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.
A single pattern runs through all things, the meaning of life, the divine purpose of spontaneity, creativity, and grace. This is the divine purpose, not a divine plan. There is no one word for it in English. It is the glow of innocence. It is the first crisp evening of fall or the first warm day of spring, with the Mockingbird singing ecstatically and the first flush of green on the trees. It runs through all things. It is the spontaneity of a child playing alone in her sandbox, inventing the game as she goes. It is the grace of a flower, far more beautiful than it needs to be.
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.
How is it possible for divinity to be all powerful, perfectly good and omniscient? This is the classic theological problem of evil.
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. But 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?" The answer is that it is meaningless. Divinity is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, since neither of these things is possible in a world with free will. Nor can we speak of the divine plan, or say that everything (or anything) is God's will. Divinity has purpose, not a plan, and as the totality of all Souls, the Nameless One cannot be said to have a will. There are as many divine wills as Souls. This is never the best of all possible worlds, since there can always be more spontaneity, beauty, grace, and creativity than there is now.
Copyright © Thales 1999