From time to time, a few of my friends who don’t believe in the existence of God will come and approach me, and ask this question,
“If God is the most powerful and able to do all things, then why does He let all the sufferings to happen here on earth?”
Since most of them already have pre-conceived views that God does not exist and just ask for the sake of proving me wrong, I usually don’t give in-depth answers lest that I’ll spend my time endlessly debating. I mostly evade the question. Well, partly because I have not given much thought about it as I am pretty contented with my belief that [non-personified God] indeed exists. Maybe it is also because my life is full of blessings, that I do not personally experience injustice or great sufferings throughout the course of my life.
Anyway, in the past few months, a very close friend of mine who holds the same religious/spiritual belief as I do, asked the same question. Apparently, she struggled with the equation that if everything is from God, then all the bad things and sufferings are from God. Why? I remained mostly speechless, while others provided some input.
As much as I recall from the discussion, many suggested that everything that we human beings experienced is simply a test. A test to determine whether one is worthy of heaven, or not. For some, this will suggest that all the negative things that happen to us are trials, to see if we can still persevere and remain believers.
I accepted the view generally, though it felt like something was whispering in the back of my head. “Really?” I don’t necessarily disagree with the view; Well, I partially agree that an aspect of our life is a test, however I believe there is much more to it than that.
Before I continue with my endless rambling, I’d like to say that I am not religious by many people’s standards. Just a girl who tries to make living peacefully, under no man’s authority. Whatever I will put forward is simply a thought that recently popped out in my head, as a result of personal contemplation and conversation with a friend of mine. So please do not jump on me, and ask me to provide verses from any religious scripture nor any rulings from any religious authorities ‘cause I won’t give you any. It’s all just Laksmi’s thought. No more, no less.
Back to the original topic. If God is able to do all things, why does He allow sufferings to take place? A close friend of mine, sent me an e-mail about his current life challenge. I don’t want to go into details, but in a nutshell, he said how a person who was very dear to him was angry with God ‘cause He let bad things happen. My friend, a righteous believer as he is, believed everything happened for a reason, but of course you wouldn’t tell that to someone who was emotionally shaken, would you?
That e-mail made me recall the conversation I had few months back, with an atheist friend of mine. It was interesting because I had two different and yet similar cases where:
- A believer wondered why God allowed bad things to happen, and
- A disbeliever who questioned the existence of God simply because there are just way too many bad things for a powerful and loving God to exist.
That day, we ended in a long-winded conversation where I was being oh-so philosophical and soapboaxing. So the rambling began. Beware.
Some hold the views that everything is from God. One can take a negative incident as a trial from God, to see if we can stay strong and persevere. The idea has its merits but then I hypothetically asked, why do we point fingers externally when such and such happen?
Slavery. Poverty. Diseases. Wars. Does God really ‘allow’ that to happen, to see if we’re patient enough?
Why don’t we step back, and think that everything that happens to us is a result of our own actions. Also, why don’t we consider that what we do, whether small or big, affects others? A simple example I can use to illustrate is a girl is talking on the phone to a friend of hers. She made an offensive remark where her friend got offended and the whole conversation ruined his mood. So in a negative state, he went out and released his negativity (resulted by the offensive remark made by the girl) by punching a stranger on the face. This stranger suffers bruises and has to be treated in the hospital.
In regards to the stranger’s circumstance, one may question, “Why does God let this guy to be hurt when he has done nothing wrong?”. That seems to be a very convenient way of thinking. Let’s blame everything on God! But really, what caused this chain of event is the girl making an offensive remark, and her friend took it negatively.
Anyway, I personally do not believe that God ‘allows’ all this suffering and bad things to take place. What he Has done is creating laws of nature and it is essentially our own doings that make things as they are now. What I mean by laws of nature, is that God has decreed that if X happens, then Y will follow. Say, one of the laws of nature is that fire is hot and has the ability to burn. Now, if we stick our hands into fire, inevitably we will burn ourselves. That is the law of nature. God does not decree that we will suffer the burn no matter what. It is when we decide to touch fire that we burn, given the laws of nature that have existed for eternity. God only comes up with the equation 2+3=5, and we ourselves put the numbers together in order to make 5 happen. He creates for us several paths to take, and what happens to us, is a result of our own actions.
Let’s delve into things a little but deeper. When the human species first came to existence or perfected (whatever you believe, theory of evolution or creation), I assume that everything in earth was still good. The earth was mostly green, the seas and the rivers were gushing blue, the sky was clear with no pollution and the air was fresh. Then we human beings started (and still are) doing ridiculous things, which ultimately result in many types of sufferings.
Some of us continue using technology irresponsibly, which causes the ozone layer to be irreversibly damaged. This in turn exposes us to UV radiation and some suffer skin cancer.
Some of us throw chemical waste and rubbish to the natural environment and water, and this leads to many suffering skin and food poisoning.
Some women eat unhealthily, smoke, drink alcohol and are reckless in their lifestyles during pregnancy, and their babies suffer deformation or abnormality.
Some people are greedy with money and do not care about the others’ well being, and they employ workers at an extremely low wage, which results in uneven distribution of wealth and poverty.
Some leaders are so obsessed with power and a sense of existence that they try to invade and own other people’s lands. This leads to wars, bloodshed, people suffering emotionally, physically and financially.
By looking at these examples, I will say that it is not God, it is the PEOPLE who have allowed all the negative things to take place. What we do, every single thing, every single second, is affecting others. This note will affect some people, whether that effect is significant or not. However, people do not like to think like that. Instead of looking into themselves and asking what they have done wrong, the like to blame something external. In this case, God is a convenient scapegoat. Therefore, rather than admitting that have committed wrong-doings and introspecting, they ask God why things happen. In the case of people who do not believe in the existence of God, they use the same line of reasoning to deny.
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So yeah, I guess that is the end of my useless rambling. The purpose of this note is not to prove the existence of God because it is up to an individual to feel God, be it internally or externally. I am not trying to sound all religious and soapboax-y, but sharing a thought that goes inside the little brain of mine.
I also thought it would be nice if we all could look into ourselves when certain things happen, and not blame external things. Our existence does give impact to others, whether we realize it or not. So when things get tough, try to overcome it, by improving what is within. Because our existence does matter, and we can make changes to ourselves and the people as well as the environment around us.
