An Age-Old Answer For An Age-Old Question

A Question For The Pope

Glyzelle Palomar (12-year-old girl): Many children are abandoned by their parents. There are also many who became victims and many terrible things happened to them like drugs or prostitution. Why does God allow these things to happen to us? The children are not guilty of anything. And why are there only very few people helping us? [This is a version of ‘the question/problem of suffering/evil’, that has never been answered adequately by God-believers, including the current most famous ‘spokesman for God’ below.]

Pope Francis (who hugged her): She is the only one who has put a question for which there is no answer and she wasn’t even able to express it in words but in tears. Why do children suffer so much? When the heart is able to ask itself and cry, then we can understand… It is only when we learn to cry with those who are suffering that we can begin to understand them and to love them… [There are] certain realities in life, we only see through eyes that are cleansed with our tears.

Related Article:
Weeping Philippine Girl Challenges Pope On Prostitution
http://news.yahoo.com/weeping-philippine-girl-challenges-pope-prostitution-064923640.html

An Answer For Glyzelle

A suffering child wonders
why many innocent children like her suffer so,
if there is supposedly an all-loving fatherly creator.

Don’t you tell her it is because
he needs to train her to be stronger,
for why did he not make her the strongest, or like the others straightaway?

Don’t tell her suffering and evil
have to exist to contrast (or bring out) the ‘greater good’,
for why must she be a reluctant sacrificial offering?

Don’t tell her it is because
evil must exist for there to be free will (‘forced’ upon all),
for why can’t the world be created totally good (or perfect)?

Don’t tell her it is because
she needs to be challenged to earn happiness,
for why are others challenged less?

Don’t tell her
that mighty suffering and evil are just the absence of good,
while not also the absence of God almighty.

Is there no answer to why there is suffering despite his presence then,
or is there an answer too profound and mysterious,
or is there a simple and obvious answer already?

We have to be as ‘godly’ to one another as we can,
because there is no perfect creator looking after us,
or none would suffer the least from birth in the first place.

We are not abandoned children allowed to suffer
by a truly absent (non-existent) cosmic father.
But we are one another’s family.

With all the years of tears,
may they cleanse our eyes fully, to see crystal clearly,
that there is no answer coming from someone who is not there.

Hugging and crying with one another is not enough.
Assuming all is part of a perfect plan we can’t understand is not enough.
Only helping (sharing compassion) and enlightening (sharing wisdom) one another is enough.

Related Article:
Are Buddhas Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent & Omniscient?
http://thedailyenlightenment.com/2013/11/are-buddhas-omnipotent-omnibenevolent-omniscient

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