Why doesn't God do something about all the suffering in the world?
At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly-not with cringing shame but with belligerence.

"Can God judge us? How can God know about suffering?" snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!"

In another group a man lowered his collar. "What about this?" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. "Lynched for no crime but being black! We have suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved ones, toiled till only death gave release."

Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that people had been forced to endure in this world?

"God leads a pretty sheltered life," they said.

So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he or he had suffered the most. A Jew, a slave, an untouchable from India, a
person from Hiroshima, a prisoner from a Siberian gulag, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other.

At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather simple: before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their verdict was that God should be sentenced to live on earth-as a human being!

"Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Let him champion a cause so just, but so radical, that it brings down upon him the hate, condemnation and efforts of every major traditional and
established religious authority to eliminate him. Let him try to describe
what no-one has ever seen, felt, tasted, heard, or smelled: let him try
to communicate God to human beings.

"At last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Let him be
betrayed by his closest friends. Let him be indicted on false charges,
tried before a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured and let him die! Let him die the most humiliating death-with common thieves."

As each leader announced a portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of
approval went up from the assembled throng. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved.

Suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.

(Author unknown)

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