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Why Follow God when Life is so Bad?

I have taken a bitter pill. My life is a book and rage is the storm of tumultuous waves that beat relentlessly upon the pages of my despair. I am altogether down cast and down trodden at the sudden realization of evil. Evil encompasses me like a drowning flood. It is a smothering darkness of an open sepulcher in which I lie.

From whence comes this evil and who is it's maker? Surely God being Benevolent would not create such an entity purposefully and surely God being Omnipotent would not be troubled by the imperfection of accidents. Where then did it come from?

I am not adequate to answer such questions that has beguiled great thinkers for millennium but instead I tell you in true humility that all my years of life have produced only one shred of wisdom. This is the realization that I know nothing.

So it would be easy to assume that God is either malevolent or impotent to prevent evil, yet it is arrogant pride to assume that because we do not understand something that it can not be. I do not understand life but I none the less believe it to be real. Many people do not understand the Internet but continue to use it daily. There are self-referential statements which are obviously true but can not be proved such as the statement, “You cannot prove this statement is true”. This is the essence of Gödel’s theorem established in 1931 that proved there are many elements of mathematics and logic that simply can not be proven.. There are numbers that can not be expressed in physical form such as the imaginary number (the square root of negative one).

Faith therefore becomes a necessary part of life. Many people have the misconception shared by the governor of Minnesota and late WWF wrestler Jesse Ventura who stated that "Religion is for the weak minded". This is the misconception that faith and intellect are some how at odds with one another and that they are mutually exclusive. This mistake is easily made because the truth is subtle and easily overlooked. However intellect rejoices in faith for it is a springboard for intellectual pursuit and faith cries out for the guiding light of knowledge for without it, it is impotent. Therefore faith and intellect are not mutually exclusive but interdependent and inseparable.

If mankind’s mathematics is self-referential and our logic is self-referential there are a great many things which are taken purely by faith. In fact one might conclude that without faith you can't think and that men can know nothing for sure.

With so many un-provable realities how are we to know anything for sure? Are we condemned to wander aimlessly through the stretches of the universe as a bug alternately approaching and fleeing the "hots" and "colds" of various stimuli. No, because we have this advantage we can make inductive judgments based on experience. One learns quickly that there are no fairies on the lawn because experience teaches such faith to be moot.

So then by experience we choose our "gods" and place our faith there for good or bad. Our humanity and finite reason demands that we do or else in arrogance and pride we presume that anything beyond our understanding does not exist. For by what faculty do we expect to describe the infiniteness of God with the mind of the finite. Is logic a good way to attempt to describe Him?

One person might describe a mountain by writing a song. Another might take the same mountain and write a poem about. Another might draw a map of it and still another might give its dimensions by a mathematical model. Though none of these is wrong not one of them gives a complete understanding of the mountain on it's own.

As Heinlein has observed mathematics would be hard pressed to adequately describe a symphony and English does not adequately describe physics. How are we then to expect logic and human reasoning to describe the mind of God? The best language I have seen to describe God is love which works by faith.

One might ask if we can not know such things as why evil exist in a universe made by an Omnipotent and Benevolent God should we even ask them. Yes we must ask and never stop asking the great "Why?". For though my intellect slay me I will never stop trying to think my Father's thoughts after Him for in thinking I give Him a form of Worship who gave me thought.

Yet the question of questions is not why is there evil if there is a God but in fact why is there any good if there is not a God? Ask not why do so many die but rather why is any one born at all and how is it that some still live. Ask not why are some sick but why do some get better? Ask not why are there so many selfish but why did One give His life selflessly? Is it so important why there are Hitlers or is it more intriguing to ponder why are there any Mother Theresas?

For if we seek the beginning of evil we will surely find it and with it all of the vile cursing that it possesses but if we seek the cause of goodness we will surely find it and with it all of the blessings that it contains. If there is a force or personage responsible for the horrible travesties of justice bestowed upon this life then let me never meet its gruesome reality; but if there be a gentle giant who fashioned my baby girl and breathed life into the nostrils of her soul then let me ever dwell in his presence.

The most noble of pursuits is this. If there is this life, this goodness, and this love. How might I obtain it? How might it be imparted unto me?

There are two rivers one flows of sweet and another of bitter waters. I know that the source of one must be sweet and the other bitter. I would not follow bitter waters and expect to find sweetness and so I do not follow evil and expect to find good.