why would a benevolent god create a world full of suffering?
Let me preface this by saying, I am not a believer in any one specific religion or spiritual belief system. There is a certain indescribable sense that I have become aware of during meditation and other epiphanies that there is some kind of peaceful oneness that reaches far beyond the physical world. You could call this oneness god and at times I have felt inclined to do so, but my own experience is not enough for me to make the claim that there definitely is a god. I’m open to possibilities and I have some ideas on the topic, but I’m not sure that we currently have the ability to come to a solid scientifically backed conclusion on the matter. Maybe that’s by design. Who knows! All of this to say, everything that follows is very much theoretical.
I have heard people argue, both in my personal life and on the internet at large, that there cannot be a god because why would an all powerful benevolent being create a world full of pain and suffering? How can “he” be “good” if “he” is the cause of war and disease? Why wouldn’t “he” just put an end to our suffering if “he” could?
Well, first of all, the idea that suffering is bad or, for that matter, that anything is inherently good or bad, is a man-made concept.
No other member of the animal kingdom thinks a lion is evil for hunting a gazelle. She’s simply hungry. Lions have natural instincts and biological needs. Does the gazelle suffer when it is killed? Absolutely. We know that gazelles are perfectly capable of experiencing fear and pain even if they don’t intellectualize it the same way a human might but death itself is only “bad” in our human perception because we are so attached to the material world and so averse to pain.
When a gazelle’s family member is killed, they may grieve that loss, but they do not accuse the lion of being a bad lion or the world of being an unfair place. The natural order of the world is not good or bad, it just is. It’s a cycle of life and death.
Western capitalist society does not like this cycle. It wants to grow and grow and grow and live forever without experiencing uncomfortable emotions. Ironically, an immeasurable excess of unnecessary suffering is caused by this pursuit. But what about living forever and experiencing no pain is inherently good? It saves us from “bad” feelings but maybe we need bad feelings in order to create the friction in our lives that allows us to feel love at its deepest level. Maybe we need pain to know we’re alive at all. Would our capacity for joy be as great if we never experienced pain? Would our capacity for love be as strong if there was no such thing as death or loss?
Anyone who has ever had a loved one die knows that death adds a richness to our perception of human connection and life itself that does not exist without loss. Even though it’s incredibly painful, we come to realize that nothing is more important than our connection to each other once that connection is irreparably broken.
So, maybe “god” put us here to teach us about love. Maybe human life is one big lesson. (It feels that way, doesn’t it??) And I don’t mean that it’s a test with a grade at the end that we either pass or fail. It’s a lesson that we either learn while we’re alive or will be forced to face once we die. The planet is perfect in its design with all of its checks and balances and if we surrender to living by the god-given rules of this environment, we can experience it in all of its beauty (pain included) instead of constantly trying to avoid reality.
Maybe “god” created this physical world to give us the opportunity to witness the sheer beauty of it all. Glistening oceans, wind rustling through tall grass, the coo of a newborn baby, the taste of cold crisp watermelon on a hot summer day and so on. Maybe the plan is to evolve our capacity for love by making it all seem temporary, even if it's actually not (considering time does not exist outside of our perception of it).
That being said, we are currently witnessing an excruciating level of human depravity on Earth and I’m certainly not saying that beauty makes up for it or that everything happens for a reason and we should just sit back and let all of these horrible events transpire because it’s god’s plan. On the contrary, I believe, it’s because we have forgotten god that we have allowed it to get this bad and the only reason god is not interfering is so we are able to fully witness our own capacity for redemption.
If we collectively realize we are one and that our connection to each other is sacred, we can choose to witness the beauty without subjecting ourselves to all this superfluous suffering. Maybe by doing so, our collective consciousness would actually evolve into something even more wonderful. Maybe that’s what god is banking on, us freeing ourselves from our own prison by harnessing the divinity that is an extension of her creation.
As we approach man-made environmental collapse, we are also on the precipice of the greatest expansion of human consciousness in the history of the world. If we can overcome the existential threat of this moment, we have the opportunity to shift into a completely new way of being and interacting with one another. God could snap her fingers and put everything back in place now. Instead, she’s giving us the opportunity to tap into our potential by allowing us to see that we had everything we needed from the start. We could even come to peace with our own suffering if we stopped trying to optimize a world that never needed to be fixed in the first place.
So, how can there be a benevolent god if she created all this suffering? She didn’t. We did and she’s patiently waiting for us to find our way back to balance through love.
Thank you for reading extra honey! In case you missed it, last week’s post was a poem about war.
I loved this so much Jenny x
This has given me a lot to think about, Jenny. Love it.