach such a thing?  No, Jesus well knew the Bible statement:  "Time and unforseen occurrence befall them all."  (They are not covering discipline here. When we are bad in some way, we are punished,but not in the way some people think, it is up to God and the person's  deed that depends on it, if you do wrong and you know it is wrong, you are disciplined, especially if you keep doin it.  Do you not discipine your children? We  are God's children and we have to be discipline in the way Jehovah see fit to do so, for our own good)  (Ecclesiastes 9:11)

Consider this even in Jesus' life:  "As [Jesus] was passing along he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him:  'Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents, so that he was born blind?  The reply Jess gave was most enlightening:  Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but it was in order tht the works of God might be made manifest  in his case. After he said these thngs, he spit on the ground and made a clay with the saliva, and put his clay upon the man's eyes and said to him: "Go wash in the pool of Siloam.' . . . And so he went off and washed, and came back seeing." -John 9:1-3, 6, 7.

Next time: Conclusion of What is the Reason for Suffering?

The Watchtower, 2001