ABSTRACT
For given God’s omniscience and absolute power it would be child’s play for him to have prevented either the fire or the fawn’s being caught in the fire. The idea is that God is to us humans as good parents are to their children whom they love. And just as their children often cannot comprehend the goods for which their loving parents permit things to happen to them, so too we humans cannot comprehend the goods for which God permits us, his created children, to endure the evils that happen to us. No loving parents use their child’s stay in the hospital as an occasion to take a holiday, saying to themselves that the doctors and nurses will surely look after little Johnny while they are away. But many human beings have endured horrendous suffering without any awareness of God’s assurances of his love and concern during their period of suffering.
