By Precilla
Perhaps a significant number of people deliberately choose not to have children because they do not want a child to have to experience the suffering that seems to be such a basic feature of life for humans on Earth. Why bring a little baby into this world that is rife with strife, hate and competition, they might think, a place where things like global warming, pollution, ecological devastation, conflict of all sorts and moral crises of epic proportions seem only to be getting worse with each passing day and where, finally, death is inevitable for everyone? They think it would be grossly unjust and cruel on their part to make a child have to undergo these hardships, and so they decide not to bring another human being into this world.
Now, a question that can be asked here is: If out of their compassion such people are unwilling to have children, because they want to spare another, as yet unborn, being having to face the trauma that living as a human on Planet Earth seems to necessarily entail, why would God, who is said to be the very epitome of compassion, arrange to create billions upon billions of humans (and other sentient beings) and send them to Earth, seemingly without their permission, where they have to face hardships and where suffering seems to be pervasive? If a compassionate human being chooses not to bring children into the world because they do not want them to have to suffer on account of being here, how is it that God, who is said to be the All-Compassionate One, seems not to think likewise? Does this mean that God is not really compassionate, after all? Is ‘He’ actually a sadist, sending sentient beings without their consent into this strife-filled world, where they have to undergo many trials and tribulations?
Different theologies seek to address this issue, providing different explanations for why a compassionate and just God (supposedly) creates sentient beings (including humans) and makes them take birth in this world, a domain where pain and suffering are ubiquitous. In this way, these theologies try, each in their unique way, to reconcile the fact that sentient beings have to experience great hardship while in this world into which God causes them to be born with their idea of God as a just, fair, loving and compassionate Creator who loves His creatures immensely and truly cares for their wellbeing.
There was a time when some of these theologies seemed to make some sense to me. But now, a basic concept that is shared by these theologies—that God created sentient beings (including humans) as utterly separate from Him and then sent them into this world, where they face many different trials—does not seem to sound very sensible. One reason for this is that I am not sure if it would be reasonable for a fair, just, loving and compassionate God to create sentient beings and then compel them, without seeking their permission, to spend a length of time in a realm where pain and strife are pervasive, no matter how great the reward (to be obtained in this world and/or in a supposed afterlife) of having to undergo this experience is claimed to be.
Frankly, I now find the notion of God as the Creator wholly separate and distinct from what is said to be ‘His’ creation, including all sentient beings, problematic. The idea of God creating beings who are wholly different from Him and of Him sending them into this world of trials and tribulations as part of His Creation Plan no longer appeals to me in the way it once did. Frankly, I am not at all sure (even if billons of other people might be) that any God like that actually exists.
I am beginning to believe that it is perhaps the case that God (or ‘The Divine’) alone exists, including in the form of the vast physical universe as well as in the form of all the many billions (or maybe even trillions) of sentient beings that live in it, including humans. If this is true, it could possibly mean that it is not that God causes sentient beings, creatures wholly different from Himself, to come into the world, but, rather, that it is God Himself who appears in the world in the form of all the sentient beings that are here.
If this is true—if all is God, if God is the totality of all that exists, including all sentient beings—then God cannot be said to be unjust, unfair, unloving or uncompassionate by bringing sentient beings into this world, where they experience pain and suffering. This is because these sentient beings are not separate creatures, beings other than God, but, rather, so many different manifestations of God Himself. If this is indeed so, then when these sentient beings experience pain and suffering, it is actually God who experiences these states in the form of these beings. Since all that exists is actually God and God alone exists, it is only God, and no one else (there is, after all, no one else), who experiences pain and suffering in the world, through the forms of the sentient beings that experience pain and suffering.
If this is true, then by causing sentient beings to be in a world where they experience pain and suffering, God cannot be said to be unjust, unfair, unloving and uncompassionate towards others, simply because these beings are not other than God, they being God in the particular form in which they appear. The pain and suffering that they experience are thus experienced by God Himself, and not someone else. Had this pain and suffering been experienced by entities other than God, one might have been able to say that God is unjust, unfair, unloving and uncompassionate by allowing such a thing to happen. But since these are experienced by God Himself and not by others (since there are no others, all beings actually being so many different forms of God Himself), God cannot be said to be unjust, unfair, unloving and uncompassionate on that account.
Now, if it is God who experiences pain and suffering in the form of so many different sentient beings that experience pain and suffering (each of which appears as a separate, distinct creature but is actually God in that particular form), then surely God cannot be faulted, for being God, ‘He’ can choose to experience any state or emotion that He wants to.
I am beginning to feel that it is only by considering all sentient beings as God ‘Himself’ in so many different forms that I can reconcile the pain and the suffering these beings experience in this world, where these are so pervasive, with the notion of a fair, just, loving and compassionate God. I cannot think of any other reasonable explanation.