The Point of This Earthly Existance

 Why are we here? This is a question that must be answered before we can ask about the problem of evil or the problem of suffering. Earth is clearly a place where, as Ecclesiastes long ago noticed, the race is not always to the swift. Justice waits until we no longer seek it. Good people suffer; bad people thrive. 

And the God whom we call omniscient and all powerful and all loving seems indifferent. 

But if we knew why we were here we would revisit all of our thoughts of God's indifference. 

We are here, my observation tells me, for two reasons, which are really one: to find God and to practice love. 

Everything else is irrelevant. All our complaints about evil and suffering reveal only that we have not managed to see the unimportance--from God's point of view--of suffering. 

I don't want to belittle anyone's suffering. I'm as annoyed as anyone that good people I know can't catch a break, pray over and over for help, like Peter sinking in the waves and reaching out a hand and no one is there to set them securely on the surface of the water. I've known good people who've lost their faith because of their suffering. 

Nonetheless, from God's perspective, this has to be. If the all loving God will make all things just, it won't be in this life. We've always known this. We all die. Jesus died. Few of us have suffered as Jesus suffered. The story in which the Christian faith is founded is the story of perfect acceptance of God despite suffering, not through it. Keeping your eyes on the finish line despite the roar of the crowd, the mess on the track, the people crossing the lines into your line, the tomatoes hurled at you from all sides.