Home
If there is divinity and a meaning to life, why do bad things happen to good people? This is not just a medieval conundrum. Scott Peck and Rabbi Kusher have tackled this question in our own time.
There is a divine purpose, and therefore a meaning to life. The trouble is that humans must have creativity and free will to express this divine purpose. And there must be challenges and renewals, which we do not always welcome.
Death is not the ultimate evil; death is renewal. Death is the way a crotchety old fart becomes a happy toddler once again. Pain and frustration are but challenges to jolt us into a creative response. It is a cruelty and not a comfort to say to someone who has lost a child that it is God's will. There is no God, and there is no Will. There is only a divine purpose. The future is what we make of it. There is no God because "God" is a name, as is "Jehovah," "Allah," and "Brahma," but One is nameless. As soon as we give divinity a name, it becomes divisive, an excuse for "ethnic cleansing," because it becomes attached to a particular historical and religious tradition.
Instead of saying divinity is good, we should say divinity is purposeful. The divine purpose that runs through all things is this spontaneity, creativity, grace, joy concept for which we have no English equivalent.
Also understand the absolute continuity of existence. Our existence merely goes through various phases and stages, which go by such names as sleep and waking, life and death, human existence and non-human existence. Life and history are full of both positive and negative experiences. Pain, discomfort, obstacle, and stagnation are usually perceived as negatives. They should instead be welcomed as challenges. How could there be creativity without challenge?
And how can there be spontaneity without renewal? Renewal sometimes requires death and destruction, of lives, societies, ideas, species, worlds, and universes. If things merely accumulated, if human lives merely lengthened without end, if there was never decay and destruction, everything tends towards a sameness, a stagnant old age, without freshness, newness and spontaneity. There are three handles on the chalice from which we drink the waters of life: creation, preservation, and destruction. Each may serve the divine purpose. We cannot say that this is the best of all possible worlds, yet it is surely better with grace, joy, spontaneity and creativity than without them. The evils are not as absolute as we think, and they serve deeper purposes than we know.
"Omniscient" cannot mean the ability to foresee everything that will happen. Free will and creativity imply that brand new things and ideas and expressions are and always will be springing into existence, for that is the purpose of all existence.
The medieval idea of omnipotence is also incorrect and incompatible with free will and creativity. The higher Self may put challenges, opportunities and coincidences in our path, but what we do with them is up to us. We may rise, or we may fall. Some accidents are just accidents. All actions have consequences. If a child or a dog runs in front of a speeding car, it will be killed. This is just a law of nature, not anyone's plan. It is wrong to say that everything that happens is some god's will. Only preachers talk of God's will, as if they knew anything about it. What they know is a convenient and legal way to fleece the suckers.
So what is the answer to the medieval "Problem of Evil?" I have already given it. Life is better with innocence, freshness, spontaneity and creativity than without. And this is only made possible by animacy and creativity, things quite impossible under the dreary religion of the scientists, where we are all just soulless machines. They would also be impossible in the world of medieval theology, where God wills all things and knows all things. The new age begins when we have liberated ourselves from both dogmas. All religions are evil, but the most evil is the religion of the scientists, because that is the most pervasive, and the one they put into textbooks.
Copyright © Dr.H 2002
Home