Update: Why does God let bad things happen?

As some of you may (or may not) know, I have a very big interest in theology, particularly Christianity because I'm a westerner. And so sometimes I'll think through theological problems in order to come to some conclusion. Sometimes I do, other times I'm not so lucky. But in both cases it's always helpful to write down your thoughts if you deem them serious enough.

Writing down your thoughts lends some kind of concreteness and structure to them, which they don't seem to have when they only exist in your head. So I'll use my blog to write them down whenever I feel like. This isn't to say that I'm trying to start a debate or convince anyone of anything, or even that I've reached a determined conclusion. I'm only writing down my thoughts in the simplest English possible.

Anyway...

The three main characteristics of God is that he's omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (he's everywhere at all times). So if God is all of these things, what does he lack? It's an age-old question that's been tackled before by age-old Jewish priests. This isn't to bring up the paradox of the heavy stone; that's a different question.

So what does God lack, if he's all-powerful? The answer is limitations. He lacks limitations. This is important because it answers the other question, "If God knew that Adam and Eve were going to eat the fruit before he even made them, why make them in the first place?" By this line of inquiry, God essentially made us to be doomed, knowing full well that we were going to be doomed. So why?

If you can do whatever you want at any moment and know whatever you want and just be everything conceptually, then there's no story. There's no story, no history, no narrative, just nothing to do, because nothing is out of your reach. There can't be a story, because for a story to exist requires some kind of conflict somewhere, or some kind of limitation. So before the universe was created, when only God existed, you can say that there was no story either. It's why Marx said that when the communist utopia is achieved, history would cease to continue, because conflict or suffering would no longer continue.

So he created us, knowing we would be doomed, because that very aspect of being doomed, pertaining to our free will in a sense, is what gives us meaning. The fact that we have vulnerabilities and limitations is what makes us who we are.

Now, maybe you don't believe me, and say that we can find love and meaning without having to be vulnerable and limited.

Take someone that you love, either a spouse, a parent, your child, whoever. Because they're human, they have vulnerabilities, and therefore they're prone to experience suffering. Which is no good; we don't want those we love to experience suffering. We can reduce the vulnerabilities hypothetically. Say, take your loved one and implant a metallic skeleton into them, and make them 10 feet tall, and insert a computerized chip in their brains to be fully aware of everything, and so on.

You can hypothetically remove their vulnerabilities, one by one, just so. Turn them into some sort of super being. But the more you remove the vulnerabilities, the more you remove the thing you love. I'd argue that we love each other precisely because we have vulnerabilities. That's what gives us a story (i.e. history).

And it's that story which gives us meaning, which is why God created us in the first place, knowing we would be doomed. It's better to live with meaning and suffering than to not exist at all, and we all know this even if only intuitively.

So to come to a more complete answer in my previous blog post about God (which this post is an update to), why does God allow things like cancer to exist?

Cancer itself isn't dangerous; if we were immune to cancer, for example, then cancer unchanged would no longer pose a threat. So the question isn't why does God allow cancer to exist, it's more like why does God make us vulnerable to cancer?

As I've stated, without vulnerabilities you don't have a story, and therefore things like love don't exist. Things like cancer are a condition to existence, without which there's no meaning to anything. It's partly why you may have a child knowing full well that they're going to experience suffering sooner or later: because to you existing is better than not existing, which presumably comes from a place of love. It's why the ancient priests and philosophers said things like God is Love, or God is Good, because these things lie at the root of our existence, which happens to be God.

Sorry if this comes off as rambly and repetitive; truth to tell, I'm writing this more for myself than anything. This isn't meant to be some hard conclusion to the problem of evil or tragedy. Like I've stated, I'm only writing down my thoughts.