By Pernickety Mee
According to a certain theological perspective (whose advocates possibly number in the hundreds of millions), human life on earth is a test. God created us humans and sent us into this world in order to test us, and He is constantly watching us to see how we are performing in this test. If we pass this test, when we die or after what is posited as a final day of reckoning for all mankind, God will admit us to a place called ‘Paradise’ or ‘Heaven’, where we will get to live in peace and joy forever. But if we fail this test, then when we die, or after the putative Day of Judgment, God will send us to Hell, a really nasty place, where we might have to spend all eternity to come. Our eternal future, therefore, depends on our performance in this supposed test that God is making us presently undergo.
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As per this theological perspective, everything that we are provided with here and all the situations we face during our stay on Earth are part of the test that God is putting us to. God wants to test us on how we use the gifts He gives us and also on how we respond to many sorts of situations that we face. Our responses to all of these will contribute to the final result of our test, playing a key role in determining if we will go to Paradise/Heaven or to Hell after we die.
According to this understanding, trials and tribulations, which every human being faces and which seem to be an integral part of human life, are also part of this test that God is making us undergo. If we respond to these positively, it adds to our score of good deeds, which, in turn, strengthens our prospects of passing our test and of thereby being sent to Paradise/Heaven. But if we respond to them negatively, it augments our stock of bad deeds, which, in turn, increases the prospects of us failing our test and of thereby being sent to Hell.
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This theory of life as a test that God is making us undergo in order to determine our eternal future, in Paradise/Heaven or in Hell as the case might be, and the concomitant explanation of trials and tribulations of life as a necessary part of this test seems to provide a simple, and at the same time, reasonable explanation of the purpose of our short presence on earth and of the challenges that are an integral feature of our life here. In response to the question that has possibly plagued human beings ever since they appeared on this planet about why they are here at all, this theory provides a seemingly compelling answer: “We are here because God brought us here, which in turn, was because God wanted to test us so that He could decide whether to send us to Paradise/Heaven or to Hell after we die and for us to be there for all time to come.” And, in response to a second question that human beings have possibly always agonized about—about why they seem to compulsorily have to face trials and tribulations during their stay on Earth—the theory again provides a seemingly compelling answer: “These trials are a necessary part of the test that we are undergoing in this world. Our response to them will play a big role in determining our eternal future—whether God will send us to Paradise/Heaven or to Hell after we die.”
The simplicity as well as the seeming rationality of this theory about why we are on Earth and why we face trials and tribulations during our short stay here likely plays a key role in sustaining faith in it on the part of vast numbers of people who believe it. It provides them an uncomplicated and, on the face of it, convincing explanation of our existence on Earth and of the fact that we must face numerous challenges while we are here.
But even if this theory may seem simple as well as compelling to many, it does not necessarily mean it is true. Although at one time this theory seemed to make sense to me, it does not now. One reason for this is that while it might offer what could possibly be considered as a reasonable explanation for the existence of the trials and tribulations in the life of human beings, it has no convincing explanation whatsoever for the trials and tribulations that are an integral part of the life of other sentient beings—plants, animals, birds, fish, and so on. In fact, the theory does not bother with the trials and tribulations of these species (who number in the millions) at all, as if these were of no importance whatsoever. And that is something that I just do not, and cannot, accept.
According to this theory, for us humans, trials and tribulations are necessary in order for God to test us so that He can then decide the eternal fate He thinks we deserve after we die—to be in Paradise/Heaven, or in Hell. It all happens for this good purpose. God is all-good, and so these trials and tribulations that we undergo which are part of God’s scheme of things for us are also, in the ultimate analysis, good (even if when we are undergoing them we might not think so). Now, a question that can be raised here is: If this is the good and justifiable purpose supposedly set by God for human beings for having to undergo these trials and tribulations, what good and justifiable purpose could God possibly have for the many trials and tribulations that non-human species have to face? Does God, as per the theory that we have just considered, have a similarly good and justifiable purpose for the many difficulties that these sentient beings, too, meet with while they are on Earth?
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Like human beings, possibly all the other sentient beings on Planet Earth too face many trials and tribulations during their short stay here. Plants sometimes face enormously difficult climatic conditions (such as drought, heat waves, heavy snow and flooding). Trees that produce fruits which human beings eat experience pain each time a fruit is plucked from them, as do vegetables when they are pulled out of the soil or when they are put in a pot of boiling water or a hot oven. Pain is experienced each time a flower is plucked from a bush or when a tree is cut down. Trials and tribulations are ubiquitous in the animal, fish, bird and insect realm, too. Creatures in this realm suffer physical pain, from hunger, injury or sickness or because of living in harsh physical conditions. They suffer emotional pain, too, such as when other creatures chase and hunt them or when human beings trap them or kill them in order to eat them or to make objects out of their skins. Vast numbers of these creatures live in constant dread of being attacked by predators, including human beings, and this must definitely be psychologically very taxing.
Given that the population of the members of all these species on Earth combined far exceeds the total human population, the quantum of the pain and suffering or the trials and tribulations in this realm of non-human sentient beings far exceeds the quantum of pain and suffering or the trials and tribulations in the human realm. Now, if as they say, God is good and just, what is the good and just reason that He might allow such immense pain and suffering or trials and tribulations in the non-human realm?
According to the advocates of the life-as-a-test theory we have considered above, the good and just reason why God allows pain and suffering or trials and tribulations in the human realm is in order to test human beings so that He can thereby determine their eternal future after they die—for them to be in Paradise/Heaven or in Hell. If that is indeed the good and just reason for this, what, one can ask advocates of this theory, is the good and just reason that God allows enormous pain and suffering or trials and tribulations in the realm of sentient beings other than humans?
I have yet to hear of any even remotely convincing answer to this question from advocates of the life-is-a-test thesis. In fact, it seems to me likely that this question does not even arise for them, because in their theologies, sentient beings other than human beings are of little or no consequence. According to these theologies, only human beings really count. Only their rights are thought of as mattering. Only their pain and suffering are considered as requiring good and just reasons or explanations. Only they are said to have been made in the image and likeness of God. It is only they who are said to continue to live after death, for eternity, whether in Heaven or Hell, and so, to advocates of this theory, only their trials and tribulations can be a test to determine whether God sends them to Paradise/Heaven or Hell, there to live for all time to come. In fact, for the proponents of this theory, only they can go to Paradise/Heaven (or to Hell). (Presumably, on death, non-human beings simply cease to exist or are completely annihilated after they die because unlike humans, they are said not to possess an eternal soul or the Divine spark of life that survives death and lives forever. Therefore, the pain and suffering that they undergo in life, the trials and tribulations that they had undergone, are supposedly not compensated for in a post-death realm, which, unlike in the case of human beings, allegedly does not exist for them).
Advocates of the life-as-a-test theory have little or no concern at all for beings other than humans. If at all they consider them, they regard them as having been made by God simply to serve human beings and to be made use of by the latter, to be exploited for their own purposes. This is why the issue of the massive pain and suffering that non-human sentient beings undergo (including at the hands of human beings) in their course of their life, their immense trials and tribulations, do not seem to matter to advocates of this theory at all—and nor even, perhaps, to the God of their imagination. This is likely why I have never heard them discuss why God might allow such immense pain and suffering in the non-human realm. Possibly this issue never crosses their minds, because their theologies do not regard it as something even worth thinking about (leave alone agonizing over), such being the status of non-human beings in their worldview.
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Frankly, if God exists as a being wholly separate from the cosmos and all the beings and things in it and is also all-good and all-just (as the advocates of the theory of human life-as-a-test we have considered posit God to be), I cannot get myself to believe that the pain and suffering, the trials and tribulations, of birds, animals, fish, insects, plants and all the other sentient beings that might exist do not matter to ‘Him’ at all. But it really must matter, I think, otherwise ‘He’ simply cannot be good and just, in which case, ‘He’ simply cannot truly be God.
This is one reason why I now find that the theory of life as being a test and of trials and tribulations as being a necessary part of this test does not resonate with me now. Its advocates seem to have no concern for (leave alone adequate explanation of) the massive suffering in the non-human realm at the same time as they seem to project a concept of a God who seems wholly indifferent to this suffering and who favours, for no convincing reason, one species—homo sapiens—over and above all the other many species that ‘He’ is said to have created.