Should Pain and Suffering Be Stumbling Blocks for the Faithful?

While suffering exists in this age, we must believe Gd is omnipotent.  Why then does Gd allow horrid things if He can stop any disease like magic?

To allow disease is not a sign of Gd’s impotence, even if it is a condition that is chronic and/or causing excruciating pain.  Just as a rich man may lose everything in seconds, so to can any creature suffer disease.  Similarly, as any man may gain a fortune in seconds, so to can we receive speedy recovery from any and every chronic disease. 

Hashem desires for us to do His will; that we wrestle to understand His ways. He longs for us to choose Him through hearkening to His call. He desires for us to love Him, all of us, from the most pious king to the lowliest worm, but only of our own accord. While we don’t know why some may suffer; we know justice must prevail, either divine reward or divine punishment, according to our deeds. We can’t have faith and believe in the possibility of the incurable. Maimonides taught that to deny Moshiach’s coming, and subsequently the arrival of a world without suffering, is equivalent to denial of Torah in its entirety. Thus, we are able to derive that in the age of Moshiach, pain and suffering will cease because of our own doing, as then we will be completely occupied with our relationship with G-d; that is when G-d gets His way, and if we love G-d, then His way is our ideal.

Rather, than stumbling blocks, the existence of pain and suffering should be motivators for us to help Gd achieve His ultimate goal; peace on earth.

Hope and Reality - Live in the real world. Dream in the ideal world.

The cosmos began in darkness.  It is the same way with the Jewish people.  Judaism began in a world full of idolatry with Abraham destroying his father’s idols.  However, in Egypt the former glories of the patriarchs and matriarchs had become but a dim light.  The enslaved Jews in Egypt cried, “There can’t be a Gd; not with all this pain and suffering,” entertaining the idea that the former glories of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Judaism could be chalked up to luck and nothing else.  We objected to the idea of Gd because our cries for hope went unanswered for so long in Egypt.

The Jews in slavery had only heard of Gd, and flirted with atheism, but when we were about to totally give up on Hashem, Moses came and showed us the path to redemption.  He showed us the real Gd does care and that there is no dream too big to dream, reviving the soul of the Jewish people, with the wholesome Light of creation.