Complete series of Self Helps :
2. [SELF HELP] Why God Allows Evil to Exist and Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
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(MUST-READ ESSAY!)
INTRODUCTION
There is a surprising amount of confusion among the religious, even among
clerics and scholars, when it comes to understanding why evil exists and why
God stands aside when so much suffering happens throughout the world. I’ve
heard nothing but lame excuses and naive, illogical reasoning from them when
they try to justify the existence of evil.
Most of us express wonder when we see some horrible catastrophe happen, or
when we see evil individuals, companies and institutions wield so much power.
Some people even go so far as to blame God for the evil things that exist in
this world, since if God had desired, He could have prevented
such things from existing or happening in the first place. Others
take this even further, using the existence of evil as proof of God’s
non-existence. How can a good and supposedly all-powerful God stand by while so
much evil happens? Where is our God?
I cannot follow a self-contradictory, unpredictable and illogical God,
which is what God is as taught by many teachers of religion. Since I do not fit
the criteria for becoming an atheist (being intelligent enough to reject the
incoherent religion taught by my parents and teachers, but not intelligent
enough to fix these incoherences and find my own path to God), what I have done
throughout my life is to go back to Scripture and re-invent God based on its
teachings, getting rid of all the cultural baggage that has entered into common
religious belief to go back to the focus of all religion: The Understanding and Worship of God.
There are good, perfectly logical explanations for these things, deep
explanations that elucidate the purpose of this universe, our place in it, and
our relationship with God, and through this give us perfectly good reasons for
the existence of evil.
Why Evil Exists
What is the point of the existence of this world anyway? Many mistakenly
think that the purpose of this world is to be a permanent residence where
people judge whether God exists or not. They think that they can gauge God’s
“level” of existence by the things that happen around them, so that given the
right set of events, they will decide He is alive and active, and given others,
they will decide He doesn’t exist, because if He existed, the world wouldn’t be
the way it is.
A friend said that he once went on a trip abroad, and before he left, he
asked God to protect three things that were most important to him in his life.
During his trip, he lost all three, which included the dying of loved ones, and
this made him decide that God doesn’t exist. He is a Buddhist now.
The above case is an example of earth-centric thinking, that considers this
world a goal in itself. This is the core mistake that leads to millions of
people misunderstanding, even disliking, God. That is a mistake because this
world is nothing besides a testing hall where humans can freely choose to do as
they like, to prove their worthiness of God’s approval or wrath. This world is
not meant to be a permanent residence.
Most religions teach that an end of the world is coming. Regardless of
religion, the universe is on track to become a dark, lifeless mass as the stars
and galaxies die out. Everything is going to end, and what remains is the
record of our deeds, kept by God. Even if we manage to create the greatest
empire on earth, or write the most wonderful novel, none of our accomplishments
will last.
One day the universe will shut down as if it never existed, and on that day
what significance can our achievements have? This world is not meant as a
permanent home of peace, but as a test. And a test requires that the possibility of failure should exist. If all humans
acted according to God’s wishes, evil would not exist. But since God has given
humans the freedom to disobey Him, they have the ability to do evil.
God is good, and evil is the absence of goodness, the same way that
darkness is the absence of light. If God is Light, we cannot blame Him for the
darkness we encounter when we turn away from Him, distance ourselves from Him,
and act against His wishes.
Why didn’t God make the universe a place of wholesome goodness lacking in
the possibility for evil? Because if evil could not exist, humans wouldn’t truly
be free beings.
To be free, humans require the freedom to act against God along with the
freedom to act for His sake. God wants to give humans perfect freedom to act
and grow, so that they can be the best or the worst they want to be. Since
humans have the freedom to act against God, and since to act against God is to
create evil, humans have been given the freedom to create evil.
God did not make this world a perfect place because that is not its
purpose. Imagine if you were a maker of creatures. If the creatures you made
were controlled by their nature to do exactly what you put in them to do, they
could never be truly your friends. They would be subservient robot-like
machines that cannot help doing whatever you put in them to do.
But imagine if one day you wanted something more. You
wanted to make creatures that could truly be your friends. The only way to have
a true friend is to create a creature that can choose whether to be your friend
or not. And so, you make creatures with free will, who can act according to
whatever they wish, rather than according to your programming. Some of these
creatures will choose to be your friends, others will ignore you, others will
choose to be your enemies. They may fight among themselves, doing much evil to
one another, and blaming you, their creator, for the evil they do, when in
truth they should blame themselves, for they are the ones choosing to act the
way they do. They have the freedom to be good, and many of them choose to be
good, but some of them choose to be evil instead.
The only thing we can blame God for is His creating us and giving us the
freedom to be evil. This is a pointless blame. This is our reality and our fate, we cannot escape it. We have
been thrown into this game regardless of our wishes, a game that forces us to
choose to be either good or evil. We can debate the ethics of forcing people to
choose between good and evil. But at the end of the day, we are forced to play
this game. There is no dropping out.
Our Creator has done this to us, possibly against our will, but we cannot get hung up over
this fact, because our future holds something very important: Either eternal
reward, or eternal punishment. Blaming God will not help our future. It may
make us feel better now to hate God as so many do, but by making us think badly
of God, this will reduce our chances of future success. The future is coming
whether we want it to or not, and we have the power to make it a good or a bad
future.
Not all evil is done by humans. Droughts, floods and other natural
disasters can cause much evil and suffering, and we can lose loved ones through
car accidents and illnesses. Why doesn’t God prevent these things from
happening if He loves us? Because, in order for the testing hall that is this
world to be a true and consistent place of testing, God shouldn’t interfere
with the functioning of nature. The laws of nature should
behave in such a way that makes sense even without reference to God. If we were
as intelligent as we are, and yet we saw that nothing bad ever happened on
earth, no car accidents, no illnesses, nothing, that everyone died in old age
of natural causes, then this would be undeniable evidence of the existence of a
higher power that protects humans.
God wants us to have the possibility of being atheists. It is one of God’s
self-imposed rules that it should be impossible to directly detect His
existence. And that requires that the functioning of this world should make
perfect sense according to predictable scientific laws.
God wants us to believe in Him without seeing Him or knowing that He truly
exists, because if it were possible to prove His existence, it would reduce our
freedom to act against Him. God wants our universe to seem to make perfect
sense without any necessity for His existence. This
way we are given the freedom to discover Him and His Scriptures, and through
our knowledge and conscience, we gain the ability to either follow His way or
disbelieve in Him. Once we are given this knowledge, there is no turning away
from the choice between good and evil.
God wants our test to be a perfect test, in which we have perfect freedom
to be good or evil. This would allow us to take credit for our actions. If
God’s existence were proven, we’d be turned into slaves who cannot help but do
as He says. We’d become merchants who act in our best interests by following
God’s commandments. This is not what God wants. God wants us to be honored
creatures who befriend Him not because we are forced to, but because we choose
to. This is what gives worth to our friendship.
There is little honor in an employee acting according to his or her boss’s
wishes, this is the expected behavior. While even this amount of obedience to a
boss justifies reward, so that even if we had proof of God’s existence, we
could still be rewarded for obeying Him, God wants to take us beyond this boss-employee relationship. He wants
to raise us to the status of honored friends, who act out of love and
friendship, and out of our own efforts toward remembrance of God,
rather than acting out of practical compulsion.
God wants us to be the servant who continues to love and serve his master,
even though the master goes away for years, decades. What incredible honor and
reward can await such a servant who faithfully loves and serves his absent
master for 50 or 60 years, until he dies, even though the master never returns?
God, by creating the possibility for the existence of true friendship
between Himself and the humans He created, had to also create the possibility
for the existence of true enmity between Himself and them. He wanted friends,
but He knew that they couldn’t truly be called friends unless they had the
option to be His enemies.
The evil done by humans on Earth is a doing of humans when they act against
God, it is not a doing of God, therefore humans should be blamed, not God. And
the evil done by nature is nature’s own doing, caused by the rules of physics,
and God does not want to interfere with it because constant interference with
nature would cause His existence to become apparent. It is necessary for
disasters and accidents to be possible, as these prove to us the validity of
nature’s rules, and allows the atheist the freedom to use these to prove that
God doesn’t exist.
God and Nature shall always be apart, or seem to be apart, so that each one
appears to function without the other. This is necessary, as this is what
enables humans the freedom to choose between faith and disbelief, between good
and evil. The world needs to make perfect, logical sense without having to
refer to God in our thinking. It should be possible for us to believe that the
world functions on its own without anything supernatural existing, this is what
gives us the freedom to believe and disbelieve in God.
We need
to be able to believe that the Master is absent. This is when the true nature of the servant comes through. Bad servants
start to misbehave as soon as the Master looks away, and if the Master is away
long enough, they entirely give up serving Him. They will start to loot His
property and defile His name. But the good and honorable servant, even as he
sees all of this happen, continues to have love and loyalty toward his Master.
It makes no difference to him even if the Master never comes back. He keeps the
remembrance of his Master in his heart, and he admonishes and encourages
himself to continue to be the best servant he can be.
The world, the way it is, gives us the perfect opportunity to be this
honorable and admirable servant. If evil did not exist, and if bad things did
not happen, then there would have been no way for such servants of God to
exist. We’d instead all be lowly and menial servants who never had a chance to
disobey, and thus never had a chance to prove our loyalty toward God.
A world without evil and disaster would be a dysfunctional testing hall that cannot
differentiate between the best and the worst of us. Without evil and disaster,
God’s existence would be so clearly visible to us that most of us would cower
in front of Him. A few people might be found who are daring enough to disobey
God even in such circumstances, but the majority of people would kneel before
God as they would before a great emperor, regardless of whether they had any
loyalty toward Him.
A world that seems to be ruled by the cold, harsh laws of nature, and that
completely hides the existence of God from our eyes, gives us the perfect
opportunity to prove our loyalty to God. This world, with all of its problems,
is the perfect testing hall that, because of the
problems it has.
Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
I will get around the metaphysical complexity of defining good and bad
people by saying that a good person is anyone the reader thinks does not
deserve to suffer, while a bad person is someone who does not deserve God’s
protection.
Why good people suffer has already been mostly answered. If bad things
never happened to good people, this would act as a proof of God’s existence and
the invalidity of nature’s laws. If all good people lived to old age and died
of natural causes, this would be easily detectable by even the simplest
analysis.
There are religious people who wrongly think that if you are truly
faithful, you will never suffer anything bad. When they see bad things happen
to people, they try to find the reasons why the sufferers themselves are
responsible for the suffering that has come upon them.
But disasters are a natural part of life, and it should affect good and bad
people equally, or at least it should seem to do so.
God does not want to be seen, so it should be impossible to detect miracles
happening to save good people.
The suffering of good people proves that nature’s laws are real. If nothing
bad ever happened to good people, but only happened to bad people, the fact
would act as a proof of God’s existence, and this is what God does not want in
this world. God wants us to follow Him and serve Him of our own free will,
without any compulsion or strong inducement.
There would be millions, maybe billions, more believers if avoiding suffering
was as simple as believing in God and serving Him. But these believers would be
tantamount to fair-weather friends, who are on the bandwagon of faith only for
their own immediate, short-term interest. They wouldn’t be loyal friends of
God.
The world should occasionally give the faithful the impression that God has
abandoned them. This is the true test of faith. Once all blessing seems to have
gone from our lives, that’s when we look inside our hearts to find God again.
If we weren’t true believers, if we only believed in God to ensure our own
worldly good, then there would be no God in our hearts. We’d lose faith and
abandon religion once we had the impression that God has abandoned us, like
millions do.
But as for the truly faithful, when life gives us the impression that God
has abandoned us, we continue to believe in God and to do our best to protect
our faith. If our Master seems absent, it does not mean He has gone away
forever. Only a dishonorable servant would start to act as if the Master is dead
once He is gone away for a month or two. Those of us who truly believe in God,
who love Him and want His friendship, and who have accepted to be His servants
for eternity, will not abandon serving Him, regardless of what hardship and
loneliness comes our way.
By the morning brightness
And [by] the night when it covers with darkness,
Your Lord has not taken leave of you, nor has He detested [you].
And the Hereafter is better for you than the first [life].
And your Lord is going to give to you, and you will be satisfied.
Did He not find you an orphan and give [you] refuge?
And He found you lost and guided [you],
And He found you poor and made [you] self-sufficient.
[Quran 93:1-8]
[Quran 93:1-8]
The possibility of good people suffering something horrible is nothing but
an extension of these facts of life; the need for a proof of nature’s laws, the
necessity for some suffering to prove one’s faith and virtue. God can inflict
the greatest suffering on His most beloved servants, as He did with Abraham
when He asked him to slaughter his beloved son, and as He did was Jacob in
allowing him to believe, for years on end, that his most beloved son was dead,
as this is how the greatest friends of God are raised to the highest ranks.
There
can never be virtue without suffering. A virtuous
act is one where we overcome our natural tendencies for the sake of God, and
attaining virtue always has an element of
suffering in it, small or great. A rich person who, out of love for God,
refuses to practice usury to further enrich himself or herself, is doing a
virtuous thing. Their suffering is that they watch their fellow rich men and
women practice usury and see their wealth increase exponentially, while their
own wealth increases slowly and is subject to far more risk.
And someone who attains virtue by working for a charitable cause, or by
giving money to the poor, is also subject to a mild form of suffering (what
economists would call “opportunity cost”), as they lose time and money that
could have been used for something pleasurable.
The possibility of good people suffering does not mean that blessedness in
this world does not exist. As in the story of Joseph, God will allow suffering
to happen, followed by periods of ease and enjoyment, followed by more
suffering, until His servant is raised to the highest possible status. God will
not leave his faithful servants abandoned alone to be entirely subject to the
cold, harsh laws of nature, though it is necessary that it should appear so, so that God’s existence will not become
apparent. The Quran says:
Whoever does righteousness, whether male or female, and who is a believer –
We will surely cause him to live a good life, and We will surely give them
their reward [in the Hereafter] according to the best of what they used to do.
[Quran 16:97]
[Quran 16:97]
Besides reward in the afterlife, the verse promises a good worldly life.
The word used in the verse to mean “good” is tayyib, which can
also be translated as “wholesome”. God will have a hand in the lives of good
people, ensuring that despite the disasters they suffer, they will end up
having wholesome, blessed lives. This, of course, cannot be proven, in
accordance with God’s plan. But it can be seen in little things for those of us
who have faith. The lives of believers seem to have more purpose. Their life
stories seem better arranged and guided. This of course cannot be proven to an
atheist, and it doesn’t have to be.
On the other hand, for disbelievers, people who knowingly rebel against God
even though they believe in Him in their hearts, the Quran has this to say:
But whosoever turns away from My Remembrance, verily for him is a life
narrowed down, and We shall raise him up blind on the Day of Judgment. He will
say: “My Lord, why have you summoned me as a blind person when I was sighted?”
He will say: “Thus did Our signs come to you, and you forgot them; that is why
you have been forgotten this Day.”
[Quran 20:124-126]
[Quran 20:124-126]
This verse, similar to the previous one, implies that there are worldly consequences for having (and in this case,
not having) faith. Those who knowingly reject God will have a “narrowed down”
life, also translated as “straitened” and “constricted”. Similar to how the
lives of good people are blessed despite their hardships, the lives of evil
people are constricted despite their joys and pleasures.
To put it another way, the general theme of a
believer’s life is blessedness, while the general theme of a disbeliever’s life
is constrictedness, a feeling of being oppressed by life. Both will enjoy
periods of joy and periods of suffering, but through submitting to God,
believers are blessed by God and are freed from many of the constraints of
life, while disbelievers are, in general, and not very detectably, made to
submit to the harshness and coldness of nature.
There will be a hidden hand of God that shields and guides the believer,
while there is no such shield and guide for the disbeliever, and the world,
itself a servant of God, treats them the way they like to be treated, as if God
does not exist.
God could inspire us to always make the right choices in order to avoid all
that is bad and to always gain what is good. But, besides making God’s
existence apparent, this would reduce the value of our friendship with Him. A
true friend of God is the one who keeps his faith in Him during difficulties,
while a fair-weather friend of God is the one who only loves and worships God
during times of peace and plenty, and whose faith is shaken whenever something
bad happens to them (and plenty of such believers do exist).
The matter of ranks of God’s chosen friends in the afterlife is important,
because it decides a person’s status in the afterlife for all of eternity. God does not want most of us to
leave this world without having proven how good of a friend of God we are.
That, in fact, is the main purpose of this world: To distinguish our ranks,
from the very best of us to the very worst.
Some people die before they can prove themselves to God, for example
infants. God allows this to happen because infant deaths are required by the
laws of nature. And as for the poor infant, while their death is a tragedy in
this life, in the afterlife God can choose to give them great reward without
them having worked for it, since God’s generosity is not limited. He may also
give them a higher status in the ranks of His friends than their parents as a
reward for the parents, while also raising the status of the parents who kept
their faith during the ordeal. A truly just God will not let an infant’s death
go to waste.
There are a thousand ways in which God can preserve eternal justice while
allowing tragedies like infant deaths to happen, since this life is no more
than a mere flicker compared to the eternity of the afterlife, and everything
that happens here will one day be nothing more than a pale memory when a person
has spent millions of years enjoying the rewards of the afterlife, close to
family and friends and close to God.
Suffering is a natural part of a believer’s life. God does not ask us to
stoically control our emotions, never letting any suffering show, to prove that
we are faithful. Jacob was a prophet of God, and yet he cried so much after his
son was believed dead that his eyes turned blind. There is no shame in sadness.
God does not ask us to be super-human, but to keep faith alive in our hearts as
we are subjected to life’s joys and sorrows.
Isn’t it Unkind for God to Punish His Creatures?
Think of God as Light. By staying close to Him, by following His
commandments, we ensure our eternal good. No one is perfectly close to Him,
each person is at some degree of distance. Eternal punishment is only for those
who knowingly stray so far away from the Light that they knowingly wallow in complete darkness. Anyone who
stays within the merest flicker of Light may gain God’s forgiveness and eternal
reward.
Eternal punishment is necessary because that is the only way of ensuring that evil-doers don’t get
away with their evil deeds. Many Jews (and Christians too) have become
corrupted by the idea that they are God’s chosen children and that no matter
what they do, they will eventually be forgiven. This is a highly dangerous
thing to believe, because once you believe that you will never be punished
eternally, then you can get away with anything. If you are an Israeli settler,
who cares if you take over other people’s lands with violence. You are God’s
Chosen, and you will be forgiven.
Once the idea of eternal justice is corrupted, then from that all evil
follows. Even if people believe in an afterlife, if they think that there will
be a limit on their punishment term, that they will burn for a thousand years
and then will be freed to enjoy life for the rest of eternity, then many of
them will not find it so bad to devolve utterly into sin, since they will
eventually get away with it.
To preserve justice, people should not be able to get away with their
crimes. During their lifetimes God gives them thousands of opportunities to repent
and become better people. God believes that a human lifetime is sufficient to
distinguish good people from bad, that it contains enough opportunities for
humans to prove whether they deserve eternal good or eternal punishment. Every hour of every day contains opportunities for
us to change, for better or for worse, and these small changes mount. There is
a Light in this world and we can choose to either walk toward it or away from
it every hour of every day. Every time we take a step away from it, we do it in
the full knowledge that we have the chance to take a step toward it instead.
If we spend all of our lifetimes walking away from the Light by knowingly
doing evil, we shouldn’t be surprised when one day we find ourselves in total
darkness, hopeless of ever finding the Light again. It was our own choices that
brought us here. For years and decades we had the option to turn back and walk
toward the Light again, our consciences kept reminding us that we still had a
chance to return to God, that God’s door was wide open to us, but instead we
decided to keep walking away, chasing our shadow instead of chasing the Light.
Once a person falls into total darkness through their own choices, there
will no longer be a point to extending their lives to let them come back. This
is what Scripture claims, that once a person is totally surrounded by their
evil deeds, they will never come back toward the Light. There is a point of no
return, meaning that a person who crosses this point, even if given a lifetime
of a hundred thousand years, it will not make a difference in their fate.
In fact, the Quran claims that such evil people, even if taken to the
afterlife and shown all of the signs of God’s greatness, then brought back to
earth, they will continue to be evil. Among
some Christians there is the belief that people, no matter how bad, can be made
to become good through education and reformation. The Quran, always unabashedly
realistic, has a more satisfactory view, that guidance can only be had with
God’s blessing, that even if someone fully
understands God and believes in Him, they can still choose to be evil.
The Quran goes beyond this, saying that once a person fully devolves into evil,
not only will they become unreformable, but that God will actively prevent any reform, because they’ve
done sufficient evil to seal their fate (as in the case of the Pharaoh of Egypt
in the story of Moses).
If you could but see when they are made to stand before the Fire and will
say, “Oh, would that we could be returned [to life on earth] and not deny the
signs of our Lord and be among the believers.”
But what they concealed before has [now] appeared to them. And even if they were returned, they would return to that which
they were forbidden; and indeed, they are liars.
And they say, “There is none but our worldly life, and we will not be
resurrected.”
If you could but see when they will be made to stand before their Lord. He
will say, “Is this not the truth?” They will say, “Yes, by our Lord.” He will
[then] say, “So taste the punishment because you used to disbelieve.”
Truly, they have lost, those who deny the meeting with God, until when the
Hour [of resurrection] comes upon them unexpectedly, they will say, “Oh, [how
great is] our regret over what we neglected concerning it,” while they bear
their burdens on their backs. Unquestionably, evil is that which they bear.
And the worldly life is nothing but amusement and diversion; but the home
of the Hereafter is best for those who fear God, so will you not reason?
[Quran 6:27-32]
[Quran 6:27-32]
The average person might be a sinner, but they do not fight against God
every chance they get, and at the time of death they will likely possess enough
light to be eligible for God’s forgiveness.
What are some examples of people who deserve eternal punishment? Usurers
and their central bankers, who knowingly enslave millions to an evil, unnatural
type of debt to enrich themselves, who orchestrate economic bubbles and bursts
to reap trillions of dollars in profit while destroying the livelihoods of
millions of families, and who plunge countries like the US into war after war,
knowing that hundreds of thousands of innocent people will be killed, just so
that they can earn their trillions financing these wars. A just God will not
let these people go unpunished, and their punishment will not be something they
can laugh at, it will not be a slap on the wrist like the US government gives
to the usurers at Goldman Sachs every year when they are caught manipulating
markets and destroying parts of the economy to enrich themselves. It will be
something that will make them cry every single day for eternity. I will not believe in a God who lets these people get away with the immense
evil they do.
Conclusion
People make the mistake of considering this world their permanent home.
They become attached to its blessings and disasters, and they think they can
judge God based on what happens in their lives. But this world is nothing more
than a tool for distinguishing God’s true friends from His fair-weather
friends, and distinguishing these from His true enemies. This world is nothing more than a preparation for the eternity of the
afterlife. We would be wise not to become attached to its ups and downs,
and to know that these are the days given to us by God in which we can prove
ourselves to Him.
***
Author's Note
I originally published this essay as a short ebook on Amazon in 2015. I’ve
decided to publish it for free here on my website, after thoroughly rewriting
it, so that more people may (hopefully) benefit from it.
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