This isn’t news to you; this is mostly what I deal with here on the site. I’ve already refuted your words, and you keep supporting that same God and His Torah.

I’m still sprawled on the canvas, wiping the blood off my face.

You went too far. In this case, all I have to do is blow on you and that’s enough.

And why are you asking about the beauty and ugliness of others? Your inability to understand the Creator’s logic is also suffering.

So come and ask: why did the Creator make me such that I do not understand the logic of His heart? What did the Creator gain by His remedy?

The answer to that is simple. A perfect world without suffering has nothing to strive for—that is, no drives, which means no human beings.

In other words, in a world of human beings there has to be suffering.
And suffering leads to improvement.

Until they commit suicide.

And why are you asking about suicide? Many more die from disease or old age.

As for the matter itself: in evolution, in order to produce something good, you can’t avoid having less good cases.

It’s all a matter of statistics. And there are margins. Genetics. Genetic defects. They express themselves in body and mind and create everything you see.

There’s no shortage of suffering.

The question is whether it is predetermined, or whether it can be changed.
And the answers are as many as the religions and different approaches.
In other words, there is no answer. Probably there’s no question either. There is suffering. The one who suffers asks. The one who doesn’t suffer doesn’t ask.

I’m not asking about suicide, I’m answering you, brother. As for disease and old age, it’s the same thing. If there is suffering and there is God, then He is responsible for the suffering. Simple. And I’ll give you another angle to look at it from: imagine that God Himself were incarnated and had to go through that exact same suffering—for example, ugliness—how would He deal with the fact that someone is responsible for it?

Of course God is “responsible” for suffering just as He is responsible for everything.
And not like those who say that God is responsible for the good and Satan is responsible for the evil.
God is responsible for everything.

But the concept of responsibility is problematic. “Responsible” implies that He owes you something. That you can sue Him. And that is not so.

If you think there are two authorities, then “that is not so” carries some weight. But I assume you don’t think that, so He and only He is responsible. As for owing, you can assume that if you want. But certainly that ugly person, for example, owes Him nothing.

You didn’t understand. The word “responsible” doesn’t fit. Because “responsible” means that someone assigned the responsibility to Him.

So instead of saying “responsible” and thereby distorting things, philosophers like to say that He is the cause of everything.

Do you understand the difference between being responsible for things and being the cause of things?

Responsible = obligated to give an account to someone.

Not that someone assigned Him the responsibility, but that He took it upon Himself—by virtue of His creation being as it is. And if we assume there is some First Being and He is the cause of everything, with no anthropomorphism like “will,” then you’ve solved the problem of suffering.

There is no anthropomorphism such as will.

But I still think the problem of suffering has not been solved, because human beings suffer.
In other words, the problem is suffering. That was always the problem. Not the questions and answers.

The problem we’re discussing here is not suffering in and of itself, but suffering from the standpoint of God. From God’s standpoint there is no problem, because there is no will. God is a closed-off, arbitrary force, and nothing more can be said about Him. You could just as well say “nature” in the same sense.

With God’s help, Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel, 5780

It is no coincidence that the question of suffering is being discussed between “Aleph” and “The Last Decisor.”

It is the way of the world that darkness precedes light and suffering precedes deliverance. Suffering arouses in a person the aspiration for repair, and he prays and acts in order to bring about a more repaired world. And the more strongly one feels the lack, the greater the desire to work to fill that lack; and thus the joy grows when one is delivered from troubles and understands how they were the opening that led to redemption.

Someone who is at the point of “Aleph,” at the starting point of the process, still does not understand where all this is leading. By contrast, one who has reached, in actuality or in the eye of his mind, the end of the process—he can be “The Last Decisor,” who understands the meaning of suffering, and how it itself was the opening and foundation for the process of repair.

And therefore, when the Lord restores the fortunes of Zion, “we were like dreamers,” we understand that the “years in which You made us see evil” were actually the years in which we wove the dream of redemption, the dream that spurred us to act to realize it. And therefore Rabbi Shimon says to his son-in-law, who sees how badly his body was wounded in the cave, “Woe is me that you have seen me thus,” and Rabbi Shimon answers him, “Happy are you that you have seen me thus,” for suffering is the opening to repair.

It is still hard for us to grasp where the process is leading. We are like Jacob, who sees Samson trying to save Israel and falling, and he says: “For Your salvation I have hoped, O Lord.” We, who have already seen what happened afterward, understand that Samson’s failed attempt was what paved the way for Samuel, Saul, and David—not to fear the Philistines, but to rise up against them until complete victory.

Samson himself signals this to the people in his last heroic act, when he enters Gaza, uproots its gates, and sets them on the mountain opposite Hebron, the capital of the tribe of Judah; by this he sends them the message: “I opened the gate. Now it’s your turn to complete it,” a mission that Samuel, Saul, and David would take up many years later.

With blessings, Shatz