Hi Laird
I think that I should put down some more thoughts about how I see/define things before going any further, as many of my thoughts on subjects like these are not fixed. They're more like intuitions that make sense
to me, and although I can sense frustration in your post, I can only go so far with my explanations. Remember these are only one individuals thoughts - nothing more. I feel sometimes that I am talking the talk, but I'm very far from walking the walk! Hardly anything I'm saying is my own, it is like a jigsaw puzzle that I've started to put together. Maybe it's designed so that even totally different pieces make the same picture? Maybe many different pictures are equally beautiful.
God - an intelligent entity with love at its core, maybe love's more than at its core , maybe it's all love. I don't think we understand love fully, far from it.
Humans - think of them/us like You see a bug making its way through some grass.
Our understanding as
humans - like trying to teach a bug maths.
Maybe that's a being little unfair to the bug/us.
How God sees his creations - as we (most of us)see our children.
Should/shouldn't - Doesn't mean there will be judgement. No hard rules in general.
I'll use 'man/men' for all humankind.
Really? You believe in a good God, right? And if you, as a basically good person, but incomparable to God's goodness, are horrified by that experience, then would not God be orders of magnitude more horrified? Being good is correlated with feeling empathy for victims of suffering and torture, isn't it?
While I think God is all about love, our limited understanding of love/God may make us feel that God should react some way or other, but how can we truly know? If we truly feel that he's good, we should 'have faith'. It's judging the big picture without knowing all the facts. Its the old story about missing a flight that your desperate to catch, your so frustrated and disappointed until you hear on the news that the plane crashed!
That's a pretty shocking statement, to be honest. It's also a pretty vague one: why might this be necessary? How could you even think that such a thing could be "necessary", especially given an all-powerful deity? And, given that you do, how do you justify that possibility - what tangible reason do you have for believing that such horror might be necessary? I asked you in my last post if you could offer something from either your own understanding or from Tom's views/talks to reconcile brutal torture with teaching how to love - it looks like you've come up empty?
I should be more careful about the words I'm using, more careful about how I'm writing when people feel so strongly about things I may be commenting on. I said" if it exists it might be necessary ", I could be wrong, I just don't know? But what I know is that
it exists.
So what are we going to do about it?
Can we, should we really blame God? Say that my/Toms assertion about earth being a virtual reality that we reincarnate on, so as to 'grow', assuming that we have free will, or the illusion of free will is required for some reason (how this is accomplished is way too complicated for me)then it is surely our fault that such horrors exist. There are many people that say "We have lost our way, our connection to God". Maybe this is the case? Maybe God, seeing the horrors that men inflict on one another, is just as horrified as I/you are, but who am I (or you) to judge how he should react? How would you react?
The evidence of how men react to barbarity is surely not the best way that we might react? I'm guessing, but my guess would be that men's emotional reaction to this would include: anger,disgust, hatred, loathing, fear, etc but what would truly be needed to really make a change, would be love, compassion, understanding, etc. The perpetrator is very likely to have experienced very little of these throughout his life, and I just don't know about the victim. Maybe he was Hitler/a paedophile in his past life, but Jesus dying at the hands of man doesn't support this - I just don't know? I am very far from knowing all the answers, but all that I need to know,
from my intuition and backed up by experience is that it's all about choices!
I have read some examples of people being in very traumatic situations and being told to forgive their attackers. One cop who was shot a few times and who was about to be 'finished off' by the perpetrator, got a voice telling him in no uncertain terms to say out loud 'I forgive you' to him. This seemed to throw the guy, and he didn't shoot, the cops life changed forever. I have read that some kids who are abused find a way to leave that reality elsewhere and somehow make it appear 'separate' from them. I would hope that's true, that the suffering that we see is somehow shielded in some way from the victim.
You asked me to 'offer something' from my own understanding(or Toms). I'll look for something by Tom, but my guess is that he wouldn't get too hung up on it. Eventually the lessons are learned, so that we know, really know, that this is not the way to be, that love is the only way. You say that lessons are 'blindingly obvious', but I disagree, they are hard learned!
This situation exists. We have to deal with it. We have to choose whether to make love driven choices or fear driven choices. Which brings me back to the bug! We are at the bug stage of our evolution. So guess which way we will often choose?
Don't worry about being hard on me, I'll withdraw if it's getting personal.;)
Does the blindingly obvious need to be experienced? If it's "extremely harmful for all involved", then why teach this by enacting the very harm we are supposed to be learning to avoid because it is so harmful?
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it doesn't. Surely God wouldn't want it that way. If 'he' does, if he likes it that way, then I would reject that side of god. But how can we, if our father has a trait that we dislike, he may gamble or drink excessively, should we no longer love him? Or can we say that I might have loved him 100% once, but now I'm only able to love him 70% - can we make such judgements? As soon as we do, I suggest that we find ourselves on a slippery slope.
This is why I think we are separated to find our own way, to eventually become love and when we are able to rejoin God, do so.
From On Love from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
"
as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart."
OK, so let me ask you something: if you see some guy about to beat up on his girlfriend, and you intervene to stop him, has he lost his free will? I don't think so. Why, then, would he have lost his free will if it was God rather than you who intervened in that same scenario?
I don't want to get into a discussion about free will, I'm not that clever. But when God interferes, I'm guessing it makes a big difference. Maybe it's designed so as he cant int I don't understand why.
No, it really doesn't make me feel better. It makes me feel worse. What's the point of learning a lesson from which you can never benefit? Great, they've learnt their lesson - suicide bombing is wrong - but what's the point of having learnt that lesson when they're stuck for eternity burning in a pit with their victims?
I don't believe that it's forever. I believe that God forgives misdeeds, or rather, lessons learned the hard way, it wouldn't be consistent with love if it were otherwise.
"The Prophet", like many other texts, say a lot of the same things, they're not my own, as I said at the beginning.
"Crime and Punishment
Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, “Speak to us of Crime and Punishment.”
And he answered saying:
It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,
That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed."
I hope overall this makes things clearer, if not there's not much more I can say. I'll leave you with the final words from The Prophet.
“A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”