Oct 08, 2017

Why Pain (1)

How do we respond to seemingly

Random acts of terror:

Makes us wonder:

If this pain is present,

Is there a loving God?

We are speechless in horror and sorrow over the senseless killings in Las Vegas, and shudder at the floods and deaths and destruction that has occurred in this hurricane season, and earthquakes in Mexico and elsewhere. It makes us wonder what kind of God is it that allows not just the random acts of terror that human do, but the terrible natural disaster of flood and earthquakes that have caused death and destruction throughout the world.

This question has been asked of the gods since the beginning of humanity, and continues to be central to the questioning of all pain: Why? What kind of God would permit such destruction? Why do good people suffer such pain in this world? How can we claim there is a God that is only love? While I cannot answer these questions in an easy manner, I will try to explain my thoughts and feelings on this difficult series of deep questions.

Seeing perfection in the imperfect

Just on the face of it, we judge what we see in the world: there is enormous pain caused by both natural and human means. How do we claim that “all is well” when it is so clear to our black-white judgement centers that all is NOT well? We live in a fiery and evolving universe, and it is only a matter of time (yes, a lot of time, but still time limited) before the universe burns itself out and ceases to be, returning to the energy level of zero. Even before that, the expansion of the universe will reach a point of our galaxy being the only galaxy visible, as the rest will be traveling away from us at a speed where that light from those stars can never reach us.

Let us look at John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Through the Word all things were made; without the Word nothing was made that has been made. In the Word was life, and that life was the light of all humanity. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

            In Genesis we find “God saw all that was made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

But how do these two beautiful verses go against the death and destruction that we witness every day? It may be we have an idea of God that does not fit in the two critical verses that I quote above. We have, in our standard teachings in most of our religions, divorced God from the reality of our universe, and placed this God far above us and “out there someplace”. We love to worship the kingship of God, and Jesus, despite the clear times in the bible that Jesus refused kingship and sided with the poor and displaced. We fail to see that this universe we live in, especially our world of turmoil, as part of the Word, in that the Word is Life itself, light shining in the evolutionary turmoil of the universe, shining and revealing the process in the light of life everywhere.

But above all we fail to see the truth in that statement of Jesus: “nor will people say ‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21). The majority of us have failed to see that ‘kingdom of God within’, that is we are living in that kingdom as we speak. Most translations put it this way: “The kingdom of God is in your midst”, or we are living in that kingdom as we speak, but in our judgmental eyesight it more appears that we are living in hell.

Until we can see the absolute truth of the words of Jesus: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:20). What this is stating so clearly is that the Father, Jesus (the Christ), and you and I are one being – but we fail to see that.

We have failed to see as God, sees, even though, by the words of Jesus, we are all one.

Too good to be true.

We will spend some time looking at this next time.

Meditation

Oh Gentle One, we are blind in our failure to see the absolute oneness that our true selves are. You have promised this is true, but it is truly too good to be true. So we have decided you were mistaken, and we can ignore that statement. Open our eyes so that we may see ourselves as we truly are: magnificent beings who are one with you, and have always been one with you, and will always be one with you. Help us to understand that the pain we feel, this cross we bear, is part of the magnificence of the kingdom of God that is within and without us; and is the very universe itself.