THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM ACROSS A RANGE OF RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

judaism: suffering of job

• Hebrew Bible (and Christian Old Testament) describes the story of Job, who is tormented by Satan with God's permission. Job loses his wealth and his family and suffers disfiguring diseases. 

• Job never loses his faith in God, but he is convinced God has treated him unfairly 

• At the end of the story, God appears in the form of a lightning storm and reveals himself to Job as a numinous being who is beyond human understanding. Job repents for questioning God's ways and God rewards Job for his faith with health, wealth and happiness 

• There are many different interpretations of the story of Job. One of its main messages is that the sort of intellectual solutions to the Problem of Evil put forward by Job's friends (who argue that Job's sufferings are a punishment for his sins) don't work. Job's response to suffering is not to understand it intellectually, but to embrace it and worship God. However, this conclusion - that suffering cannot be understood except through faith - is not very attractive to philosophers. 

islam

• emphasis on God's omnipotence and sovereignty - his complete control over everything that happens. The world operates according to the divine  plan, although we might not understand it.. 

• Some Muslim thinkers argue that everything proceeds from God - even evil and suffering - but others argue that evil is largely the responsibility of human beings 

• Most Muslims take a mixed view: humans are responsible for much evil, through their own selfishness or ignorance; however, some hardships are seen as a punishment for the collective wrongs of a people and others are a means of purification for individuals, so that they can repent what they've done wrong.

• Because God is just, there is an afterlife and those who do good works will have their reward but those who do evil will suffer the consequences. This means that, even if God appears to be allowing evil, he will take back control and assert his sovereignty in the end. 

hinduism

• Karma ("action") is the consequence of our previous behaviour (perhaps in previous lives) playing out in our current life. Therefore, a lot of things that appear to be natural evil (like disease, disability, hunger or just bad luck) are in fact the karma produced by our own wickedness in the past. After we die, we are reincarnated and the karma from our old life affects the next one. 

• In Hinduism there is an inevitability to evil and suffering. However, goodness and growth comes out of evil and suffering so, viewed this way, evil is not really evil at all. 

christianity

theodicies