We Need Suffering in the World Learning Objective: To explore two arguments that claim we need suffering in the world. To explore four arguments that claim we need suffering in the world. To evaluate your opinion of whether we need suffering in the world.

What do you think? Why do we need evil? Students mind map their own ideas and discuss in groups. Get them to think of what the world might be like without evil – why might this be a problem? They can keep adding to this mind map as you go through the next 4 slides.

We Need Evil – Reason 1 Humans need a contrast: Think back to a really good day/event in your life... How did you know it was a good day/event? Humans need a contrast: We need evil in order to understand good. If there was no evil in the world we would never really appreciate the good. Life would have no meaning. Go through each slide to make sure students have an understanding of each of the 4 reasons. They can add the ideas to their mind map as you go.

We Need Evil – Reason 2 Keyword: Soul Making Life is all about growing and developing. In order for this to happen we need to experience good and bad things and sometimes make mistakes. Our mistakes allow us to grow emotionally. If nothing ever went wrong in our life we wouldn’t become mature and responsible. You have to be able to make choices and to live with those choices. This is known as soul-making. It is like the saying ‘no pain no gain’ – if you struggle with the difficulties that life can throw at you, you may end up a much stronger person. Evil is therefore seen as a positive and is for our own benefit. As a parent might punish a child to help them learn so we have evil to allow people to grow. Keyword: Soul Making We need evil in order to grow, mature and develop. It is preparation for the afterlife.

We Need Evil – Reason 3 We need evil to show and develop the qualities of empathy and compassion. Christians follow the teaching of Jesus ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ which means show compassion to everyone. In order to show and develop this quality we need to see suffering to give us this opportunity. Often the greatest acts of human kindness come out the greatest disasters. Show the clip from the Nepal earthquake to demonstrate how humans have responded to the suffering they have seen. http://www.dec.org.uk/

Good can come out of evil We Need Evil – Reason 4 Good can come out of evil Stephen Sutton suffered and later died from cancer. However, lots of good came out of his situation. He created a bucket list and made sure he lived his life to the full and appreciated it. He also raised 4.2 million for cancer research. In order for us to appreciate and value good, we have to know suffering.

What do you think? Why do we need evil? Soul Making – we need evil to grow, mature and develop Humans need a contrast Why do we need evil? Students need to make sure they have some notes in their book on each reason. We need evil to show and develop empathy and compassion Good can come out of evil/suffering

HOWEVER, your job is to convince them otherwise. Adverts The world has decided that it would be a better place if there was no evil and suffering in it at all. HOWEVER, your job is to convince them otherwise. You are going to create an advert to convince people that we do need evil in the world. Use some of the following reasons: We need a contrast We need to develop empathy and compassion We need evil for soul making Good can come out of evil Get students to either write a script, storyboard or role play an advert in the remaining time.

What do you think is the strongest argument? Final Thoughts What do you think is the strongest argument? The world would be better if there was no evil and suffering. The world would be a fairer and nicer place We need suffering for a contrast, for soul making, for developing compassion and so good can come out of evil To conclude get students to think about whether we need suffering in the world or not. Choose your strongest argument and explain why you agree with it on your Reflection Sheet.