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It’s time to face the music. It’s time to get busy and struggle with our faith. It’s time to search for what God is trying to tell us in allowing so much tragic suffering and death. It’s time to consider what God may be asking us to do about it.
First, we must simply admit:
7. We will never fully understand God’s actions
In Part 1 I said that I can’t answer all of your questions about why God allowed particular people—some of them people you loved and cared about—to die of cancer, or in an automobile accident, or from a hurricane or flood. That’s because I don’t know why God allowed these things to happen.
Only God’s understanding is infinite. Our understanding is small and limited. Often, we simply don’t have enough information to understand why God allowed an innocent person to die, and their loved ones to suffer.
Sometimes the best we can do is to trust that God actually does love everyone involved, and that in the eternal scheme of things there is some reason for what happened, even if it looks completely senseless to us.
Yes, if circumstances had been different, maybe things could have turned out better. However, God has to take into account all of the factors that affect our lives as they unfold. Those factors include the inexorable workings of a material universe that doesn’t care whether we puny humans live or die. They also include all of the human factors of love and hate, enlightenment and insanity, compassion and sadism, that make human life and human community so complex and tangled.
We humans see the particular circumstances that surround particular tragic events. God sees all of the circumstances, past, present, and future, near and far, that influence those events.
We see only the immediate aftermath of deaths due to accidents, cancer, or heart disease—and of natural disasters that claim thousands of lives. God sees the eternal consequences of those events.
Where is God in this?
As the years pass and we look back on the events of our lives from a longer perspective, we may gradually come to see and understand more of the factors that God took into consideration in providing for or permitting events to unfold as they did.
In case it’s not clear by now, God never causes evil things to happen. Here’s how it works:
- God provides for good things to happen to us.
- God permits evil things to happen to us.
And as I said earlier, God permits evil things to happen to us only if it was necessary for our freedom and our salvation.
Also, if God does allow something evil to happen, then there must be some good that can come from it. Mind you, that doesn’t mean it was good that it happened. It doesn’t even necessarily mean that something good will come from it. Only that something good can come from it.
Whether or not something good does come from it is up to us.
The greatest good that can come from human tragedies is that it may cause those of us who see and experience them to grow in compassion for others who are suffering. When tragedy prompts us to get busy and do something for those who need our help and care, it is part of our growth toward angelhood. (See, for example, “Ihor Lakatosh’s Story: How Healing the Body Helps the Soul.”)
When we make the decision to respond with care and compassion, we give those who are suffering the gift of knowing that even in their darkest times, someone truly cares about them. That’s what human life is all about.
This brings us to our final point:
8. Whatever happens, we can choose to grow spiritually from the experience
I can’t tell you why the tragedies you grieve happened. Only God knows. We can only hope that it will become clearer in time.
I also can’t say anything simple that will make it all better. You must still face these severe temptations and tests of your faith.
What I can say is that painful trials and temptations are a necessary part of our spiritual development.
But more than that, when we are going through these harrowing tests of faith, we are most fully engaged with our true humanity. In fact, we are forming our humanity. To adapt the famous line of Thomas Paine, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Under ordinary circumstances and on ordinary days, we simply go about our business, doing what we have to do to in order to survive in this world. Yes, these ordinary days and small moments do build up the sinew of our lives, and gradually mold us into emotionally and spiritually mature adults. Not even the smallest moment of our life is wasted.
But consider what is going on when we are facing the ultimate questions of life!
Consider what is happening when we are questioning the very foundations of our faith!
Consider what we are doing when we face these heart-wrenching spiritual crises!
Thumbs up or thumbs down?
At these moments, we are like Caesar at the Colosseum, watching the gladiators fight their battles. When the battle has ended and the fate of the combatants hangs in the balance, everyone in the stadium looks to Caesar. Will his thumb point up toward life? Or will it point down toward death?
That is the ultimate power we have over our own life when we face these agonizing battles of spiritual trial and temptation.
Our life on earth is a spiritual Colosseum where we fight the life-or-death battles in our soul that will determine our eternal future. It is not designed to be easy. It is designed to bring us face to face with the ultimate questions of life.
We are not meant to avoid or run away from these deep and harrowing questions. If we are to be truly human, and become angels, then we must enter the fray. We must face the foes of evil, pain, suffering, uncertainty, anxiety, and all the other “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
When we are facing these spiritual battles we are at our most human because that is when we make the ultimate choices of who and what we will be. Whichever way we point our thumb—up, down, or sideways—that is the direction our life will go. In these times of anguished trial and temptation, we determine the meaning of all the other, ordinary daily moments of our lives.
That’s why I can’t answer your questions for you. You will have to struggle to find answers for yourself. I do hope, though, that the ideas I have offered here will give you some clearer light and a better perspective from which to face the battle, and move from darkness and anxiety into the light and peace of greater understanding.
To achieve greater understanding, we must be willing to let go of our own ideas about how God ought to run the universe so that we can gradually come to understand how and why God does run the universe.
What does God have in mind for you in these events?
When we are willing to let our old ideas and our old self die, and let God give us a new self and new meaning for our life, we will also grow in our ability to help and comfort friends and family who are suffering from tragedy and loss.
Perhaps that is why God has allowed these things to happen in your life.
Perhaps you are experiencing these particular tragedies because God is asking you to grow in compassion for those who are suffering from their losses.
Perhaps God is challenging you to think more deeply about the meaning of your life and your relationships.
Perhaps God sees that through facing the painful spiritual battles that these tragedies have triggered in your soul, you may become a comfort and a blessing to friends and family who are struggling and in pain because of them.
Perhaps through the seemingly random and senseless illness and death of those you care about, you can grow in love, understanding, and compassion.
If so, you will be moving closer to the eternal future of enlightenment and love for your fellow human beings that God has had in mind for you from the moment you were born.
This four-part article is a response to three spiritual conundrums submitted by readers.
For further reading:
- If God is Love, Why all the Pain and Suffering?
- How does God Govern Humankind? Is God Actively Involved in our Lives?
- What is the Source of Human Fragility, Sickness, and Disease?
- Strip Search Prank Calls, Domestic Violence: Evil Loves Deception
- Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
- Who Are the Angels and How Do They Live?
- What Happens To Us When We Die?
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Kudos, Lee, on a very masterfully presented piece of work. I especially liked this last segment!
Interestingly, this last piece has many parallels to some writings I have been penning for either my own blog or perhaps self-publication, in my own search for understanding and inner growth as I try to deal with my current life’s circumstances.
Though my writings may not reflect the same points of view having all the same spiritual references as your piece does, it is eerily similar in overtone. It is a bit ironic how closely they travel as they unravel in their nature to present perspective.
Hi Richard,
Thank you. I’d say it was no coincidence that you came across our blog.
You’re probably right. I must have been subconsciously searching for someone just like you to offer the right kind of support with the proper perspective and presentation.
Very nicely written Lee. Recent Malaysian airline & Gaza tragedies makes one question the strength in the positive energy.One feels everything around is breaking apart and one feels ashamed to be human. Dalai Lama said somewhere that there is more goodness in the world than evil but as a society we focus more on the negative than the positive. I try my best to keep my faith in positive energy alive and thriving but it is sad to see negative forces win again and again. or is it that they have already lost as they decided to embrace negativity…
Hi Baldeep,
Thanks for your thoughts. It certainly is a battle for light to overcome darkness both within us and in our world. I do like the thought that for evil, winning is losing. The more it operates, the more it brings about its own demise.
Unfortunately, since the existence of evil is a necessity in our human existence here on Earth, it can never really bring about its own demise regardless of its persistent efforts to influence or destroy anything and everything it can
As you’ve said, all evil cannot be extinguished from our lives without extinguishing us in the process, no? Therefore, sadly, no such ultimate demise could ever occur over any period of time.
Hi Richard,
Yes, good points. I was speaking more poetically than literally.
Evil tends to be self-limiting, in that there is no coherence and solidarity in it. Sooner or later, instead of attacking the good as it desires to do, it turns on itself and becomes “a house divided against itself,” to use Jesus’ words (Matthew 12:25).
For example, a government whose officials are motivated by concern for the welfare of its people can work together harmoniously to achieve constructive goals for the country it governs.
However, a government whose officials are motivated by a desire for money and power will be riven by infighting and backstabbing as each tries to gain more money and power than the others in government. So that government’s doom is inevitable. It has happened to empire after empire throughout history–and is still happening today in our modern empires.
So although I agree with you that evil does not go away in an ultimate sense, but persists to eternity, it exists in a state of continual self-limiting internal strife and revolution, causing particular evil people and groups to rise up to power and then inevitably fall to weakness, subjection to others, and (in this world) death under the weight of their own evil.
This is what takes place over time to evil individuals, groups, and nations here on earth, and this is what takes place in hell to eternity.
About evil being extinguished from our lives:
This can happen through a process of spiritual growth and rebirth during our lifetime here on earth.
It is true that we will never rid ourselves of 100% of our evil impulses. There will always be shadows in our life. Even the highest angels are not perfectly pure.
However, what matters most is what Swedenborg calls our “ruling love” or “primary love.” Whatever we put first in our life–whether loving God, our fellow human beings, money, or power–that will determine the overall nature of our life.
If, through a process of spiritual rebirth here on earth, we put God and our fellow human beings first in our loves and priorities, then the evil parts of ourselves will be pushed more and more to the side, and our life will be one of love, understanding, and service to God and our fellow human beings despite our remaining flaws.
Excellent points, Lee, and a perfect conclusion to this series.
Hi Walt,
Thank you! And thanks for your good feedback and questions.
There’s a Biblical problem with the idea that there were always intended to be carnivores and predators. Genesis 1:29 says that God gave creatures every green herb for food. It doesn’t say anything about meat, or animal flesh. Not only that, but the verse means that every green plant was edible, whereas paleontologists say that there were always poisonous plants.
It wasn’t until after either the fall or the flood that animals became carnivores.
It wasn’t until Genesis 9:3 that people were allowed to eat meat.
Genesis 3:16 also suggests that women weren’t always intended to give birth to children in pain. Childbirth was originally supposed to be painless. Why is it that apes, our closest relatives, have no difficulty or pain giving birth, yet human females do? Why didn’t natural selection eliminate women with narrow birth canals? Another way to avoid childbirth pain is for natural selection to favor babies born of smaller size and weight to fit more easily through the birth canal.
Hi World Questioner,
These are all indications that these early chapters in Genesis are not meant to be taken literally, and that they are not about the creation of the physical world. According to Swedenborg, the original authors never intended them to be taken literally the way fundamentalists and creationists do today. They created these stories to tell about spiritual things, and used earthly imagery as symbols of those spiritual things. In Secrets of Heaven #66, Swedenborg explains that there are four modes of writing in the Bible:
Here is his explanation of the first one:
The first eleven chapters of the Bible were written in this mode. They are not meant to be taken literally at all. Only at the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12, where Abraham’s story begins, does it switch over to the narrative mode, which is intended to tell actual history. Really, much of that is not real history either, but rather a story that gives meaning to the Jewish people and their culture.
The Bible is simply not a history book, and it’s not a scientific textbook. It is a book that is intended to lead and guide us toward heaven. Reading it as a textbook of science or history is completely missing the point, and lowering it to the level of a merely human book. Really, it is disrespecting the Word of God.
As far as the difficulty in childbirth, this has to do with the rapid growth of the human brain, leading to a much larger head proportional to the body, and the trade-off between a large birth canal and efficiency in walking and working for women. Having a wide birth canal requires the femur to be at a greater lateral angle, which is less efficient for walking and working than having a straighter femur. Men have an efficiency advantage in running, walking, and other activities because of their narrower hips and less angled femurs.
Genesis 3:16 is not about how women came to have birth canals that can barely fit an infant’s head. Rather, it uses the known difficulty in childbirth to provide an “origin story” that is really about spiritual and psychological things, not about physical things.
Eve did not suddenly get a narrower birth canal after God said told her that he would greatly increase her pain in childbirth. It’s not even about having babies. It’s about greater difficulty in bearing spiritual offspring, “fruit,” which are new developments of love and understanding. Because Eve had chosen to distrust God’s instructions, and trust her own senses instead, it would now be harder for her to have these new spiritual births of love and understanding. Plus, Eve was not an individual human being, but a representative of an entire culture.
Once again, attempting to read Genesis as if it were a scientific textbook is completely missing the point. And it’s bound to lead to all sorts of faulty ideas about how this physical world came about—exactly the faulty ideas that the creationists are cramming their books and websites full of. It’s all a bunch of hooey, because it’s all completely outside the arena of what the Bible is about.
You didn’t comment on what I said about Genesis 1:29 or Genesis 9:3. Also, don’t you think that, while maybe far from ideal, that it would be better for men to be bipedal women to be quadrupedal than vice-versa? Quadrupedal women is more acceptable than quadrupedal men, right? It’s more acceptable for women to walk on all fours like apes and monkeys than for men to, right? Is bipedalism more important for men than for women? I’d be surprised if bipedalism benefits women more than men. I’d be surprised if quadrupedalism would be more problematic for women than for men. Also, I promise, I am honest, if Genesis chapters 1:11 had a much lower WCI count, had much less wayyiqtol conjugation, I would take it as allegory, poetry, and myth. Regardless of what Jesus says in the New Testament like “as in the days of Noah.” If it was written in a mythical style like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish. I take it literally BECAUSE of its writing style. BECAUSE of the WCI count and the wayyiqtol conjugation.
Hi World Questioner,
What you said about Genesis 1:29 and 9:3 falls under my general response that this is the wrong way to read the Bible. The Bible isn’t a manual of paleontology. It’s not about the diet of early humans. Those early chapters in Genesis, especially, are about the early spiritual story of the earliest spiritually aware humans. Reading it as if it gives us information about early human diets is a mistake right out the gate. It’s the same trap that the fundamentalists and creationists fall into.
And . . . women are humans, not animals. Women going on all-fours is no more “acceptable” than men going on all-fours. If you really want to find a good wife in this life, I would suggest that you adjust your attitude about women. What decent woman is going to want you if you think that women are almost like apes and monkeys? Women evolved an upright posture right alongside men, because women are human females, just as men are human males. Sheesh!
And if I am honest, I will say that you have fallen prey to materialistic creationist talking points because your mind tends toward materialism and literalism.
You’ll have to make up your own mind whether you want to continue on that materialist track, but I would advise against it. If you do, you’ll fall prey to all the fallacy and falsity that the fundamentalists and creationists are continuously spouting. You won’t even be able to read and understand what the Bible says, just as they can’t, because you will be making the same mistake that Eve did, eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because it looked good and pleasant to her eyes. She followed her physical senses instead of listening to the word of God coming from a higher and deeper place within. If you do that too, then like Eve, your “childbirth” will become difficult and painful, meaning you will have a hard time coming up with anything good and true because your mind will be clouded by the darkness of materialism.
People who can think only materialistically search and search and search for “evidence” that their materialism is correct. It’s not much different from atheists searching for reasons that the Bible is wrong because many of its literal statements are demonstrably false. Creationists and atheists are two sides of the same coin when it comes to the way they read the Bible. In fact, there is a direct line from the materialism of the fundamentalists to the atheism of the atheists. One leads to the other.
The grammatical structure of the early chapters of Genesis is irrelevant to whether it is meant to be taken literally or spiritually. Read Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” It is written as if it were an ordinary poem about walking in the woods and deciding which path to take at a fork in the path. But nobody thinks it’s about walking in the woods.
I didn’t say that women ARE almost like apes and monkeys. I just wondered WHAT IF women walked on all fours.
Why did God even give Genesis 1:29 and 9:3 when there were always intended to be carnivores and predators? Why did God say in those verses that creatures were originally intended to be vegetarian? Is that even necessary? What if those verses were not in the Bible?
And what if Genesis chapters 1-11 were written with a much lower WCI (waw consecutive imperfect) count? I promise you, I am honest, if Genesis 1-11 had a much lower WCI count, I would not take it literally, regardless of what Jesus says in the New Testament like “as in the days of Noah.” If it wasn’t for the Wayyiqtol conjugation
Hi World Questioner,
The fact that you even raised the idea of women going on all fours like apes and monkeys shows that your mind was moving in that direction.
And the answer to your question about Genesis 1:29 and 9:3 is the same as I gave before: God gives those verses because they are about our spiritual condition. They may draw on earthly themes, but those themes are simply vehicles for deeper meaning.
As long as you keep trying to make it literal, you’re bound to get tangled up in this sort of confusion. Really, I can’t help you there. Go talk to Ken Ham. He’s got glib (and fallacious) answers to all these questions. But if you want real answers, stop trying to take it all literally.
And I’m sure you’re sincere in thinking that if it were written differently, you would take it spiritually and not literally. But that is simply not the case. Why do you take it literally, but I take it spiritually? The difference is not in the Hebrew words and idioms used, which are the same for both of us. The difference is in our minds, yours wanting to make everything literal and material, and mine wanting to see the deeper spiritual meanings in the text.
If you are basing your understanding of the Bible on WCI count, then you have seriously missed the point of the Bible. That’s like watching a baseball game and basing your entire understanding of the game of baseball on the number of left-handers vs, the number of right-handers. It is the ultimate case of missing the forest for the trees.
Genesis 1:29 “every green herb for food” that means humans were vegetarians, perhaps vegans, and all animals were herbivores. If that’s not the case, why not have Genesis say that God has given creatures for food, to be more scientifically accurate? Would people lose faith if Genesis didn’t say that man was formed from the dust? If Genesis didn’t record the six days of creation? If Genesis didn’t record the age each patriarch was when the next named patriarch was born… If it didn’t say “every green herb for food” and it didn’t record 9:3 “every moving thing that lives” but said “every green herb for food and every moving thing that lives” in Genesis 1:29… If it didn’t record the Flood, or the pishon and Gihon… etc. Otherwise if Genesis was written as a combination of myth, allegory, and poetry instead of a history-like narrative, with a low WCI count, and therefor a higher percentage of fundamentalists didn’t take it literally… It’s not like if fundamentalists didn’t believe in a literal return of Jesus, or if Jews didn’t believe in a literal restoration of the kingdom of Israel.
Isn’t the seven-day creation week a foundation for keeping the Sabbath (Exodus 20:11)? Without literal 24-hour days of creation including the seventh day God rested, the foundation for Sabbath-keeping collapses.
One problem with the figurative interpretation of Genesis is that from Chapter 11 onward, it gradually and steadily gets closer and closer to literal history, all the way up to the New Testament. That makes no sense. Why not just have a clear boundary and sharp dividing line between myth up to Chapter 11 and history after Chapter 11, or alternatively have it ALL be allegory, poetry, and myth with no more history in the later stories than the earlier stories?
Hi World Questioner,
Let’s turn your question on its head:
What if Genesis were written in an obviously poetic and mythological style, without the WCI count that you’re so obsessed with? What if it were obviously not meant to be read as a literal account? (Personally, I think it is obviously not meant to be read as a literal account, but others don’t see it that way.)
In that case, what would the materialists do with it?
Most likely, they would just toss it aside as unimportant. And since that would be how the Bible begins, very likely they would toss the Bible aside as mere fables.
Then where would they be? Where would they go to get their butts kicked so that they would straighten up and fly right?
You said:
“Most likely, they would just toss it aside as unimportant. And since that would be how the Bible begins, very likely they would toss the Bible aside as mere fables.
Then where would they be? Where would they go to get their butts kicked so that they would straighten up and fly right?”
You made a good point. I never thought of that. Why didn’t God tell me that before?
Couldn’t God at least make Genesis with just a somewhat lower WCI count than the rest of the Bible?
Why does God have such concrete origin story for Genesis? Why can’t he just make it abstract with less concrete detail? It should be more like Foundation or Xelee Sequence than like 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’m about cerebral vs. pulp or cerebral vs. mythic, not about themes. I’m also not talking about dark themes when talking about Revelation Space, neither am I talking about rigorous astrophysics. I’m talking about a story about a whole civilization or race or world or society than a story about individuals.
Hi World Questioner,
I don’t know about Foundation or Xelee Sequence, but I have watched “2001: A Space Odyssey” several times. Yet I remember the story of the Seven Days of Creation and the Garden of Eden much more clearly, precisely because they’re much more concrete.
I’d wager that if you took percentages of the population of the world that know about the Seven Days of Creation and the Garden of Eden, and you compared them to the people who know about origin myths in those other stories, you’d find that the number who know about and remember the two Biblical accounts vastly outnumbers those who know about and remember those other origin stories.
The Bible stories use concrete detail precisely because it is more vivid and memorable than more abstract stories. Plus, those concrete details all have deeper spiritual meanings that go far beyond anything in those other human-written origin stories.
Why did God take 15 billion years to create the physical world? Couldn’t he have done it in just six days? What is a good reason for God to have all species descended from a common single-celled ancestor? Couldn’t he make all species distinct and create each creature to reproduce after its kind? Why did God decide humans should be descended from apes? Couldn’t the first humans have just been created separately, distinct from all animals?
Hi World Questioner,
All these questions zero in on a single aspect of how God creates things:
God creates things, not instantaneously, but by using step-by-step processes. Nothing just pops into existence. Everything develops over time.
Why?
It’s a very good question. I’m still thinking about it.
One answer is that God is working with material reality, which is pliable, but also resistant to change. Compared to divine reality, which operates outside of time altogether, and is present in all time and space simultaneously, and compared to spiritual reality, which also has no time and space as we know it, but which does have distance and nearness, and a sequence of events, material reality exists within space and time, in which things must unfold over spatial distances and temporal time scales. This means that doing things instantaneously is contrary to the very nature of physical reality.
Why did God create material reality in this way?
One answer is that for anything to be not-God, and therefore able to have a relationship with God, it must have distinct differences from God, while still expressing something of God’s nature so that a relationship is possible. The way God did this was to impose limits on created reality, both spiritual and material. Fewer limits on spiritual reality, and greater limits on material reality. One of those limits of material reality is that things must develop and unfold over time, within space. This means things must happen via processes, and not instantaneously.
Another answer is that material reality, and the material world, must provide the opportunity for sentient, spiritually aware beings (us) not to choose a loving relationship with God. If we are not free to reject the relationship God wants to have with us, then we are not human, and the relationship isn’t real. It’s just something God programmed into us, so that it’s meaningless. How much does a friendship mean if both people are simply programmed to have that friendship? It’s just an algorithm, not a real human relationship.
Designing the material level of reality with the ability not to do what God wants it to do means designing it with a certain amount of resistance to divine and spiritual influences. It means making things somewhat or even very inefficient, so that the material world doesn’t always do what God or the angels want it to do. It means that God and the angels have to labor to get it to do what they want it to do. This is the meaning of the six days of Creation, and the six days of labor, culminating in the seventh day of rest. There is significant work involved in producing the finished product: an angelic human being who will live forever in heaven.
Pan out to the grand scale of the physical universe, and an answer to your question emerges: The material universe is naturally resistant to inflow from God and spirit. It takes a long time to respond. Over nine billion years to get to the point where it produced Earth—a planet capable of supporting life. Another half a billion years or so before Earth began hosting life. Another three or four billion years before that life developed to the point where it could host a sentient, spiritually aware mind (ours).
For God, all this time is meaningless. God is present in all of it all at once. For God, it doesn’t matter if it takes 13.8 billion years or 13.8 trillion years or 13.8 quintillion years. All time scales are the same for God, because God is present in all of them simultaneously from a realm of being that is outside of time and space. God sees and interacts with all time and space at once, no matter what their scale. As the Psalm says of God:
God has all the time in the world to make us. God is not in a hurry.
So God created a material universe in which things unfold over time—long periods of time.
This also means that what does develop is very robust and resistant to forces that would tear it down. Evolution is a process of trial-and-error that unfolds over hundreds of millions of years and longer. What emerges, under the influence of divine and spiritual power gradually pulling evolution in a human direction, is organisms wonderfully adapted to survive in the conditions that this earth throws at them, and able to persist and thrive in those conditions.
On a different planet, under different conditions, the organisms, including the ultimate human organisms if there are sufficient time periods and conditions for them to develop, will persist and thrive in those conditions.
I’m sure many more reasons could be given as to why God chose to have things unfold over time rather than instantaneously or even very quickly. But these ones seem to me to be some of the most important ones.
As for the specific evolutionary path it took to get to us, that’s something I’m not all that qualified to talk about. But once again, the development of complex, thinking, spiritually aware beings under material-universe conditions is a long, complex task that had to go step-by-step from one-celled organisms to the human body and the mind it contains. Apes just happen to be one of those steps. They have a lot of what we have, but they’re not quite there yet.
One final thing: Creating the universe this vast, and with such huge time scales, gives us time- and space-bound humans some sense of the greatness of God.
If the universe were a small little thing, only about the size of earth’s orbit around the sun as was once thought, we might admire God, but we wouldn’t necessarily be in awe of God. But it’s hard for a believer to look out on just how vast and old the universe is, and not be overwhelmed with the infinity and omnipotence of God.
Why would an infinite God create a puny, quick universe when God could create a vast, ancient universe? Anything else would hardly be a worthy expression of God’s infinite love and wisdom.
Now, about people thinking materialistically. Because they got false expectations from the Bible, and they turned out not to be true… Like when the Jews rejected Jesus, and whatever…
I don’t know how to explain it.
Locked in materialism is corruption, not being able to accept spiritual reality…
Corruption… Like the Darkhold in Dr. Strange: Multiverse of Madness, the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars, even the One Ring in Lord of the Rings.
People are attached to material things because what they read in the Bible sounded like it would occur on Earth, and they weren’t prepared for the prophecies to not be fulfilled literally. It came as a shock to them.
Isn’t materialistic thinking the wrong way to think? Is spiritual thinking the only right way to think?
Why doesn’t the New Testament say “all scripture has a deeper meaning”? Instead of “spiritual” (pneumatikos) meaning which might be interpreted by materialists as “windy meaning” or something, it should say “deeper meaning,” whatever the Greek word for “deeper is.” Bathos? And the Hebrew word used for deep in Genesis 1:2, but instead in the form of whatever it’s called, the comparative, “deeper.”
When the 12 disciples asked Jesus if this is the time he’s going to destroy Israel in the book of Acts, he said “it’s not for you to know” – that would seem to imply “not yet,” wouldn’t it?
Why doesn’t Jesus tell the 12 disciples to stop thinking materialistically and seek the deeper meaning of scriptures?
Perhaps meditating like the Buddha could aid in the journey from thinking materialistically to thinking spiritually?
Why doesn’t the Bible say “all scripture has a deeper meaning beyond literal interpretation”? Or “all scripture has divine depths of meaning beyond literal interpretation”? Or, instead of “literal interpretation,” “fleshy interpretation” (carne or sarkos). Is pneuma actually used as an antonym for carne or sarkos? OR is it used as an antonym for the Greek word for “material”? Is the Hebrew word for “flesh” used as an antonym for ruach? Is ruach used as an antonym for the Hebrew word for “material”?
Hi World Questioner,
I have now edited my initial reply to your question about why God took 15 billion years to create the physical world into a new post on the blog:
Why did God take 14 Billion Years to Create the Physical World?
Enjoy!
Maybe Eve didn’t get a wider birth canal, but perhaps she was made to be insensitive to childbirth pain. That she would not “feel” childbirth pain.
Childbirth pain is nociception, right?
Couldn’t God have made Eve to not feel the damaging stimulus of childbirth? There’s a difference between damage to the body and actually feeling pain from the damage.
Do you know what I mean.
By the way, did I ask why natural selection didn’t favor smaller birth sizes? Smaller babies would fit through the narrow canal of a woman more easily than larger babies, creating less pain in child birth, wouldn’t they? But perhaps the reason why not is that smaller babies would just be more fragile.
Hi World Questioner,
These stories are not meant to be taken literally. They’re about human psychology, not about human physiology. Presumably the actual people represented by Adam and Eve before the Fall had about the same experience in childbirth as we do today, because our heads were already quite large proportional to our bodies due to our large brain.
And no, childbirth pain is not nociception. Nociception is the signal sent to the brain before we feel any pain. It’s what causes you to pull your hand off a hot stove before you even feel the pain. Childbirth pain is the pain a woman feels based on the signals that initially are nociception, but that are then translated into pain in the brain/mind.
The main issue in human childbirth is getting the head through the birth canal. Once the head is through, the rest of the body comes easily because it is smaller in diameter. A smaller head would mean a smaller brain, which would have negative evolutionary selective effects.
Couldn’t Eve have been created numb to pain in childbirth? What if childbirth didn’t give any nociceptive signals? What if the woman didn’t feel childbirth pain?
And why shouldn’t women take opioids before giving birth? Do opioids even minimize childbirth pain?
Speaking of which, why couldn’t snakes have opioids in their venom, so they could inject opioids into their prey so that their prey doesn’t feel pain from the snake bite?
What if lions were venomous, or rather, could inject opioids into zebra, antelope, and other prey using their canines? And i’m not just talking about lions, but any predators that bite to kill their prey.
Hi World Questioner,
I’m a theologian, not a biologist, so I’ll pass over all the questions about snakes, lions, and opioids.
About Eve, once again, she was not an actual individual. Adam and Eve represent a whole early human culture that probably lasted thousands of years.
As far as not feeling pain, that might be nice, but pain has a purpose, which is to send us messages about what’s happening with our body. Usually it’s when something’s getting damaged, but in the case of childbirth, it’s also sending the message that the baby is coming. Drugging a woman during childbirth is not usually a good idea, because a woman is an active part of the birth. She must push to move the baby through the birth canal, and so on. If she’s drugged and can’t feel what’s going on, she also can’t do her job as well. Again, I’m a theologian, not an obstetrician, so I’ll just stop there.
Why did God make humans so that their brains reach their full weight of three pounds at age 6? Why didn’t God make humans so that their brains grow until age 25?
Why did God make us so that we get all the neurons we ever have by a few months after birth? Why couldn’t neurogenesis just continue into adulthood?
Hi World Questioner,
I’m sure there are very good answers to all these questions. But I’m neither an evolutionary biologist nor a neuroscientist, so I’m not the best person to answer them. But in general, the way things work here on earth is a compromise between God’s ideal and what’s possible given the limitations of the material realm.
I think the creationist world where there was no death or disease before the Fall is better than the evolution world where there was always physical death and always predators and carnivores and diseases. Where the physical world is an idyllic utopia before the Fall.
If there is going to be overpopulation, the solution would be to terminate multiplication once humans have “subdued” the Earth.
If making the Earth bigger and bigger would only make its gravity stronger, God could just change the mass-gravity constant so that there is less gravity per mass, couldn’t he?
God could also transport some of the excess population to other planets. If human population is terminated, there could be multiple sapient races each created on different planets. Aliens looking like what we see in space operas and space frontiers and planetary romances, etc. Multiple species in the image of God, not just one.
Hi World Questioner,
Or, God could move us all, no matter what planet we come from, to the spiritual world when we die. In the spiritual world, there is no problem with space or overpopulation or gravity.
Why not make the Earth flat and extend infinitely in all directions? If gravity wouldn’t work, couldn’t God just make the laws of physics different?
Hi World Questioner,
What’s wrong with the system God did put in place?
All of your questions and objections are based on trying to make everything material. But God’s purposes are spiritual, not material.