Healing the lepers and the blind and maimed are incredible miracles, but pale in comparison to the miracle that Christ performs in the hearts of those who come to Him, as much as the temporary physical deliverance from maladies pales in comparison to the eternal salvation the Savior offers from death and sin. All experiences in this life have meaning, even if it is beyond our grasp at this particular point in time to understand in each individual circumstance. That’s my opinion at least.

I do like the thought of Alma’s lament being about the cumulative evil rather than just his personal suffering. Good stuff. I don’t think it necessarily distracts from my overall point, though it might nuance it a bit.

I don’t disagree. The language of scripture (especially OT language) often places God as the one behind events and forces, though other verses seem to demonstrate that God has to contain or even defeat external forces. And I’m sure that’s how the ancients understood it, even without the fancy metaphysics of later generations. They ascribed both good and evil, peace and destruction to the gods:

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil [calamity; woe]: I the LORD do all these” (Isa. 45:7).

Granted, the above is specifically talking about God’s plans for Israel and Babylon.

Even if “fiery serpents” were in fact sent (assuming this is even historical), that doesn’t make it the rule. It’s worth noting that instances like this are highlighted in the scriptures, probably because they are the *exception*. Even if God does in some cases intervene and bring about a form of punishment via sickness, disaster, etc., I think it would be misguided to generalize these relatively few examples in order to explain *all* occurrences of suffering.

The Mosiah 3 example reminds me of the point about “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Heb. 12:6). The context in Hebrews is discussing persecution faced by Christian disciples and moves from an athletic analogy to a parent-child one. Christians should interpret the persecution they face as chastening, as a way of strengthening their faith and commitment. But I think we’d be hard-pressed to argue that God *causes* the persecution or manipulates people into persecuting Christians. For me, it’s an understanding of mine that to take on the Christian life is to enter into one that is against “the world”, which will at some point bring persecution. To view this as a “refiner’s fire” is I think different from assuming that God made all these people persecute me.

And of course there is a King that will take responsibility for any evil and any “an evil,” has already done so in fact.

I actually go back and forth on this one myself, and I’m more than happy to make space for people who view this in a different light.

There is great evil going on all the time. Indeed, evil goes on in our own neighborhoods. But alas, we often teach the gospel as if it were a first world solution to first world problems, spiritually speaking, and our discourse on suffering and evil often follows suit.

I enjoyed this talk, and the examples of suffering Walker lists are on the light end, but also necessary in a talk on suffering. So I think he did a great job.

This is a great talk. I have no nit-picks. :)

I have been wrestling with the language of suffering in Mormon culture for many years now. The things I hear being taught often strike me as well intended, culturally acquired, and often just dangerous. “All things happen for a reason.” “God will never give you more suffering than you can handle.” “You must be really strong to be able to have such trials.” “God is teaching you a lesson.” “You must forgive all no matter what they do.” And on and on it goes.

Like so much of life, in some contexts some of this is right, and in many contexts it is wrong. We do not do context very well, but often teach religion as absolute and eternal truth, meaning context free at the moment of whatever I believe.

I taught a SS lesson where the question of forgiveness and evil came up. I was surprised to hear how absolute many comments were, that while we could hate the sin we had to love the sinner, and ultimately let God judge and forgive the sinner. This was the conclusion. But mind you the context of the discussion was forgiveness in the context of evil, and the sins they were talking about were not evil, just your run of the mill horribly selfish sort of things.

I reminded the class that evil was its own category and that they had yet to discuss it.

I do not ascribe evil to nature. It is not evil when an earthquake causes a damn to break and the waters kill thousands of people. Nature is amoral, not immoral. Nature does cause suffering, but this is the suffering of amorality, not the evil of immorality. You and I might disagree on this point. It means also, btw, that nature is not inherently sacred either, for that is a moral category ascribed to an amoral thing. Nature can become sacred, but that implies moral direction upon it. Perhaps nature can become evil if influenced by external moral factors (let’s say that the funding that was supposed to secure the damn was instead used to fill peoples pockets and it was this lack of infrastructure upkeep that caused the damn to break–now evil is introduced, but that is again not an act of nature, but of moral will.)

I gave the example of Auschwitz and asked the question, if you were a prisoner and walked out of a cell to see your child’s teeth being sorted on a table, would you love the sinner and forgive him? This took people aback, to be sure, but I was introducing them to the world of evil, which they were playing at without ever discussing. (We do this a lot.)

Even the most orthodox said they would not. Then I asked another question. Let’s say you are not the prisoner. Let’s say you are the priest, and you get 15 minutes to console the prisoner of Auschwitz. What would you say? Would you preach divine justice, mercy, and ask them to forgive their German guard? Would you tell them God has given them their suffering for a reason? Or that they are learning great lessons for the eternities? What moral platitude would work in Auschwitz?

Suddenly, our entire theology of suffering seemed inadequate.

This was my way of scolding our Mormon cultural beliefs that seem to address suffering but not evil, nor the suffering caused by evil. I told them that I had no idea what I would tell the prisoner of Auschwitz, but that my only moral obligation was not to tell the prisoner she must forgive the German guard, but that my moral duty was in fact to shoot the German guard, to free the prisoners, and to burn the prison to the ground, making sure all those who built it were dead. For this kind of evil, this must be our collective moral response. If it is not, any theology of forgiveness will remain very arbitrary.

I still get comments to this day about that lesson.