ABSTRACT
The problem of suffering poses difficult questions within any society and at any time in history, in that the often indiscriminate scope of suffering, its apparent pointlessness and lack of recompense, the extremes of physical and emotional anguish it involves, and so forth, are universal concerns. Within monotheistic religion, however, the problem is particularly acute, since the existence of suffering in the world raises the question of how the one God can be characterized as just and merciful when the strict monotheistic insistence on His exclusive power and omnipotence tends to associate Him with responsibility for the miseries of the world.1
