Eco-Train QOTW 9.8
If I had the unbearably exceptional opportunity to ask God one question about his/her/its design for this world, I’d need to format the question very carefully, since who wants to be “that idiot” who points out an extreme oversight to an all powerful being who might smite you for your irreverent infraction
The Question
On a bright sunny day, long, long ago, when the world was still fairly shiny and new I asked the heavens a sensitive question…
Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?
Why do children die of cancer?
Why, oh, why?
God
I am nature; the power that breathes amid the trees and dances in the rain. The joy in a new-born’s eyes, the ache for love in a young woman’s heart. If you’ve ever really looked at clouds, you might have seen me blustering, blowing and floating across the world in spontaneous harmony with everything that is. The magic and the mayhem that spins you around the sun and conjures the tides to rise and ebb, I am the salmon that swims upstream.
Me
So WTF, you are nature, I understand that, but why do you allow suffering, why?
God
I am the lawn, the endless Savanna, but I am not a single blade of grass. I cannot pander to one cry for help, I’m very busy trying to maintain the whole. Without balance there is nothing. Without the best environment for the crowd, the individual cannot survive.
Me
Okay, nature, you speculate on the overall benefit, the perfect environment for your minions, if they progress as a unit, you’ve achieved your aim?
God
Now, you have my measure, you clever little minion. But, don’t irritate me, I’ve got a crisis a minute to attend to. Please desist, your questions are rather boring, under the circumstances. I gave every minion the gift of free will, and look how it’s abused. Go on, take a look?
Me
Free Will has nothing to do with cancer dear lord. I don’t understand why a kind and caring being, such as yourself, could possibly allow a tiny, innocent child to suffer so immeasurably, to say nothing of how their family suffers along with them.
God
The individual minion is a blade of grass, I have to worry about the health of the lawn. The trials of a single blade of grass are not my concern. Without balance there is nothing.
Me
Balance? I’m about to give your answer a Z-minus, as far as ratings go for answers.
God
Do whatever you like. Be whatever you want. Understand as much or as little as you care to. But hear this, without the whole, bits and pieces shrivel and dissolve into endless darkness. There is light, but it’s made up of millions of tiny points that glitter and radiate to illuminate the world. Without a single dot of matter, there is no universe. Do you understand?
Me
No, I don’t understand your riddles. I just want to know why you allow so much suffering if you’re as good and great as you’re supposed to be.
God
For heaven's sake, just go outside and sink your bare feet into a dew soaked lawn. If you don’t understand after that, I can’t help you. Go on and try it.
Me
It’s magnificent, there is simply no single word that could ever describe my pleasure. Yet, still, dear lord, I don’t understand.
Background
Just because
For me my “God-training” was rather unusual because it did not come from the family fold. My family were what I call “basically religious” the type of people who only pray if a speeding train is running full tilt down the tracks aimed directly at them. I, much to my family’s disappointment, became extremely religious during my years in junior school. I attended a very posh Catholic, all-girls school and was chosen amongst thousands of candidates to train for the nunnery. Thank goodness for a family emergency that “forced” me to abandon novice training because I would’ve made an abominable nun.
Later, I transferred to an all-boys, Anglican school, which had started accepting girls. There were three-hundred-and-eighty boys in the school to four girls. I must admit that during the last two years of my schooling I became a lot less religious.
At varsity I dabbled in almost every religion and anti-religion, I would say that I “educated” myself. Sadly, the outcome was that I became “basically religious”, these days I need the speeding train, you know?
Find the question
Here @ecotrain/ecotrain-qotw-98-if-you-could-ask-god-one-question-and-god-would-give-you-an-immediate-answer-what-would-the-question-be-and-w