[Dear readers: \u00a0this piece is first in a series of three fictional articles about human loss and suffering. \u00a0The first two present actual religious rationales for dealing with suffering that I have heard from religious friends. \u00a0The final one stresses reliance on human aid and makes no attempt to explain away the loss and brutality that we sometimes face in life.]<\/p>\n
July 22, 2011 at 11:22 am<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes I hate this job\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Lord of Hosts had a particularly bad day today.\u00a0 He was constrained by his Goodness to watch as Zachary Sandvig\u2019s body temperature slowly rose to 109 F in the family minivan after his mom forgot to drop him at daycare.<\/p>\n
Yahweh\u2019s deepest desire was to intervene, but this would have resulted in a net increase in suffering elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sucks\u201d, said Jehovah.\u00a0 \u201cHere I am, feeling every nuance of his suffering and I just sit here.\u00a0 What\u2019s worse is I\u2019m linked telepathically with his mom as she walks away from the car.\u00a0 It would take literally zero effort for Me to remind her about Zach.\u00a0 But if I did that, the world would deviate from maximum perfection.\u00a0 Shit, even I have a hard time believing this is the best of all possible worlds.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to minimize Zachary\u2019s pain, but humans just don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to be Me.\u00a0 It\u2019s such a helpless feeling. \u00a0\u00a0I loved that little guy.\u00a0 Add him to the usual millions who die every day, and it\u2019s just heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Everlasting Elohim paused, and appeared lost in thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat good is My great power if I can only act in accordance with My own nature?\u00a0 \u00a0On the one hand, I can\u2019t tinker because the universe is already perfect (because that\u2019s all I could have created).\u00a0 On the other, I\u2019m perfectly compassionate and empathetic so I live with the pain of billions of wretched souls.\u00a0 Sometimes I wish I had never been uncaused.<\/p>\n
But then I remember what makes it all worthwhile.\u00a0 I was lonely.\u00a0 Without humanity, I\u2019d still be alone, locked in My own Nature.\u00a0 Creating billions of sensitive, conscious, vulnerable beings and placing them in a dangerous, competitive environment was the best way I could have arranged things so that those beings could voluntarily choose to love Me.<\/p>\n
Still, I feel like such a dick on days like this.\u00a0 Was My loneliness so bad that innocent kids like Zach have to pay the ultimate price, dying in agony and alone?<\/p>\n
Everyone says I\u2019m omnipotent, but I\u2019m in the same prison humans are.\u00a0 Most people will live short, miserable lives.\u00a0 Mine is long and miserable.\u00a0 I have to watch the whole piteous pageant.\u00a0 The few who enjoy life will live with the knowledge that sudden loss or disease can strike at any time.\u00a0 I can\u2019t blame the naturalists who think we\u2019re all just matter in motion.\u00a0 The world with Me in it and the world without Me in it look exactly the same.\u00a0 Sometimes I doubt My own Goodness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zachary\u2019s mother, Emily Sandvig, a 5th grade teacher in Johnston, Iowa, is in the Polk County jail pending an investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Dear readers: \u00a0this piece is first in a series of three fictional articles about human loss and suffering. \u00a0The first two present actual religious rationales for dealing with suffering that I have heard from religious friends. \u00a0The final one stresses reliance on human aid and makes no attempt to explain away the loss and brutality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/enoughsenough\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}