Suffering By The Will Of God? Posted in: Aggressor-Victim, Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

That God is benevolent and completely in control, yet at the same time bad things happen in this world is a problem for logical and rational thinkers. I think. If we embrace any idea that artificially distances God from something he/she is absolutely in control of, i.e. to explain the suffering of this world without implicating God … as most religions tend to do in one form or another (law of karma, natural law, punishment for sin, our fault, the devil) … even though at the same time believing not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of God aren’t we deceiving ourselves and turning our backs on logical and rational thinking? If so, then application of any logical rational discussion after this point is really a bit of a nonsense. And in any case, is willingness to abandon logical and reason a sign of spiritual sincerity? A price we have to pay to know God in truth?

Perhaps therefore better to accept God is implicated? Desires the suffering of this world to happen? Logically how do we then reconcile this with God being benevolent? Perhaps we simply don’t see the positive worthy-of-a-benevolent-God eventual outcomes. Perhaps suffering is something that ultimately facilitates worthy divine expression? A necessary evil, if you will. Not that it is actually evil 🙂

Look back at dark passage of your earlier live. Understand it, give it context, now with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps you can see that some past misdeed inflicted by another person upon you (horrible at the time) actually set the stage for becoming you a forgiving person (a good thing, yes?). If so, one could argue that bad facilitated the good in that case. Indeed was essential. One cannot be a forgiver without something to forgive. Do you want to be a forgiver? Is being a forgiver something worthy of your divinity? Worthy of God?

Also it is helpful, especially with adventures that appear to end on a grim note, to consider the possibility that this one lifetime might be but a single chapter in a much bigger story. Can we really rule this possibility out?