Janyce's SOAP BOX

Personal Philosophy & Opinions

This page was last revised on 16 Jun 1997 @ 10:17 PST

MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE QUOTE: ©

F or why is all

around us here
As if some lesser god

had made the world
But had not force

to shape it as he would

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The vast majority of the world's population have always been suffering of mental and physical pain. This has always been true. It is true today. And undoubtedly, will continue to be true during the future existance of mankind.
Tennyson here, questions the inherent contridiction set forth by the gods allowing such pain to continue, while concurrently claiming to be the full essence of a complete and unselfish love.
If I were the supreme being (god), I am sure I would find it impossible (for example), to walk into a hospital, and not cure everyone who was beset with pain and suffering, that was not self-inflicted. And, perhaps, in overwhelming compassion, I would cure those too.

The Christian god, Jesus Christ, is reported to have healed a crippled man in Jerusalem at a pool by a gate used for sheep (called Bethzatha).
There were three conditions for people to be healed at the pool:

Healings occured only when the waters became "troubled" (commonly accepted as having waves or bubbling) which were of relative short duration.
The "troubling" was random and unpredictable.
To be healed, a person had to enter the "troubling" water before it stopped moving.

The biblical story explains that the crippled man had tried for thirty-eight years to make it to the water before the water bacame calm, but always failed, because he had to crawl.
Jesus understood the man's "catch-22" situation, and healed him out of compassion (while telling him to go "and sin no more" - a standard line he always said after performing a miracle for a person).

How could "LOVING" gods, allow such an injustice to occure, not to mention, all the hurting people who couldn't even get to Jersalem let alone the pool?
And what of those others who must have had similar "bad luck" at (not) being healed because Jesus wasn't there?
This story aside, what of all the good and righteous people who suffer from "natural disasters," such as earthquakes, tornados, floods, volcanic eruptions, and the like?

Tennyson strikes at the heart of the gods (whom-ever they be), questioning the unfairness of the world in which we exist. Bad things happen to "good people," and good things happen to "bad people." It rains on the just and unjust alike.
Indeed, is this fact due to the impotency of the gods; the incompetancy of the gods; the lack of love of the gods; the lack of concern of the gods; (or perhaps) all of the above? Agape' love certainly appears to be inconsistant with the environment in which we find ourselves.
To blame it "on the devil," Satan, or any evil entity, only suggests the impotency of the gods in dealing with the anti-gods.

Tennyson certainly summed up this conundrum in a few well-chosen words.

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