why all the pain?

Today we were celebrating father's day at my wife's parent's house. We were in their backyard, with a campfire going, real nice scene. A tiny baby bunny darts from the woods into the yard, adorable and tiny. My daughter is delighted and runs towards it. Then it's clear something is not right. The bunny is running around in circles, desperately moving, trying to get away from something. It's head is tilted permanently to the side. Around and around, and then it collapses, and dies. It was running from it's own pain, trying to escape the suffering.

My daughter was extremely sad. Why? She asks? Why did the bunny have to die? Why was it in so much pain?

And right now, I really don't have an answer. Pain and death are just so sad. I know we live in an imperfect world, and whether you're talking holocausts or dead bunnies, the implications of that imperfection can be horrible. I know many philosophical reasons for the existence of pain -- it's used to strengthen, it exists because of the fall, it alarms you to when something is wrong, etc etc. But why did the bunny have pain??? I know there are answers to all this, but gosh when you see the death of a bunny through such innovent naive eyes they don't do much for you.

I'm reminded now though of a news segment I saw of a girl with the rarest of diseases -- the inability to feel any pain whatsoever. She had to wear goggles because she had already poked one eye out, a helmet because she continually hit her head. Her skin was scarred from incessant scratching, her legs broken and healed crooked from falls. The lack of pain meant she would continue to harm herself. So of course I can see how, in a world where things can be broken and damaged, pain might actually be a gift.

But that poor bunny in so much pain, and then dead. It just seems so. . . meaningless. My daughter is right, it is so sad.