On Suffering

Christians seem to always try to explain suffering as being something that serves some higher purpose. Of course, the "higher purpose" they insist it serves is only ever their own, while they oppose and deny that it could serve any other higher purpose offered by others that differs from theirs. For example, they assume suffering always serves some greater good, according to a "good" God's plan, even while they oppose that that same suffering may only serve a worse plan, from a "bad" God, even though the latter is more in line with the evidence (especially of how Christians behave). 

Naturally, not a single Christian ever accepts that their own behavior is the cause of such suffering. Or, if it is, the only kind of suffering their behavior causes - like their judgments or passing of laws to prohibit the exercise of one's "free will" - is the kind of suffering that God wants, and will surely apply in the next life anyway.

 But, even if we accept the unsupported assumption that suffering is part of a good plan (even though there are any number of ways of imagining a plan that did NOT require or include such suffering as being a better plan), it is one thing to claim that suffering can potentially lead to growth (subjective as the word "growth" may be in this context) the way an athlete gets stronger from exercise. 

Indeed, if the ontological argument for God's existence is that God is the embodiment of "good" that exists that surpasses any conception of such a good that did not exist, then using the same reasoning would lead us to argue that a sense of a "good" plan that did not require suffering would be better than a "good" plan that did. Hence,  the same reasoning Christians use for why their idea of a "good" God exists actually invalidates the Christian claim that suffering is part of a "good" God's plan, when a better "plan" could've been conceived by an infinite all-powerful intelligence like God. 

On the other hand, it is another thing to claim that we should therefore look at all suffering through such a lens, and see that any suffering - from witch burnings, animals eating each other, genocides, plaques and famines, etc - could or should always be rationalized as serving some larger purpose that we know not of. A purpose we must always "assume" is necessarily "good," however seemingly pointless or even evil the suffering may be on its face.

Hell, of course, while it serves no purpose other than to punish, is something Christians don't care about (other than the chance to enjoy seeing the torments of those who dared to disagree with them).

Again, consider how the word "growth" in such a context is subjective. If you whip and beat a slave for their disobedience or to make them work harder, you may succeed at making the slave more obedient, or getting the slave to increase their output, but does that increased obedience and output really mean "growth" from the slave's perspective, or just from the slave owner's perspective? And does not the latter require a death and destruction of the liberty and free will of former?

With the second perspective, not only should we blame the slave for the suffering imposed on them by the slave master, we should also tell a child who has been raped by a Catholic priest that, however wrong it was for the priest to have raped him, it is also wrong of the child to see the suffering they feel as a result as not serving a "good" God's plan - the same "God" the priest used the child's "belief" to rape the child in the first place - which is a plan that must be accepted as "good," however much suffering it requires, and regardless of whether even a child could always imagine a plan that was better.

Can you just imagine a parent using this kind of reasoning, and saying this to their child after learning their child had been raped by a priest? 

Can you imagine the parent then acting perfectly fine with the rape of their child by simply "believing" that the suffering their child may endure as a result always serves a "good" God's will, and a "plan" that they simply "believe is always "good"? And if the child claims such a plan at least suggests such a "God is not good but bad, the parent then feels a need to tell the child that such a perspective will be rewarded in the afterlife with eternal suffering far worse than what the child is suffering from already?

And if a parent would be unable to accept that their own child's suffering in this life - whether from leukemia  or molestation or whatever - serves some "divine purpose," why are they so willing to accept even the possibility of their own child's eternal suffering as serving the same purpose?