A hard couple of questions everyone needs to answer or someone else explain another point of view!

Why Suffering?
By Victor Warren 

(this was one of my late sons writing,he passed from this life at only 42 years old which is early in life but, he had old-old wisdom! I hope you enjoy and that it will make you stop and think?)

It’s pretty hard to look at the world, at how messed up it is, at all the suffering and pain, at all the bad things that happen to good people, and conclude that there actually IS a God.  I know this as well as anyone, and I spent a decade (half my adult life) as an atheist.  I thought like many others do when they’re in the grip of despair; if any being can be called God, how could He let these things happen?  And if He DOES let them happen, doesn't that mean He’s mean-spirited?  Well, the answer to these two questions is actually my second point, so I’ll skip over that for now.  My point here is that I see why it’s so hard for so many people to believe that there actually IS a God.  Yet the answer to this first question MUST be one of two things; either there IS a God, or there IS NOT.  

I’ve seen glimpses into the way the universe functions.  I’ve studied physics on such a small level that it boggles my brain that so many things so small can not only function together, but can combine to make a world as complete, complex and marvelous as the one I see every day when I look around.  Even in the ugliest of things there is some beauty.  And I am in awe of all this.  Likewise, I have studies astrophysics, looked in the opposite direction, at just how mindbogglingly large and complex the universe as mankind has come to understand it really is.  The universe blows my mind every bit as much as the micro-verse of quantum physics, and both are as mind-boggling and glorious as the macro-verse, the world on the scale that humans can perceive with the naked eye.  Here we have three distinct realities, each separate from one another (a single electron striking an apple has no more effect on the apple than an apple would have on the sun if hurled into it at a million miles per hour), yet connected to one another, built upon one another, and part of the greater whole.  Add to all of this the theoreticals and abstracts I’ve come to know through pursuit of philosophy, psychology, spirituality, and the various other areas of study I’ve pursued over the years.  On top of this is the history of the world, the fact that everything above that goes on in the world today is but a cut-away slice in time compared to the whole past and future, a still shot if you will.  I could go on and on, but there’s no need.  I trust I’ve already made my point; that what we know today as “reality” is completely, mind-boggling, incomprehensibly vast and intricate, and breathtakingly beautiful and mysterious.  And all of THIS in turn is but the tiny fraction that mankind has managed to uncover and understand to date!

Those last two paragraphs were necessary in order to provide the requisite perspective for me to make THIS logical chain of reasoning, leading to an inescapable and certain conclusion:  1.  There must either be a God or not.  2.  It is inconceivable that a God can exist and let the world be the way that it is.  3.  The only thing that is less conceivable to me that point number 2 is that everything I described in the above paragraph could simply spring into existence one day, with no creator, no reason and no purpose.  I must therefore conclude that, of the two options from which I am forced to pick, the least unlikely option is that there actually IS a God.  Therefore I must proceed henceforth as though I absolutely and totally believe that He exists.  

This in turn lays the groundwork for the second, much larger, and more difficult question.  WHY?  Why would God not only allow so many wrongs to go on, but have purposely set the world up this way in the first place?

I believe the best way to answer this question is to approach it from God’s point of view (as near as my tiny mortal mind can come anyway).  So lets travel back, way back when there was nothing.  So imagine if you will that you’re all alone in a black nothingness.  There is nothing but your thought because you ARE everything.  There is nothing but you, and for that reason you are utterly and completely alone.  But you are all-powerful too; you can create and have anything you can imagine by simply thinking about it.  Well, you can’t remain completely alone floating in a void of nothingness for all eternity; that would be madness.  So you MUST create SOMETHING.  But since you can create ANYTHING, the first question you ask yourself is, “What should I create?”

You quickly realize that in order for your creation to solve your original problem of being completely alone, you must create a whole other, separate consciousness.  So your next question is, “How do I create another mind that is truly separate from my own?”  After contemplating the problem for awhile you realize that since yours is the only thought that exists, in order for another mind to be truly ‘separate’ and ‘other,’ it would need the freedom to make its own choices, to choose what it wants instead of what you want.  Otherwise it would merely be an elaborate extension of your own thought.  [Here’s a concrete analogy… In the same way that a lonely man might make an elaborate computer program to keep him company, it would not’t be true companionship as long as it was strictly governed by the laws set for it.  No matter how elaborate these rules might be, the computer would never truly be capable of thinking for itself unless it had separate intelligence.  And the only way it could have that is if it also had the freedom from your programming instructions to make its own choices regardless of your wishes.]

But you don’t want your creation to overthrow you, ever, nor do you want it to ever achieve the capability and desire to go its own way and leave you alone once again.  So your next question is, “How do I create a mind that can think for itself and make its own choices, regardless of any pressure I may exert on it, and yet still have it WANT to remain with me, as I want it to remain?”  The answer is so simple that you astound yourself with your own creativity.  It would have to be able to choose, yes.  But the ultimate choice it must be free to make for itself is to accept your will for its own good, because it comes !to realize in due time that yours is ultimately the best will, choice and knowledge.  Now, in order to do that it must feel, at the very core of its being, an attraction toward you, a longing to be near you, to be close to you, to want to share with you, learn from you, and to be content simply being with you.  This feeling you must instill at its very core in order for this whole idea to work.  And this idea you decide to call “Love.”

But why stop with one such ‘other mind’ when you can create as many as you wish?  You can make each one different, each one beautiful in its own right.  And you can create them all in this much more fulfilling existence where you love each, and they you, but where they also come to love one another as well.  Yes, that would be SO much more glorious than just one mind.

Now, all these creatures to come must love you, as you will love each of them.  Yet they must be presented with a reality such that, from each of their own unique, individual points of view, they are completely free to choose for themselves what they want, what they don’t want, what to believe or disbelieve, what they like, dislike, etc.  So in order to pull all this off, you must create a bigger reality that is like a shell.  And just like a shell contains an animal within it, this shell of a reality must contain all these beings within it.  None of them can ever be allowed to leave this shell until after they have chosen to accept your will, learned how to love you, and come to understand that all this was your ingenious idea to begin with.

And in order for all this to work, this shell, which you will call ‘material reality’ (but which they will come to call the universe), must have two intrinsic principles.  Firstly, it must be made up of opposites, each balanced against the other to create a variable tension in between the two extremes.  In this manner, each of these aspects can be fine-tuned to yield a specific effect.  In conjunction with all the countless other such balanced ideas,  a vast network will unfold that will allow each and every single one of these created minds to be born, live, learn, love and die, all while being completely free to make their own choices along the way. All of this will undoubtedly be far beyond the scope of comprehension for any of these being, which you will hence forth call your children, but not beyond your own scope of understanding.  After all, nothing exists ANYWHERE unless you imagined it in the first place and allowed it to be so in the second place.

So now you have the idea for the setting of this grand experiment, and most of the pieces in place.  But there’s still that pesky second intrinsic principle to deal with.  In order for all this to resolve correctly in the end, each child must be given the freedom to choose, yes.  But of equal importance, you must account for the fact that they WILL undoubtedly make mistakes along the way, gradually gaining more and more knowledge in order to see more and more clearly.  At the end of any given child’s path will come full understanding, acceptance, and love for you, as well as love for each other.  But you must weave all of this so that each of these children’s individual threads are effected by all others they come into contact with, as well as by the inanimate shell itself.  This complicated weave must allow for each child to successfully reach the end of their own path while also accounting for all possible choices and mistakes they can make along the way.  Since they MUST make mistakes in order to have freedom of choice by its very definition, you must be willing to forgive them for their mistakes at the end, no matter how many they make or how horrendous they may be, so long as they arrive at their destination of enlightenment which you had set for them all along.  You will forgive them if they but ask, because they are your children and you love them.  And along the way they will also learn to forgive their brothers and sisters in like fashion, and eventually even realize the ultimate fruition of this concept by learning to forgive themselves for their own mistakes.

Now, with all this concept in place in your mind, there’s just a couple of loose ends to tie up.  Firstly, they can’t know with 100% certainty that this is the way the plan is to unfold.  They must have faith that it is so, and believe in their faith in order to have the strength to continue.  But they must also have some doubt, because if they knew beyond any doubt whatsoever, they would loose their freedom of choice.  As with all things, in order for there to BE a choice there must be at least two different things to choose from, in this case whether to believe in you and purpose, or in mindless, inanimate purposelessness. And so you instill within them not only love at their very core, but faith in yourself and your existence as well.  With these two tools, they will make it to the end of their journeys, so long as they choose to keep going, choose to never give up.

Their journeys must also be difficult, or else their existence would have no real value, no real meaning.  And so all this reality must be set up in such a way that the default state is for a child to NOT move forward, to NOT progress, to NOT learn and grow.  Only by choosing to love, learn and grow can they continue along their difficult path toward enlightenment.  They must also choose to accept the toil, pain and sorrow that comes to them along their path.  By so choosing, they are paying their own way with the one and only thing they have that is truly theirs, acquired by themselves rather than given to them by you.  That one thing is the ability to experience pain and sorrow.  Not only the ability, but the free choice to choose to do so, for the simple reason that they will have come to realize that to do so is the correct way.  In this manner they will earn their way, their destination will be full of meaning, value and purpose, and you will forgive them of all their mistakes once they reach this end point.  

In order to facilitate all this, you will have to sew a few seeds of knowledge throughout your creation by interjecting key figures at key points.  These key figures will carry just enough of a message to all your children scattered throughout space and time to reinforce their intrinsic feelings of love and faith.  This will offset the constant downward pull of the world around them and give them just enough strength to continue moving forward, should they choose to do so.

But the best part of your entire plan is that this ‘end point’ is really just the beginning; it is the point when all have learned and matured and come to feel true love for themselves, each other, and you.  At that point, your REAL creation can begin.  This second creation will be free of the pain and sorrow.  It will be joyous and fulfilling and full of meaning and glory and love witnessed and shared by all, forever!  

    Now, with all this in place there is only one thing left to do.  Make it so.  And so with a single word, “BE!” perhaps, you bring your entire fabulous, glorious, infinitely diverse and shining creation into being.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Victor Alan Warren is now gotten his answers in the hand og our Father God,God rest his soul .AMEN!