If God is powerful and loving the humankind, then why does He permit evil as well as suffering in this world? Various answers had been offered by many Christian philosophers and many victims of suffering, but there was not a lucid answer that could settle this argument permanently. God uses malicious acts of this world to rise up His own people and remind them that there is an opportunity that they can posses their eternal life. Literature, especially biblical literature has exploited this biblical nature to its fullest in various types of forms, including the play J.B. by Archibald MacLeish. In the play J.B, Archibald MacLeish reanimates and modernizes elements taken from the story of Job to come up with his own response to the ultimate question which has been asked by countless generations, “Why do the righteous suffer?” Throughout the play, Archibald MacLeish delineates the sudden corruption of J.B and his family, his calmness despite the helpless pieces of advice from the Three Comforters, and his unusual ending in order for God to test if one’s will and faith are strong enough to rebuild oneself after an irrational decadence.
Chastisement or punishment can be performed in various forms that can produce in a variety of consequences. In J.B., the sudden punishment of God on J.B has caused a commotion in his family physically and mentally. Nevertheless, J.B’s faith does not die and he also continues to fulfill his responsibility as a “puppet” in a play created by God. After the death of his five children, J.B is placid and not abhorring God for his punishment. “God will not punish without cause, God is just.”, said J.B (109). J.B knows that there must be a reason for God to punish him, because God always acts impartially. Ev...
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...thing from nothing because He has faith in J.B and J.B has faith in God as well.
With a new ending, the play J.B. offers a lesson to its audiences which heavily emphasizes on the value of love and family. Love warms up many frozen hearts and family energizes many forlorn souls.
By embedding tragedies such as the corruption of J.B’s family, modernizing the true disposition of the Three Comforters, and renewing J.B’s ending along with his own aspect from the biblical story of Job, Archibald MacLeish has answered the question asked by the innocent, “Why do the righteous suffer?” After all, J.B becomes a stronger person than ever, because he overcomes his own obstacles and fear. The innocent has to suffer from the punishments from God in order to gain new experiences and to be more independent. Everyone has to suffer in order to be a better a person.
Second, the story line. Although Archibald MacLeish wrote the play based on the story of Job in The Bible, there are many differences in the story line. In The Bible, Job’s misfortune was spawned by Satan trying to show God that Job was not as holy as God had thought. God gave Satan the power to destroy everything Job had, including his health. Job’s children all died together when the roof of the house collapsed on them while they were all dining at the house of the oldest brother. His wife died also, and all of his possessions was taken from him. Furthermore, he contracted painful sores all over his body. As for J.B., his children died separately, one after the other. The oldest had died in the army. Two were involved in a car accident. One daughter was killed by an explosion that also took out J.B.’s millions. And the youngest was raped. However, J.B.’s wife, Sarah, was not killed, but instead she left him. In The Bible, Job is confronted by his three friends. His friends encourages him to turn against God and to curse him, but he refused to do so. On the other hand, J.B. was confronted with four friends, the first three encouraging him to turn against God but the fourth telling him to pray to God and to praise Him.
On July 8th 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in Enfield, Connecticut. Edwards states to his listeners that God does not lack in power, and that people have yet not fallen to destruction because his mercy. God is so forgiving that he gives his people an opportunity to repent and change their ways before it was too late. Edwards urges that the possibility of damnation is immanent. Also that it urgently requires the considerations of the sinner before time runs out. He does not only preach about the ways that make God so omnipotent, but the ways that he is more superior to us. In his sermon, Edwards uses strong, powerful, and influential words to clearly point out his message that we must amend our ways or else destruction invincible. Edwards appeals to the spectators though the various usages of rhetorical devices. This includes diction, imagery, language/tone and syntax. Through the use of these rhetoric devices, Edwards‘s purpose is to remind the speculators that life is given by God and so they must live according to him. This include...
The problem of evil is a difficult objection to contend with for theists. Indeed, major crises of faith can occur after observing or experiencing the wide variety and depths of suffering in the world. It also stands that these “evils” of suffering call into question the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The “greater good defense” tries to account for some of the issues presented, but still has flaws of its own.
After reviewing the work of David Hume, the idea of a God existing in a world filled with so much pain and suffering is not so hard to understand. Humes’ work highlights some interesting points which allowed me to reach the conclusion that suffering is perhaps a part of God’s divine plan for humans. Our morals and values allow us to operate and live our daily lives in conjunction with a set of standards that help us to better understand our world around us and essentially allows us to better prepare for the potential life after life. For each and every day we get closer to our impending deaths and possibly closer to meeting the grand orchestrator of our universe.
Throughout the works of famous pieces of literature such as Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and William Shakespeare’s King Lear, the common theme of justice is prevalent throughout the works. Often resulting in physical pain, the concept of justice throughout these two works of literature reinforces the brute and cruel perspective that Dante and King Lear experience firsthand. The subsequent death of King Lear after Cordelia demonstrates the ultimate guilt in which King Lear experienced due to his arrogant and ignorant perception of the amount of love that Cordelia feels towards her father. Dante’s journey through the afterlife conveys the illumination of his transformation from a sinner who lost his path, to a spiritually righteous man.
Despite its prevalence, suffering is always seen an intrusion, a personal attack on its victims. However, without its presence, there would never be anyway to differentiate between happiness and sadness, nor good and evil. It is encoded into the daily lives people lead, and cannot be avoided, much like the prophecies described in Antigone. Upon finding out that he’d murdered his father and married his mother,
Sacrifice within the social context can be transgressed into two aspects, one relating to the offender, and the other being the offended one, God. “If individuals entered a state incongruent with good relations with God, they had to undergo rites to restore them to a normative status” (Davies, 1985;155). Thus the sacrifice encompassed this social dimension. The part played by God in the social ...
In "Per Repitio Nos Studiare: The Struggles of Abraham and God," Ryan Priester also explores how one learns through repeated suffering. Instead of examining human apathy or submission in the face of pain, however, his examination of the binding of Isaac introduces us to the role of human rebellion and resistance. Both The Waste Land and the relationship between Abraham and God revolve around the human response to excess and extremity.
Alcorn, John. "Suffering In Hell." Pedagogy 13.1 (2013): 77-85. Academic Search Complete.Web. 11 June 2014.
These arguments made by Berish and Job boil down to the question the theodicy, “why do good people suffer? Where is God in all this? Where is justice” (Fox 173). Elie Wiesel provides an answer that parallels once again with the book of Job. Embodied in the character of Sam, who claims that suffering is, “all because of our sins” (Wiesel 134). Similarly Jobs friends give a similar answer to the theodicy question by saying, “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same” (Job 4:7). The answer to the theodicy question in t The Trial of God is that suffering occurs because of the sins committed by individuals.
The classic play Romeo and Juliet by the famous playwright William Shakespeare is one of the most beautiful love stories of all time and has captured and inspired readers everywhere. Regardless of the fact that it was written in the 1500’s, it is still being performed and extolled today. There is a multitude of reasons for such continuance of the play. First of all, its everlasting themes of love and hate enable people to deeply relate to the story. Secondly, its memorable characters deeply imprint on the minds of readers. And lastly, above all, is its magnificent language which many writers today regard in awe. These three elements make the acclaimed play, Romeo and Juliet, one of the most timeless stories of our lives.
Both Shakespeare’s King Lear and Dante’s Inferno explore the reasons for, and results of, human suffering. Each work postulates that human suffering comes as a result of choices that are made: A statement that is not only applicable to the characters in each of the works, but also to the readers. The Inferno and King Lear speak universal truths about the human condition: that suffering is inevitable and unavoidable. While both King Lear and the Inferno concentrate on admonitions and lamentations of human suffering, one of the key differences between the works is that Inferno conveys an aspect of hope that is not nearly as prevalent in King Lear.
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.
Ultimately`, William Shakespeare shows in many different ways throughout the play, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, that love is the more powerful force than hate. The readers see how the characters continuously forgive one another, even when the conditions are tough. The friendships between specific characters display a loving bond that cannot be broken with hate. Shakespeare demonstrates that Romeo and Juliet’s love can overpower the hate of many events in the play. He shows that their love can even overpower the death of one of their own family members. Romeo and Juliet’s love brings friendship between their feuding families. This story is a true example of how love can conquer all.
...world. Our ideas do not determine the actual nature of God. Regrettably, it is shatteringly obvious to me that the nature of God centered on sightless trust is no longer an appropriate custom to adhere to. Throughout my analysis, I had expected to discover some way of proof to keep the direction of trust in God drilled into me by my religion. Sadly, this was not the case; the ontological and teleological arguments never connected the perceived world with a supreme God. On one hand, the teleological argument developed misguided results from analogies of scientific statements and materialists offered solutions, which may be rationally legitimate. On the other hand, the ontological argument was unsuccessful since it was misleading due to terms that could not broaden into truth. Therefore, there is no adequate evidence or extensive justifications for the nature of God.