Why is there still so much suffering in the world?
You only have to read a newspaper or see the news on TV to realise that we do not live in a perfect world. Today despite all the advancements we have made over the last 2000 years there still seems to be a lot of pain and suffering in the world. Wars are still being fought, Christians are still being persecuted, Children are still starving and every so often for good measure that is a major natural disaster like a flood or earthquake thrown in.
There are plenty of people knocking on our doors telling us that we are living in the final days and that the end of the world is nigh. But that has been the case for at least 3000 years. We don’t live in a perfect world now and the Israelites had their fair share of problems long before Jesus was born.
Our first reading from the Book of Job attempts to come to terms with the problem of human suffering. You may wonder why Job should be put through the pain that he has to suffer and there is unfortunately no easy answer.
In the gospel passage Jesus cures Simon’s mother-in-law and throughout the gospels we see Jesus tending the sick and dying. Suffering may or may not be part of God’s master plan but the simple reality is that an awful lot of what is wrong with the world today is mankind’s fault, it has nothing to do with God.