Rejecting God by Renouncing the World

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Ivan Karamazov rejected God by rejecting the world, which is corrupted by suffering and cruelty. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s book-chapter “Rebellion,” Karamazov showed complexity and depth in their understanding and analyzing of human suffering. The question that led him to reject God focused on God allowing suffering to exist in the world, especially that of children who have not sinned. Karamazov rejected a world founded by suffering and cruelty, therefore rejecting God in light of catastrophic suffering, especially concerning innocent children. Karamazov is deeply troubled by the injustice displayed alongside the existence of a benevolent God, and questions how a Just God can permit such tragic cruelties. Even when he tried to reason that God sacrificed our world for an unconceivable harmonious place, to him there is nothing divine about God’s sacrifice. He does not see the purpose in a child’s suffering so that all of humanity can enter the kingdom of heaven after death. This argument led to him asking his brother Alyosha if he would consent to the suffering of just one child in order to bring universal peace, but Alyosha denied. Karamazov would not consent either, and he stated that he would gladly return his ticket to the entrance of heaven because he cannot understand the existence of God as a perfect being if He allows for children to suffer. Karamazov renounces harmony at the cost of all the suffering that takes place in the world because he sees “Chris-like love for people as a miracle impossible on earth” (1). He claims that harmony comes at a high price and demands justness here on earth, not in the after life. Therefore, his rejection of God is the rejection of a place where oppressors and victims live in “harmony” among ...

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...sensible validation in catastrophic suffering, and we must not justify it as part of some divine purpose or for the greater good of humanity in the afterlife; humanity needs justice on earth. Such need to justify cruelty and agony eliminates the incentive for victims and their families to overcome sorrow, grief, and misery, especially if the explanation lies in the after-life. An appropriate response must present solutions to prevent suffering, and an initiative to spread human compassion, thereby overcome suffering. One response is to keep protesting against injustices on human beings, by alleviating poverty, violence, torture, child abuse, and any other sort of injustice. If we are to hold the argument that God suffers with those who suffer, it would be much more justifying to end the suffering rather than to vindicate it, and accept that suffering is God’s will.

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