This is a, somewhat brief, response to the video made by Alex O’Connor, called “Christianity’s Biggest Problem” where he asks the questions: Why does a truly powerful God permit such an overwhelming amount of animal suffering? This refers to suffering that specifically excludes human interference, but is a consequence of the natural state of the animal system. How can an all-loving God permit this?
Point 1 (Theological Perspective): Imperfect World
I would like to begin by stating that the Bible never claims that the world is perfect. In fact, it claims quite the opposite (John 16:33, 1 John 5:19), that the world is imperfect and full of suffering and trouble. The Bible does, however, make the assertion that God is good and loving, multiple times (Psalm 25:8-9, Joel 2:13).
The obvious question to ask here, is how can an all-loving, omnipotent God permit an imperfect, suffering-filled world to come from him (I know the original statement refers to the suffering of animals, but I’ll get there)? For this, we need to go back to the beginning of the Bible, Genesis.
Genesis 3:11-19, NLT, reads
“Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.” Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, grovelling in the dust as long as you live. And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. ‘ By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
In short, the reason we were expelled from paradise was our sin, in disobeying God, and we (Adam and Eve) are rightly punished for our offences. God did not ‘permit’ our suffering and pain per-se, but instead allowed us to make a choice between subservience and paradise, or insubordination and suffering. This is simply the world that we chose by serving our own selfish desires, and we, and the animals of this world, are simply suffering the consequences of our own actions.
A question may be raised here that, “Why are the animals suffering for the actions of the humans?”.
Responsibility and dominion.
Genesis 1:28, NLT reads:
‘Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”’
We were, and are, responsible for the lives of the animals that live on this planet, and by our actions, they have been punished for our iniquity.
If this still doesn’t make sense, then this analogy may help to clear things up.
Let there be a supreme being A, that rules over Kings. Let one of these kings be B, and let this king rule over a people, G. A has given B authority to rule over G, and therefore, the decisions that B makes are very important, as “with great power comes great responsibility” and great consequences can arise from the misuse of this power. If B is corrupted, then naturally G will suffer from the poor decisions of B, and you may clearly see that A represents God in this analogy, B represents humans, and G represents all the other animals of the land. The animals have been transitively punished through us, but some may argue that in the serpent’s biblical punishing, the other animals were punished by relation.
Point 2 (Logical Perspective): The Value of Pain
My second point proposes that pain has value, and even though it is generally undesirable, it is necessary.
System 1:
You [Alex] say[s] that the problem is the inherent design of the ecosystem.
Let’s imagine, like he said, that ecosystems cannot be balanced without predation and therefore predation is the only viable system by which the worldwide natural ecosystem can exist and be stable. By your point, should we remove the pain factor for wild animals, such that they don’t feel pain, they would have died out by now. They would never know when they are in danger of death and, therefore, would never be able to prevent it.
Also, if we did that, how would that even be possible? Would this method be selective in that only wild animals cannot feel pain and we do? If that’s the case, isn’t that discriminative to humans? If we removed the human pain factor, then you can guess my logical conclusion.
System 2:
If we instead suppose that there is in fact a better system? Most people would agree that you’d need to propose that there is one and what it look like (aside from Eden, of course).The Bible has, or had, a solution, Genesis 1:29 reads:
‘Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food…”
It seems that God’s final intention was that those in Eden were never supposed to eat animals, and they were never supposed to eat themselves.
Pain is a mechanism that our body uses to tell us that something is wrong, a messaging system, if you will, and further, the degree to which we experience the pain can tell us the severity of an issue.
In fact, it is because of pain that we can truly value pleasure as we have a more definitive benchmark. Just an absence of pleasure (not pain, simply nothing) would most likely not be a good enough motivator for most to change things that need it (the way you sit, what you eat etc.).
I’d like to finish off by saying that the Christian claim is not that this world is perfect. It is that it is full of suffering. This was not the way things were supposed to be, but it is God’s will which is the best manner by which we can reach the best world. We believe that from struggle and strife, God can bring strength and joy.
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