This is going to be
a shorter Ramble than you might think. It is the number one problem
of religious studies and the number one question of agnostics and
atheists which causes even some of the hardiest believers to pause.
“If there is a loving, good, all-powerful God, then why does He
permit the evil and atrocities which happen in this world?”
There is a simple
answer to this. He permits evil to exist in the world because to do
otherwise would mean completely wiping the human race from existence.
The human race is, as a species, insane in an otherwise sane and
beautiful creation, and it doesn't take much pushing to bring out
this insanity in the average person. Just take away the things,
people, dreams, security, etc. which they have attached themselves to
and it will bubble to the surface as we struggle to cope. It is this
insanity which drives people to be selfish and without compassion. It
is this selfishness which causes harm to ourselves, those around us,
and the creation around us whether we see the immediate cause of the
harm or not; and which causes us to blame everyone and everything
else around us including God for the harm we do to ourselves. We, the
insane human race, are the cause of evil in this world. The only way
to totally eradicate evil is to totally eradicate the human race as
we know it. In other words, evil is allowed to continue because of
His mercy.
Furthermore, God
respects our right to be individual beings with our own thoughts,
feelings, memories, experiences, and choices. In order for us to
continue to exist physically, and eradicate evil, He would have to
completely reprogram every one of us into completely different people
without each person's individual consent, and this is something He
will not do. His compassion for us, His love and respect for us as
individual persons dictate that He allow us to be the people we are
and make our own choices whether they are selfish or compassionate
and to bear the consequences of either. Just as He will not wipe the
whole human race from existence Himself, so He will not wipe the
individual psyche from existence and forcibly reprogram the
individual human brain. That would be tantamount to murder because
the unique psyche of the individual person would be lost forever. He
asks us to cooperate with Him in being transformed by His Grace, but
only with our consent and cooperation; never by force.
There has been one
time in our distant past when He nearly did eradicate evil from the
world. It's an event recorded in every human cultural memory. The
great flood almost completely destroyed us, and yet He chose to stay
His hand from our annihilation. There have been times when He has
culled us and our inventiveness in order to keep us from destroying
ourselves and the rest of creation faster than it could have been,
but He has never completely destroyed us.
Ultimately, we will
end up destroying ourselves and the habitat He created for us through
the consequences of billions if not trillions of our selfish choices
over the last tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years of human
existence. Until that happens He will continue to prune and cull to
stave it off until there is nothing left to prune and cull, and He
will continue to offer us a way to cooperate with Him with the end
result of our individual salvation from destruction at our own hands.
The just judgment of
God is to let us stand or fall by the consequences of the choices we
make. His mercy is when He does damage control to mitigate those
consequences so we don't end up completely destroyed either
individually or as a species. But if we refuse to cooperate with Him,
He respects our choices and lets us fall on our own swords, tears in
His eyes as he is forced to watch it.
The worst part about
our insanity is how it affects Him. We blame Him. We curse Him. We
deny His very existence. We bring harm and violence to His good
creation, and inflict it on ourselves, each other, and the non-human
innocents and He is forced to watch it all, to know exactly what it
feels like every time it happens to everyone and everything it
happens to. We inflict our evil on Him too, and He continues to love
us and show compassion and mercy even as we are hurting Him
mercilessly.
God allows evil to
continue because He loves us and cares about us, not because he
doesn't. We're the ones who twist it around and blame Him for our own
individual and collective evil.
No comments:
Post a Comment