Thoughts on the nature of God
God is not a very good person, some people die horrible deaths or suffer terribly. I mean, look at Africa. Does God love them less?
Where do I begin? I feel that there is so much wrong with this statement...
Let’s start with what seems to be the main reason for God not being a good person - his apparent absence.
Why does God not interfere when bad things happen? Why does he not stop things like natural disasters, diseases, child abuse, domestic violence, war, terrorism, racism and a couple of other isms I can’t think of right now? Why doesn’t he act? Why does he allow people like oh… Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan or Herodes, to name a few historically approved mass-murderers, to live and to set into motion schemes that caused so much death, destruction and suffering?
Wouldn’t it have been better if Adolf Hitler wouldn’t have only gotten injured in WW I but would have died instead, sparing the world the horrors of WW II (we could have even awarded him German nationality posthumously)? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the atomic bomb would have never been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (or would have never been invented at all)? Wouldn’t it be a true statement, a proof of his existence, were God to end the famines in Africa over night?
So why doesn’t he do that?
To answer this question, you’ll have to go way, way back - to Adam and Eve, actually; or, if you want to, to Adam and Lilith.
For those who do not know: in several religious writings there is a mention of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, who left paradise because she did not want to be submissive to Adam but equal instead (in the story expressed in her desire to be on top during love making every now and then, too, which Adam denied her). She is later turned into a demoness, if I recall correctly, and is also regarded as such.
Well then, the problem starts with leaving paradise. In either cases of Lilith, Adam and Eve leaving paradise is a result of a conscious decision against God.
Neither Adam nor Eve had to eat from the forbidden tree - everything in paradise was free for their taking with the exception of that one tree (hence the name “forbidden tree”). It was the one rule they were told to follow and they eventually rejected it. As a result they are both expelled from paradise.
That is not only because they broke God’s rule but because of something else. By consuming the fruit (it says nowhere it was an apple) Adam and Eve had gained the ability to be like God, i.e. to distinguish between good and evil. Adam and Eve had attained the free will (and all repercussions that come with it like regret, shame and things that just happen because they are out of anyone’s control).
And therein lays the reason for God’s absence in our world. Every man and woman has the choice: believe in God or don’t; adhere to the 10 Commandments or don’t; be a vegetarian or don’t etc. Our choices are literally endless and they are all ours to make. But since we now have the ability to decide these things, since we can now clearly say what is good or evil, God no longer has a right to interfere with our life - if he does, for instance, stop Hitler from becoming anti-Semitic this means that he takes away a choice and therewith the free will.
The question above all is now: why does God not simply take away the free will from us?
In my opinion, the answer is that this isn’t something a benevolent (or good) person would do but rather something evil. It is something oppressive and even a divine tyranny (meaning here a rule through oppression and not terror) is a tyranny, but oppression cannot be a character trait of an entity described as forgiving, loving and all-encompassing.
Or do you think differently?