The problem of pain

[FinalEnigma]

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the problem of pain; There is indisputably evil in the world. If God is all powerful and benevolent then why is the evil there? This is of course a simple phrasing of it, but I don't feel the need to do into great detail as we are most likely all familiar with it. My question here is the following:

How does Judaism answer the problem of pain?

PS. If you are a christian, answering would be meaningless.

[cnorman18]

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the problem of pain; There is indisputably evil in the world. If God is all powerful and benevolent then why is the evil there? This is of course a simple phrasing of it, but I don't feel the need to do into great detail as we are most likely all familiar with it. My question here is the following:

How does Judaism answer the problem of pain?

PS. If you are a christian, answering would be meaningless.

Well, I'll take a run at it, J, but you're not gonna like it.

The short answer is that Jews don't claim to know that God is either omnipotent or benevolent.

For "omnipotent," the tradition is explicit; we deny that. God either cannot or does not control the thoughts or actions of individual humans. We are responsible for our own decisions and acts, not God. If I hit you on the head with a hammer, who do you blame? Me or God?

It's futile to argue that I ought not have been made capable of hitting you; if I can't hit you on the head with that hammer, I can't hit a nail with it either, and no houses will be built. Humans either have the freedom to act both wisely or unwisely, to do both good and evil, or they are robots and not humans at all.

(Parenthetically, I have no patience for those who argue that we are robots. Since we are all obliged to behave as if we have free will whether we "really do" or not, the question is by any meaningful definition absolutely moot and without practical importance. Peace to those who hold that position, but don't waste my time.)

As for "benevolent," there's no good news there either. After the events of the last century, it's hard to find a Jew who will tell you that God loves us without qualification or reservation. That matter is very much open to debate.

Want something from the Book? Okay:

Isaiah 45:7: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

I have said this before; we believe that God is answerable to a moral code higher than He, and that He is perfectly capable of violating it - and has. That's one Jewish view of the apparently evil commands from God that the Hebrews massacre innocents by the villageful; those commands were wrong, and when Moses refused to carry them out as ordered, he showed himself to be morally superior to God.

In the most prevalent Jewish view, evil or pain that is inflicted by human hands is the fault of those humans who inflicted it.

Evil or pain that is apparently inflicted by God - well, we have no problem with blaming God for that and questioning Him directly about it.

I had a roommate in college who was once asked by some fundamentalist proselytizer or other, "What will you say to God when you stand before His Throne?"

He turned to him angrily and said, "I'll hold up a cancerous bone and say, 'How do You justify this?'"

That struck me at the time as an honest, honorable, humane and righteous answer. I now know that it was also a profoundly Jewish one.

There is a certain tension and paradox in the relationship between God and the Jewish people, and that has always been the case. He is our Master and King; but He is also our Partner in the Covenant, our equal in a sense; and sometimes He is our Adversary.

Hey, He tried to kill Moses. It's in Exodus 4:24ff.

Judaism has many things to offer, but simplified judgments and easy answers are not among them. As I have said often, it's a religion for grownups; people who want to stand on their own feet and walk uprightly. It's not for those who want to remain infants and be supernaturally guided at every step and told what to do at every turn.

[Nameless]

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the problem of pain;

Pain isn't necessarily a 'problem' unless you imagine/conceive it to be so.
'Pain', like 'joy', simply is an integral part of the fullness, the richness, the context, of 'life' (not to mention evolutionarily necessary). How can 'joy' be, without 'pain'. Contrast! Context!
(Using 'personal comfort levels' as arbitor of 'good/evil/bad' seems rather superficial to me.)

And I obviously do not (cannot) speak for 'Judaism'.

[Nilloc James]

everything was comforting nothing would be, everything would be the same.

The same goes with good, if everyone was good no one would be, theyd all be the average. Thus you need a dictator to have a pope to be simple.

The same goes with pain, you need pain so there can be cmfort or happyness.

[cnorman18]

Well, there's two in a row saying that pain is necessary for there to be pleasure, and that it's just a part of life, and not a problem unless you decide it is, and all that complacent philosophical... stuff.

Pain isn't a theory or a concept or an intellectual puzzle. Pain is PAIN. Confront it honestly, and then see if you can theorize about it. You may find it a bit harder to dismiss so facilely.

Allow me to demonstrate with a few examples:

In the Middle Ages, one of the most common forms of capital punishment was "breaking on the wheel." this consisted of having almost literally every bone in one's naked body broken with an iron bar or an iron-bound wheel, and then having one's smashed limbs twined through the spokes. The wheel was then mounted atop a high pole, where one expired after several days of unimaginable agony. This was a popular public entertainment.

During the Rape of Nanking, Japanese officers found it amusing and entertaining to find a pregnant woman in labor and bind her to a board with her legs straight and her knees tied together. They would then sip sake or tea and savor the stimulating aesthetic contrast between their comfort and her hellish pain, often also enjoying the equally intriguing contrast between pleasant music and her desperate screams. This would be allowed to continue until both she and the child were dead, often a week or more later.

A more modern form of interrogation or punishment is to suspend a person by his feet, pierce his eyeballs with needles, and blindfold him with pads soaked in acid over his eyes. He was suspended upside down, by the way, to prevent him from fainting and escaping the pain.

Yes, those are examples of deliberate torture. Let's look at an example from the medical profession:

In earlier times, amputees were far more common than they are today, even considering the effects of modern war. This was because, before antibiotics, the only treatment for a severe infection of the extremities - or a severe injury, which almost always resulted in such an infection - was amputation. This was commonly done with a saw and a cauterizing torch or red-hot irons - and the patient was of course fully awake. If one was otherwise fit and lucky, one might be allowed to get stinking drunk.

I could give many more examples. Notice that I have not mentioned the practices of Dr. Josef Mengele and the Waffen SS.

Now tell me how any of those are necessary for us to enjoy pleasure, or are just a benign part of life, or aren't a problem unless we decide they are.

There are some who post on this forum who know what real pain means. Let THEM speak of how "necessary" or unimportant it is.

In any case, none of this was the intent of the OP. The Problem of Pain has to do with the mutual exclusivity of an omnipotent God and a benevolent one. It seems a strange solution to the ancient Problem of Pain to declare that there isn't one.

[FinalEnigma]

I would like to point out that this thread was placed in theology, doctrine and dogma for a reason. I'm not trying to disprove God using the problem of pain, and I'm not asking for the same christian answers that have been handed out for centuries without convincing anybody. I'm asking about the Jewish interpretation and answer, so to be technical, unless you are Jewish, or wish to maintain that Cnorman's response is not the Jewish position, then you are off topic.

and with regard to the actual argument, I wasn't speaking of course of strictly physical pain, but of suffering in general.

Even if I were to for some reason concede that a level of suffering is necessary for man to understand pleasure/happiness, the enormous magnitude of suffering in the world is completely absurd if solely for that purpose.

How does it enrich our lives for thousands of children to be starving to death? can you honestly claim that a benevolent God would allow thousands of children to starve to death so that some other people who are, by their own hands, causing these children to starve, can better appreciate how great it is to not be hungry?

[Nameless]

Well, there's two in a row saying that pain is necessary for there to be pleasure, and that it's just a part of life, and not a problem unless you decide it is, and all that complacent philosophical... stuff.

Pain isn't a theory or a concept or an intellectual puzzle. Pain is PAIN. Confront it honestly, and then see if you can theorize about it. You may find it a bit harder to dismiss so facilely.

Are you suggesting that my experience with 'pain' is so inconsequential that there couldnt be any validity in my words? Complacent? I guess that 'peaceful' can appear as 'complacency' to those inturbulated.
I dismissed nothing, if you understood my post at all. Rather unlike the way that you dismissed what I wrote. "Oh, if only you felt the 'real' pain that I have known... you would think differently, like I do.
"Pain is pain"! I like that! Thanks for the clarification. But since you have demonstrated a singular inagbility to understand the intended meaning of my words and intent, I understand where you are comming from.
You egoic dismissiveness has been noted. No need for response, I'm merely correcting a misunderstanding.
If you "confronted" what I write a bit more "honestly", you might find it a bit harder to dismiss so facilely", also!

[Nameless]

...or wish to maintain that Cnorman's response is not the Jewish position, then you are off topic.

He is Jewish, I am Jewish, he cannot speak for Judaism, I cannot speak for Judaism. There is no manual for being Jewish. If you don't like my offering then fine, I'll unsubscribe from your elite thread.
I will repeat, though, that pain isnt a 'problem' unless you (egoically) see it as such. If you think that 'god' made a mistake, talk to It, don't whine to me (us, here) about it!
Good day.
Pffft!

[cnorman18]

Well, there's two in a row saying that pain is necessary for there to be pleasure, and that it's just a part of life, and not a problem unless you decide it is, and all that complacent philosophical... stuff.

Pain isn't a theory or a concept or an intellectual puzzle. Pain is PAIN. Confront it honestly, and then see if you can theorize about it. You may find it a bit harder to dismiss so facilely.

Are you suggesting that my experience with 'pain' is so inconsequential that there couldnt be any validity in my words?

Show me where I suggested any such thing.

Complacent? I guess that 'peaceful' can appear as 'complacency' to those inturbulated.
I dismissed nothing, if you understood my post at all. Rather unlike the way that you dismissed what I wrote. "Oh, if only you felt the 'real' pain that I have known... you would think differently, like I do.

I never said that either.

"Pain is pain"! I like that! Thanks for the clarification. But since you have demonstrated a singular inagbility to understand the intended meaning of my words and intent, I understand where you are comming from.

I don't think that you do.

I was suggesting that your attitude was excessively detached and philosophical, and I'll stand by that. I said, and say, nothing about you personally.

You egoic dismissiveness has been noted. No need for response, I'm merely correcting a misunderstanding.
If you "confronted" what I write a bit more "honestly", you might find it a bit harder to dismiss so facilely", also!

I responded to your remark, repeated in your next post after this one, that "pain isnt a 'problem' unless you (egoically) see it as such"; and I invited you to explain it in the context of the examples I cited.

If you want to take my post personally, I suppose you may. That was not my intent, though, and I don't think your accusations that it was are warranted.

It does seem odd that you can be philosophically detached about the subject of your post, but not about a response to it that gives a different point of view.

[Eph]

I am not Jewish either, but, I don't mind answering since Jews believe that anyone can come up with a rational and good answer (I learned that from the honorable cnorman).

The "we need pain" to appreciate "the pleasure" answer does work for me - in most, but not all, cases.

A clear example of this is demonstrated in how scientists have studied the rich versus the poor. The rich are never measured to be substantially more "happy" than the "poor". Yet, the poor might face pain and difficult hardships not experienced by the rich.

So far, in my read of Jewish Literacy, I have read an explanation that this is why Eve transgressed the law in the Garden of Eden - so that Adam could experience the hardships of life and become more of a "man" (paraphrase). If God wants us to live by "the sweat of our brow", then why can't the reason for hardship, and therefore pain, be to know joy and happiness?

Surely pain can bring about good in many instances. Didn't the holocaust (while entirely sickening) bring about more tolerance than ever before experienced by the Jews? (don't get your panties in a bunch, I am not AT ALL saying it was a good thing or that it should have happened).

I have witnessed the suffering, and death, of individuals bring families together in ways unknown to them before.

The pain of child labor brings about children.

LDS pioneer heritage is full of suffering and death as they were driven from their homes in the icy winter. We gratefully think about them, honor and revere them.

Extreme suffering doesn't always have a happy ending nor is it always honored in historical memory. That is where the explanation of "no pain", "no happiness" runs dry. This is also where reason runs out of explanations for "why must it be this way?". For believers, this is where faith comes in: to trust that God knows something we do not. To non-believers, this may appear ridiculous. But, those who have made the effort to see God's hand in their lives, it is enough and they believe the answer will be given to them, in this life or the next.