Now I’ve known the existence of suffering, of bad things happening to good people, most all of my life, in the trauma and pain and brokenness of people that were no more aware of the world than I was but somehow so much less fortunate. But – and forgive me for the self-centered nature of this (after all, mine is the clearest/closest perspective I have) – semi-recent events have presented a mystery in a test of that lens. In a temporary abandonment of that clear perspective of suffering what I keep coming back to is why. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s so difficult to link some bad thing that happened to a person to the bad things that person has done to deserve it. It doesn’t match up to me. And that’s because there is suffering in the world not because we deserve it, but because we’re just far from God. This is not new news for the many of us, I’m sure, but its meaning has taken on a far more personal turn for me now. Bad things that happen are not good things, any way you look at it. It’s true there are good things about something that has happened, it’s true people learn from bad things, but that does not really make it worth it. In fact, appreciating these things makes me more aware of the fact that in a good world it wouldn’t have happened. People wouldn’t have to learn from mistakes or gain some amount of life experience. We can’t pretend like we don’t live in a broken world. We can’t strive for perfection or oneness with God without taking into account the place we’re in and what we are. Suffering isn’t a good thing, ever, whatever way we look at it. It’s also not dismissible. It is as much a part of our lives and our identities – as humans (humanity) as much as individuals – as anything else is. That inevitability is key. We are not human without free will, free will doesn’t come without people screwing up, people screwing up makes the world a bad place, thus that is a key part of our humanity. A key fact of our humanity. And I’m not going to skate over what I just said: “We are not human without free will.” I do believe that. I imagine a humanity created by God without His accompanying blessing (debatable) of free will and it does not seem as whole to me. I think that this move by our omniscient God was a deliberate one – forbidden fruit eaten and all. As much as we (or I) don’t want to accept that, free will was/is necessary. Tragic and necessary. We are human and we are inquisitive. Knowledge-seeking. We are human and we are complex. We are human and we are not God. How could we ever be absolutely close to God if we didn’t choose it? If we didn’t know what He was not? If we weren’t aware of ourselves? Etc etc etc. If we could, we wouldn’t be human. Obviously, we are not close to God, not now. The culmination approaches. It is even now swiftly arriving. There is now for me a large significance and validity in the concept of a common consciousness of humanity. Of course! Reference my thoughts on time: we are all one person. It is all one moment. And as we near the second coming and pass on our genes and enter into the minds of our ancestors we are getting closer, closer; we are gaining and always gaining the pieces we need for the end, the knowledge and wisdom of ourselves of God of the universe, and some of us will move on. And we will be ready, then, to join God.
Does any of this make sense?
