The Problem Of Evil

Two thousand years ago, God sent down his son. He was a good man who preached compassion and forgiveness, he even died on the cross to teach us the true way of God. But it didn't work. Religions fought with each other over their own interpretations of Christ's teachings. They got in the way of faith. It no longer became an issue of free will but of power and guilt. Where's the free will in a priest saying "Do what I tell you to do or you'll go to Hell?" That isn't free will, that's obeying orders because you fear punishment.

Priests are only men anyway. They don't care about understanding God-they care about building power in this world. But God doesn't want vast churches and adoration. He's not that kind of father. He wants us, His most ambitious creation, to come of age and no longer need Him.

We have always believed in God, our God, who created Mankind in his own image to worship Him. An all-powerful, all-knowing, compassionate God. However, we have always been troubled by what the philosophers call the Problem of Evil. Given all the evil in the world, how can an all-powerful, all-knowing, merciful God exist? Either God knows about evil, cares about it, but can't do anything about it-in which case he is not all-powerful, or he cares about it, can do something about it, but doesn't know what to do about it-in which case he is not all-knowing, or he knows about it, can do something about it, but doesn't care about it-in which case he is neither merciful nor compassionate.

We have always believed this inconsistency by believing that out powerful, omniscient, benign God allowed evil in the world to give us, his greatest creation, the gift of free will. To trust us with the ability and opportunity to choose between good and evil, even in the face of our harshest trials and tribulations. Is the truth so simple that it should have been obvious? After all, what God would create Man simply to worship Him? What Supreme Being could be so vain, so petty?

Perchance there is no Problem of Evil because God did not create us to worship Him. We always assumed God created a perfect ordered world-an Eden-then introduced the serpent of evil to test us. But maybe this isn't true. Maybe our Lord created an evil world then introduced good and the natural state in this world and the next is chaos-entropy. That evil is the normal way of the world, and good was only introduced as a capricious whim; God only created us to enhance his amusement and that is the sole reason for our existence. Where our God allows us to climb higher and higher, believing in virtue and goodness and honor, only to dash us down with random acts of evil. Conceivably, there is no heaven, only arbitrary suffering. Life beyond death could be as cruel and random as life on earth-except that it is eternal. That there is no escape. No karma. No justice. No Elysian fields where the good may find peace after a hard life. That the Soul Truth, is that God-the God we dedicated our lives on earth to-doesn't exist.

Or, perhaps this is all to prove once and for all that God doesn't exist. That only the Devil holds sway. Only then could mankind outgrow the shackles of religion and develop its own sense of right and wrong-true free will. After all, one can only make a truly virtuous choice when there's no promise of reward. So this will be God's gift to us, to erase himself from our consciousness. That's what his son tried to explain. Living a good life is its own is its own reward - at death each individual will experience his own Soul Truth.

But no one listened.

Updated 22.04.06

Religion from South Park

"...you see, it's our tears, Stan, that give God his great power."