Good God?

If an All-powerful God of Love exists, why do we live in such a brutal world?

Levi Bellfield: A name that’s synonymous with Evil.  A monster responsible for the brutal murders of Milly Dowler, Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell.  As I begin to write this article on June 25th 2011 the news media in the UK is full of coverage of the outcome of the trial and subsequent conviction of this malevolent creature, for killing Milly (he’d already been convicted for the other murders). And to top it off, as if having to deal with Milly’s murder wasn’t unfair enough for her surviving family it transpired that Bellfield’s legal representatives subjected them to what has been described as ‘torture’ during their ‘cross examination’ in court (remember, Milly’s parents are innocent victims of Bellfield’s hateful crimes, they had done no wrong), to such a degree that it sparked outrage across Britain, as a national response to the clear injustice that exists within the so-called ‘Justice System’.  In the midst of the Dowler family’s grief our callous legal system demonstrated to all compassionate, right thinking men and women that it, like Bellfield, had lost touch with the meaning of justice (which, for the record, is ‘fairness’ and ‘moral rightness’).  At the end of this ugly spectacle, both the killer Levi Bellfield, and his legal representatives were convicted of doing evil to an innocent family - in the court of public opinion.  This awful debacle is bad enough when taken in isolation, but what’s frightening, no, more than just frightening, what’s terrifying, is that things like this happen all of the time. Throughout human history murderers have abounded.  Throughout recorded history injustice has worked its nefarious way through the so-called justice system.  Any thinking person must surely ask, if God exists, where is God when things like this happen. I mean, God is Love, right?  Right?  Right??? http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/24/dowler-family-bellfield-trial-mental-torture

Do issues like this bother you?  Do you ever think about the implications of what this question: ‘If an All-powerful God of Love exists, why do we live in such a brutal world?’... could mean?  Maybe you do.  Or, maybe, you don’t?  If you do how do you square the obvious conflict of the reality of suffering with the theoretical belief in an ‘All-powerful’, benevolent God?

You know what?, sadly, lots of people, it seems, don’t spend very much time thinking (I mean really thinking) these days.  How often do you notice people taking time to think, in depth, about important topics?  Sifting through the evidence of their experience and senses to draw their own conclusions? Thinking is perhaps a dying art.  These days oftentimes what passes for thinking is merely Googling a topic to see what some ‘expert’ has written on a subject and then, through a process of ‘digital osmosis’ absorbing this ‘regurgitated’ point of view, and pretending that it represents the process of reason, of in-depth analysis (when in reality it is, when habituated, merely a lazy, ‘hand me down’ approach to thinking: pseudo-thinking).

You know what, too?, some people have little or no idea what’s going on the the world.  They either don’t give a ‘frick’ (others use a different word) or they think that by ignoring the world’s problems they will, in some magical way, ‘not give power to Evil by dwelling on its existence’ and it (Evil) will eventually atrophy, as a result.  Both options are, in my opinion, foolish.  If you (I don’t mean you personally of course, I’m talking generally here) don’t give a ‘frick’, eventually, later, if not sooner, one of the world's problems will come and bite you on the bum, and then you’ll find that suddenly, you do give a ‘frick’ after all... when you’re the one being ‘fricked’ with. While pretending problems don’t exist is a bit like the child who hides behind his hands and thinks that because he can’t see others, they can’t see him.  But they can. And have you ever tried tending a garden - by ignoring the presence of the weeds - so as not to acknowledge their existence, in the hope that by doing so the weeds will all die?  Did it work?  Ignorance then, does not really lead to bliss.

The problem of Evil exists, closing our eyes to it, or pretending that it isn't here will not make it go away.

How many people have echoed in one way or another Jesus' heartrending cry; uttered as, broken and battered, he hung dying on a cross, the victim of a brutal injustice: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’?  Maybe we too should cry out heavenward together, when faced with the onslaught of suffering in our world, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?’.  Remember: God is Love right. Right?

The subject of the challenge of the incompatibility of Good and Evil and why (if God exists) God appears to allow Evil to exist too is called Theodicy. Since as long as we know people have considered the world around them and wondered, if God is a beneficent God and ‘All-powerful’ then how come so much evil, suffering and unfairness is permitted to occur?  It’s a fair, reasonable question.  And lots of ideas have been considered.  What do you think?  How can we account for the existence of the evil killers Levi Bellfield, Caligula, Osama bin Laden, Doctor Harold Shipman and ‘Angel of Death’ child killing nurse, Beverly Allitt - in the overall context of the proposed existence of an ‘All-powerful’ Beneficent God?  Is it even possible to justify the existence of any one of these killers with the existence of God, let alone with industrial scale killing machines, such as Nazi Germany?

Here’s what I think (remember though, my opinion is not fixed by the way, but evolving as I continue to consider and re-consider this perplexing question).

My starting premise

Let me be clear, I want a Benevolent God to exist.  I’ve always (well, at least since I was old enough to think about such things) believed in God and have viewed my life through this ‘lens’.  However in recent years I’ve begun to question the trite, unconvincing, simplistic answers that some have propounded when seeking to answer the troubling question of the existence of Evil ...and the possible existence of God.  I tell you this so that you can evaluate my own evaluation process from a position of understanding, I’m aiming to be (to use a well-worn phrase of modern times) ‘open and transparent’ concerning my background, my current premise and the process of my reasoning.  Another thing you should know is that I’m a psychic/medium, and, as a result I not only believe in the existence of a spirit realm, but, based on extensive personal evidence I know that such a spirit realm exists and that discarnate spirits can interact with incarnate (living) beings (like you and me).  I appreciate that many of you reading this will have yourselves, in one way or another, received evidence of this kind of your own, leading you to draw the same, or similar, conclusions in the existence of a spirit realm.  However, some of you won’t have personal evidence of this sort, but will, nevertheless, still believe in the existence of a spirit realm, as an ‘act of faith’, so to speak, based, perhaps, on the desire for an afterlife to be a reality(?) and, perhaps also on what you’ve heard from other reliable sources; or maybe, based on your exploration of the evidence presented by science on this issue (for example, due to the research conducted by Arizona State University).  Others, however, for one reason or another may have genuine unbiased doubts as to whether or not a spirit realm exists (and by extension a God) probably because they don’t think that they have ever either experienced any proof or, because (and I’d find this surprising, but, accept that it could be so) they disagree with the findings presented by science in support of mediumship (such as, for example, the 100 trillion to 1 odds supporting the occurrence of genuine mediumship, gathered by Arizona State University).  To those of you who fall into this category, I’m sorry that you’ve not yet received any evidence to your satisfaction. If you haven’t already I suggest you read The Afterlife Experiments by Dr Gary Schwartz (which details Arizona State University’s evidence amassed in favour of survival of the soul) and, perhaps (whether or not you agree with the Arizona findings) you also attend a spiritualist church service, or one or more presentations given by one or more of the popular TV mediums (like John Edward or TJ Higgs) as they tour the country, to encounter, first hand, the kind of evidence that can come through (you never know, you might even have a reading yourself), as it can be very specific.  However, if you’re one of those biased so-called ‘skeptics’ who’ve made up your mind already that there is ‘no such thing as a spirit realm’, then, you’re probably wasting your time reading any further.  Your mind is already made up.  You’re closed to other possibilities.  You won’t consider things in a genuinely scientific way (which means coming to a conclusion after all of the evidence has been fairly considered... not before it’s been unfairly discounted... before being explored).

My assumption

It would be inauthentic of me to avoid writing from a spiritual perspective, in light of my own considerable psychic/mediumship experiences... just because not everyone else has had similar experiences of the spirit realm.  Unfortunately, life is such that it’s probably impossible for me to find a starting point with which everyone might agree.  So, if you’ve read this far I’m going to assume that you’re genuinely interested in the issue of whether or not a Good God exists and, that, you’re at least open to my premise that a spirit realm exists (whether or not you’ve had personal experience of that realm).

Here’s something else I should tell you: I believe, based, reasonably I think on the evidence, that no religion which currently exists amounts to God’s full and complete revelation to humanity.  No religion has anything approaching a monopoly on ‘Truth’.  In fact, sadly there is a lot of untruth that is passed off as truth by dogmatic, emotionally-led, fear-based religion.   I do accept however, that, at least as far as the founders of the major faiths go (assuming that everything popular understanding says about their lives is accurate, but that’s another question) that they personally genuinely had (in many cases transcendent) experiences of a kind that led them to proclaim faith-based messages - as perceived through the ‘lens’ of the beliefs, history and context of the times in which they were first expressed by those who expressed them, (my own ideas included, as expressed in this article too: no one is immune to the influence of their personal history, personal experiences and the times in which they live).

I’m not going to go into a lot of depth regarding my personal psychic/mediumship experiences in this article.  I shall instead refer interested readers to my website, which contains further articles, videos and audios which document some of my own experiences, along with testimonials from my clients: http://www.kerinwebb.com .

Okay, having laid out my premise which is that evidence indicates that a spirit realm exists, let’s look then at the remaining problem of whether or not there is any way we can correlate the existence of an All Loving God with a world that’s full of pain, unfairness and evil by exploring some of the most popular answers given by some to seek to answer this issue (covered below, in no particular order).  I should state, at the outset, on the issue of the question of the clear existence of evil and pain and whether such problems can exist if an All-loving, All-powerful, All-knowing God also exists (in the commonly understood sense of those terms) I think the argument, based purely on the evidence of history indicates that no is a reasonable answer to this perplexing question.

Free Will

Probably the most popular, and perhaps the most easy to accept (on a cursory basis) reason that people cite (as I have myself at times) for the existence of evil is that the reason evil exists is because God has given humanity ‘free will’, which basically means we have the ability to make decisions.  Both good and bad. The reason we have this ability is because God is in the process of helping us to do something that can’t be done by instantaneous fiat: he’s in the process of helping us to build good character.  Building character is a trial-and-error process.  It’s not something that can be forced upon someone, because to do so would remove the faculty of choice and mean that such a person would not really be a person but rather an organic automaton.  (Basically a flesh-and-blood robot.) Interestingly, I believe it was the fundamentalist preacher Herbert W. Armstrong who made the salient point that this means that there is something an All-powerful God cannot do. He (or She) cannot create free will character, by a magical act of fiat. This, therefore, means that, perhaps, we need to re-appraise our definition of what it means to be ‘All-powerful’, as, some things, by their very nature (such as building good character) cannot it seems be achieved, even by God, immediately.  This I think is a fair enough and realistic proposition.  However, I think we also need to ask a further question when exploring this supposition: do we all really have free will?   I think the answer to this question depends upon what parameters we apply.  We’re all influenced by our biology, for example, and this can be clearly seen when we consider gender ...and crime.  Why, for example,  are more sex crimes committed by men?  Answer: Testosterone.  Conclusion: testosterone influences behaviour, therefore full ‘free will’ cannot be said to exist in such circumstances: because the crimes committed were, in part, influenced by gender, genetics and hormones (I’m not excusing such crimes, most men, all of whom are influenced by testosterone do not commit sex crimes, the villains who do such things are totally responsible for their actions, I’m just making the point that if such criminals had been born women, they probably wouldn’t have committed these acts).  Therefore, using this example, ‘free will’ is not an entirely true phenomenon, because there is a certain degree of ‘programmed’ hormonal influence occurring.  It’s a fact.  Are such deviants compelled to commit their crimes?  No.  Could they choose not to commit their crimes? Yes.  Are they however subject to an innate tendency, a hormonal predisposition that causes a certain degree of influence on their sexuality that when manifested totally selfishly (devoid of love and affection) results in awful situations? What does the evidence suggest? Why therefore we must ask, would a God of Love design a world in which such potential would exist?  Why wouldn’t He at least regulate hormones more efficiently in such prone individuals to ensure that they didn’t contribute to influencing such selfish, criminally inclined people in the direction of despicable criminal acts?

Consider, also in the context of sex and ‘free will’, why so many news-agent top shelves are stacked with magazines full of women posing in photos, in various stages of undress and nakedness.  Well, there are a number of answers to this puzzle, a couple of which potentially include (a) money (they get paid for doing so) and (b) something I learned about a few years ago, in my study of human psychology called ‘female lordosis behaviour’ (which refers to certain mating signals that women can elicit).  In the natural world we often observe behaviour patterns that follow what’s known as a ‘bell shaped curve’ distribution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

Put simply this means that in any distribution of behaviour, such as, for example, certain kinds of female mating display, you will have women at one end of the spectrum who exhibit very little of this behaviour, lots who fall within the middle section who exhibit behaviour close to average (and, specifically, where lordosis behaviour is concerned, more likely within the privacy of their homes, although I did once see a student on a mediumship training course get on her hands and knees and waggle her clothed, raised, derriere, in a highly suggestive manner, to the lecturer, which, I can tell you, left him looking pretty surprised)... and a few who’re influenced by their genetics to exhibit extreme examples of this behaviour (doing it naked in public while others take photos of the event).  I remember the authors of the psychology book I was reading which briefly talked about this subject concluding, in part, that this accounts for why some women pose for such magazines.  They are relatively few (most women don’t elect to audition for Playboy), but significantly numerous enough to provide an endless supply of erotic magazines.  Do these woman have total ‘free will’ when induced to pose like this?  Perhaps not.  Biology can be a powerful force. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338376/X-Factor-2010-sleaze-Ofcom-act-Christina-Aguilera-Rihanna-lewd-scenes.html (I'm not making a 'moral comment' about this, just making a behavioural observation.)

This week a burglar was stabbed to death in the UK as he, along with several accomplices sought to burgle a home in which occupants were present and as a result they encountered resistance from people prepared to defend themselves.  The outcome was the death of the burglar. How much free choice did the occupants have, when they felt threatened by the intruders?  In the same context, not so long ago musician Myleene Klass thought her house was about to be broken into while she and her child were there alone at night.  Her reaction?  She grabbed hold of a kitchen knife and brandished it openly at the window clearly threatening her potential assailants.  The message she sent?  ‘If you break into my home I’ll stab you!’  Is Myleene Klass a violent individual?  No. Is she a premeditated knife wielder?  No. Did the well-known survival instinct called, by psychologists, the ‘fight or flight’ response kick in, accentuated by her fear for her safety and that of her child (causing her to make a decision that could have easily escalated and resulted in a killing)?  Yes. Conclusion: Myleene had limited ‘free will’ at that moment in time, when she faced danger, because she was being influenced by the instinctive ‘fight or flight’ response. http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/other-emotions/fear2.htm I could cite many more situations, like a person who, under considerable stress ‘snaps’, and does something that he or she would not normally do, and, given the choice and the removal of the stressors would never choose to have done, when thinking rationally, etc, as examples of the relatively limited ‘free will’ that we have and how all of our decisions can be seen to be influenced (to one degree or another) by our genetics, our upbringing, our location, our circumstances and our point in history, etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/10/myleene-klass-knife-intruders

Rightly, it’s said by some religious teachers that learning to resist the stressors that influence us to wrong behaviour (or ‘sin’) is a bit like learning to lift weights to develop physical muscle growth: as the muscles learn to work against the resistance afforded by the weights they grow stronger, while correspondingly a person who resists ‘sin’ becomes morally stronger.  Like I said, I think there’s some currency in this premise.  But I think the Freewill Argument is one of degrees of freewill, not of absolute freewill. Therefore the Freewill Argument, as to the purpose of the existence of evil in the world (which suggests that the existence of evil helps us to grow morally stronger as we resist its influence), in my opinion, only affords a partial answer.  (And it goes no way to answer why a God of Love would create an animal kingdom in which some animals are designed to kill and others are designed to be killed.  What moral growth occurs there?)

Unintelligent pain

My next question regarding the presence of Evil and the question this raises about whether or not an ‘All-powerful’ God of Love exists relates to the existence of pain.  As someone trained as a professional counsellor/hypnotherapist, I’ve come to learn that ‘pain is a signal’ from the body, generated to draw a person’s attention to the fact that something is wrong (for example, that an injury has occurred) and that the injury needs to be tended.  We put our hand on a hot surface and, simultaneously, as we sense a burning sensation we instantly, automatically, remove our hand to limit the degree of damage caused. But pain is not an intelligent signal. What happens when a person cannot remove the pain causing agent?  What happens when the pain continues to exist when nothing can be done to ameliorate it, when it’s not possible to simply remove ourselves from the source of our pain - in order to stop the discomfort? Since starting this article (at this point I’m writing on 27th June 2011) I’ve begun to read the insightful, compelling, thought-provoking book by Bart D. Ehrman called: God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer: http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Problem-Answer-Important-Question-Why/dp/0061173975.  He cites examples of young children who were killed by the Nazi’s in concentration camps by being thrown alive - fully conscious -  into furnaces used to cremate the bodies of adult Jews who’d first been shot or gassed.  But these unfortunate souls did not have the benefit of a quick death, first. It was a regular occurrence, such that witnesses said they could hear the agonised screams of the children across the camp - as they were being burned alive.  This account has played heavily on my mind since I read it.  This situation of course begs the question, if God exists and if God is All Powerful and All Loving, why didn’t he intervene and spare those children?  At the very least, why didn’t he design a ‘circuit breaker’ in the pain signal, to kick in when there is no reasonable likelihood of the removal of the source of the pain?    Surely an omniscient, omnipotent God of Love could have designed such a ‘fail safe’, ‘circuit breaker’, ‘override’ mechanism to spare these poor children the horrors of the Nazi furnaces?  Any reasonable fallible human being would have intervened, if they had the power to do so.  Why didn’t God?  This, I think raises the question that, if God exists, do we therefore need to re-think our understanding of what it means to be ‘All-powerful’?  Perhaps.

God is whimsical, a mixture of good and bad

Some people appear to think that God is whimsical.  That He’s a mixture of good and bad (as evidenced in certain scriptures in which he appears sometimes to be loving, while at other times He appears to be presented as an unreasonable, spiteful sociopath, which, interestingly, is a hallmark of sociopathic behaviour: one minute friendly, the other cruel). While the evidence of some ‘scripture’ suggests this to be the case, the evidence of spiritualism, mediumship and Near Death Experiences I think suggests otherwise.  (As stated above, the evidence of spiritualism suggests that God is indeed a God of Love.)

The ‘Red Sun’ Theory

Perhaps God is omnipotent, but the intrinsic ‘laws’ which He’s created to govern the physical realm limit how omnipotent power can be applied in the physical realm?

I call this the ‘Red Sun’ theory.  Those of you who read Superman when you were young will remember that in the world of comic book fiction (to be distinguished from some of the scriptural tales which people have accepted as fact, in a religious context, but which are perhaps partially, or, in some cases completely fictional too) the character of Superman possess god-like powers, but (for reasons that are beyond the scope of this article), in solar systems in which red suns exist the radiation emitted by such suns rob him of his supernormal powers and he becomes mortal, vulnerable and decidedly not ‘all powerful’.  Possibly, the nature of the material world ‘robs’ (whether by decision alone, or by decision and design) God of some of His power too?  Perhaps we should consider good and evil in a vertical manner as opposed to just a dualistic manner.  In the world of mediumship it is understood by some, perhaps by most, that the earth is located at the lower end of a continuum of existence.  As a result it is far removed from the highest realms of Spirit.  The farther removed a realm is from the Source of Spirit (God), the more liable it is to being influenced by Evil. Therefore God could be said to limit His obvious influence in realms that are located further down the spiritual ‘ladder’.  This proposition, while seemingly answering some questions fails to answer why a loving God would choose not to intervene to save a child from being thrown live and conscious into a crematorium furnace, through an act of decision and/or design, doesn’t it?

God is omnipotent, but He’s using a bad situation to (ultimately) create something good, which is why evil exists now

Some argue that an Evil entity (which goes by various names, but which I shall call Satan) warred against God and His Holy Angels and as a result he damaged an otherwise perfect creation and that, furthermore this Evil entity, Satan, has been at war with God and with all living beings ever since.  I think this proposition has currency, but only up to a point; because it doesn’t seem to take into account the fact that if God is omnipotent, he could just as quickly defeat Satan and his cohorts and instantly return creation to its perfect state. This world surely cannot be the best possible world that an All-loving, All-power, All-intelligent God could create? Therefore, if Satan exists, as perhaps he might, and if he’s responsible for the vast majority of the problems that exist around us, God should be able to remove him and rectify the situation, so as not to allow for the eventuality of disturbing situations in which young children are thrown, conscious and screaming, into crematoria, to be burnt alive, shouldn’t He? You know, many times, over many years, when this particular point of view was a point of view that I’d largely accepted to be ‘the answer’ (God is using a bad situation to make something good) to the problem of the moral conflict between the existence of a God of Love and the existence of Pure Evil I prayed to God to ask Him to take another look at His ‘plan’, because, from my perspective, whatever His eventual outcome was designed to be, the high degree of suffering that was occurring as we ‘worked towards’ this goal could never be deemed to be worth what it was costing in terms of suffering to achieve.  This kind of God, the kind of God who some suggest is working along such emotionally dissociated lines is, now, to my mind, the kind of God who (if He’s real) lives in a cosseted ‘ivory tower’, a ‘fluffy’ God, far removed from all of the misery taking place (which, remember, He’s ultimately responsible for) pontificating from His luxurious throne, saying, merely, that we have to trust Him because ‘everything will be alright in the end’.  In the comfy realm of theory, maybe that idea works still for some, but when you’re 100 floors up in a New York skyscraper, faced with two horrible options (a) you either stay where you are and burn to a crisp as the flames that are spewing from the plane which has just crashed into the floors below you draw menacingly closer and the super-heated air causes your lungs to burn as you desperately try to breathe, or (b) where your other  choice is instead to jump to certain death, as it clearly seems to be the lesser of the two impending evils... I don’t suppose this so-called ‘plan’ seems very reasonable, after all?  From a comfy armchair at home (or a comfy throne in Heaven), it may all seem worth it, but, swap places and things will quickly begin to look (and feel) quite different.  So, this kind of answer, and this kind of God, are unsustainable, I believe, at least if you’re trying to arrive at a theory which supports the reign of an ‘All-powerful’ God of Love and the murderous existence of al-Qaeda.

The argument promulgated for this callous perspective is that God is good, but that, since Satan chose to rebel, and, since humanity could also choose rebellion, or obedience, time is being allowed for humanity to learn to make that ‘right choice’ (obedience).  This means that, both good and bad (and the option to do both) have to be allowed to co-exist, in order for this process to be fully complete and for the desire to do wrong purged from our character, and this is why it’s taking such a long time for this plan to reach it’s eventual conclusion when God will (such proponents of this point of view suggest) intervene in human affairs and rid the world of Evil... and reward the good.  I once read that God loves us so much that He deemed it to be worth the billions of years of suffering that would occur (on an animal and human level) by first allowing Evil to co-exist with the living world, in order that humanity would - eventually - overcome the temptation to do evil, which, currently the Satanic embodiment of Evil seeks to encourage us to do.   Like I said, this theory only really works from the safety and comfort of an arm chair.

God is omnipotent but...

God is omnipotent, but... even an omnipotent being cannot disentangle evil from the fabric of creation instantaneously (just as he cannot create good character instantly, it takes time to develop). Omnipotence is a question of perspective.  Any being who can create dynamics that result in a physical universe and who can maintain beneficent spirit realms too, by any standard is ‘all powerful’, so to speak, but all-powerful might not mean that everything can be achieved instantaneously.

Sometimes people get caught up in trying to gauge the limits of God’s power by asking questions like ‘Is God powerful enough to create a weight that He can’t lift?’.  If He is All-powerful enough to do this, then He’s not All-powerful, because He can’t lift the weight He created.  If He can lift any weight imaginable, then He’s not All-powerful because He can’t create a weight that He can’t lift.  Such questions don’t lead to answers, and some doubt the value of such questions. The ‘God is omnipotent but...’ point of view perhaps answers, in part, God’s seeming ‘hands off’ approach to our world.  For some reason, the depth of entanglement of Evil in the physical world necessitates a high degree of divine work and unimaginable time to disentangle this corruptive element from the fabric of existence.  And it takes an All-powerful being to be able to do so, but, due to the laws of logic and reality, even an All-powerful being requires time. Mani, for example, I understand, taught that at the Dawn of Creation, due to the hostile actions of the Satanic figure evil became deeply entwined with the fabric of God’s act of Creation. I can see some logic in this idea, but I stumble for instance at the paradox of the example of how the leopard is clearly designed to kill, yet it is still a beautiful animal, which can, given the right circumstances demonstrate affection too.  (I can see how the implicit existence of Evil would cause the existence of animals that kill, but not such a beautifully designed animal. Neither can I understand why a God of Love would create such beautiful creatures as leopards, making them highly developed killing machines, much less why He would cause germs and viruses to exist.)

Could not, would not God, have foreknown the likelihood that evil would either (a) manifest, if there was not a preexistent evil entity like Satan to cause evil, or (b) if a Satan existed, that he would seek to corrupt the physical world at an intrinsic level?  Probably, I suppose.  If this is the case, then, we of course find ourselves defaulting back to the situation which I personally find unpalatable (and I intuit that you do too?), that of the ‘Ivory Tower God’ who foreknows the extent of suffering that will occur if He proceeds along an alloted course, but who deems it worthwhile to continue with such a plan that will result in the existence of Levi Bellfield, Jack The Ripper and Nazi monsters, who burn little children to death in ovens, even if, at some indeterminate future moment in time (which takes millions of blood drenched years to reach) things will ‘work out in the long run’, because, as I’ve said before, I think, on this basis, the price is too high in the ‘short term’ (which is not really a short term, it’s taking millions of years to complete).

God is not omnipotent:

Another question raised to explain the existence of Evil is that, perhaps, God is not omnipotent, but rather that there exists an almost balanced situation in which benevolent forces, of which God is the leader, seek to curtail the ability of malevolent spiritual forces from destroying our world (through the process of direct mind-to-mind influence, in which they seek to cause people to make bad decisions). This is viable, when you consider the physical world alone, but... the evidence of spiritualism and mediumship (including my own) seems to indicate that in the realms of spirit, it is essentially good that holds sway, and which, as a result, benevolent spirits are indeed able to intervene in human affairs, such as, with messages of Love (as presented by psychic/mediums, along with corroborating evidence of soul survival) and with various other kinds of evidence (including that gathered by Near Death Experience research) which suggest that we (for the most part) eventually make our way to a Heavenly realm where we’re cared for and where we meet with previously departed loved ones, along with enjoying the company of other benevolent beings and, in various ways, have fellowship with the very presence of God. A non-omnipotent God theory, in isolation, explains the presence of Evil, but not the over-riding presence of good in the higher spirit realms.  We cannot square a truly Heavenly realm, led by a non-omnipotent Creator God who reigns supreme in this realm, with a suffering world, can we? Can we? Or can we?

So maybe God's not ‘All-powerful’?

Perhaps God is incredibly powerful and very intelligent, but He cannot foresee ‘everything’?  Perhaps we misunderstand what it means to be omniscient? Frankly, this scary, but, perhaps less scary scenario than that of a God who can foresee the existence of screaming children locked in ovens, but who chooses not to intervene is more accurate?  Maybe God is very wise but not literally ‘All-knowing’ in the commonly understood sense of the term?  Neither option is ideal.  A God who is able to anticipate and therefore able to stop young children being burned alive in ovens, but who doesn’t (for any reason), is a nightmarish God.  A God who isn’t able to intervene, and who didn’t anticipate such a situation when creating the material universe, a God who more closely resembles Superman (very powerful, but not omniscient or omnipotent) indicates that the universe is a more dangerous place than we would like to think, does it not?  What’s more, my own experience contradicts the proposition that Spirit cannot or does not intervene to protect human beings from otherwise dangerous situations, such as occurred in my own life when I was saved from death or injury during a hurricane, after having just witnessed the presence of two winged beings - an event I talk about in a video on my website (and, if you’re interested you can also see a couple of photos of the aftermath of the hurricane there too).  Was I more ‘worthy’ of protection than any one of those young children who were thrown into furnaces?  Of course not! Probably the reverse is true.  So why doesn’t it happen more often?

Yes, why doesn’t it happen more often?  I think, potentially, that the mighty (but not 'All-powerful') God proposition could go some way to answer this problem.  You see, if God is All-loving, wise and mighty, but… if there also exists a contradictory power, which, while less intelligent than God is still far above human ken, and while less powerful than God, is still far, far more powerful than we humans can ever begin to imagine - and if this negative entity/energy is (for its own nefarious reasons) in conflict with God, as in any battle, this could mean that there are places in which God is in total control (such as the beneficent spirit realm) but that here, in the material cosmos, a ‘no mans’ land’ exists, in which neither power exerts total control and where it is as a result an eons long process for God and the Forces of Good to eradicate Evil and send it back to its own dark domain in the lower spiritual realms (which many religions and more modern accounts of some Near Death experiences and spiritualism suggest exist, ‘below’ both Earth and the more refined Heavenly realms). If a titanic battle is indeed being waged, this might mean that while God is aware of the extent of evil that exists in the material realm, because it takes such a considerable amount of effort for God to maintain/sustain the beneficent spirit realm… and the material universe, that, the Evil force that has encroached into the physical universe (but is not strong enough to proceed into the beneficent spirit realm) is being fought on all fronts and, in some situations it’s just not possible, in all given moments to intervene in every evil act (or for that matter, every event of misfortune in general) that occurs, but it is possible to intervene in some… as the ebb and flow of battle leads through the process of God eradicating Evil from the material universe, inevitably to arrive at its predestined outcome (the restraining of Evil).  The ‘First Prophet’ (Zarathustra) and many others since have stated that this titanic battle will be won with the Good God as the victor and with Evil imprisoned for all time.  From my limited, human perspective, as I examine the evidence of the existence of Evil and misfortune in the world, alongside the evidence of spiritualism, modern science and Near Death Experiences this conclusion seems reasonable to consider.

Also to be considered in the context of the powerful-but-not-All-powerful-God theory is the suggestion that I’ve heard crop up every now and again over the years which is that God may Himself be learning and evolving.  This to me seems reasonable.

We’re responsible for creating this world

Perhaps we, the sum total of living beings have created this ‘reality’ as a result of our collective mind set? In a limited way, yes, this idea has some currency, but, when taken to the Nth degree, we could equally ask, then, if we’re all responsible for the mess that this world is in, why hasn’t an ‘All-powerful’  God of Love stepped in to help save us from ourselves? (And if we're powerful enough to create this reality ourselves, a reality which most people don't like, why doesn't it just shift in the direction of a universal ideal, empowered similarly by our collective mind-set?)

Spiritual addiction

Some Gnostics have taught that matter is entirely a creation of Evil (the Satan-like figure I mentioned above) and that we who live here have ‘fallen’ into the material realm and in the process forgotten our original spiritual origin and subsequently become trapped in the material world, half-asleep, spiritually speaking, distracted by the ‘baubles’ of Satan’s world: money, sex, addictive substances, ego, status, etc.  The Gnostics also teach, in various ways, that God is in overall control and that we who live here are being urged to ‘wake up’ and cease incarnating in the physical world, by drawing closer to Spirit and by, therefore, remembering who we are.  This theory makes partial sense.  (Except for the fact that there’s also a lot of good in the world, which would indicate that it was not created by a wholly evil entity.)

Some Gnostics, like the Buddhists (and others) believe too that ‘Great Souls’ incarnate into this world to convey spiritual truths in order to help people to ‘wake up’, and become free again.  Buddhists call such people Bodhisattvas, souls who could become fully Buddha-like and cease incarnating into this present evil world but who, as an act of compassion, forego such a blessing in order to seek to assist all living beings to learn to ‘wake up’ and therefore cease returning to this earth through incarnation after incarnation too (incarnations which are caused by our addictions to the things of this world).  This concept works, to a level, but, it seems to me to be a never ending task.  And if it’s never ending (or taking an inexorably long time by human standards) this means a perpetual, or practically perpetual inexcusable round of suffering for all who unwittingly inhabit the physical world. Would an ‘All-powerful’ God of Love allow this if He could do something good about it?

Sin

Some teach that evil occurs due to ‘sin’.  Either we ‘sin’ and as a result we’re punished by God’s inexorable laws, which includes allowing evil to befall us as punishment for ‘sinning’.  Or, other people ‘sin’, and, sometimes, sadly we’re effected by the results of their actions.  I think that, in part, this is true. People do ‘sin’ and others do suffer for the results of their actions.  However, wicked people often prosper.  And decent people often suffer.  Nor does the ‘Sin Perspective’ adequately answer problems like those of the children who are born with congenital defects, who live and suffer for a few hours, or days, before dying.  Never having lived long enough to have had the chance to ‘sin’.  Nor being effected by the direct results of another’s ‘sin’(s).

Love is the answer

If some of what I’ve written has caused you to question the fabric of reality, good.  Consider this too if you will, would you still have believed what you believed before reading this article if you were born to different parents, or born in a country with a different national religion?  Were your beliefs founded on clear intelligent reason, or were they beliefs of a ‘hand me down’ fear inspired kind (what will mum, dad, or God think if I use my God-given ability to weigh up the evidence and come to a reasoned, and reasonable conclusion)? If God exists, does he want spiritual children who fail to ask important questions, who blindly parrot received religious dogmas and who avoid testing the evidence?  Not a loving God. Only cosmic bully would want that.

Love of God based on fear, is not really love, it’s a feigned love born of fear.  Even if you can’t see this, if God exists, He probably can, can’t He? Feigned love of God is a bit like the obedience that exists when a dictator governs a land.  Remove the dictator and suddenly people start to speak out against him, they start to rebel, fight and sometimes they kill their fellow citizens as petty enmities that have been suppressed by the once mighty boot of the dictator erupt as it's removed. How many religious fundamentalists have adopted a (by comparison to their previous behaviour) hedonistic lifestyle upon discovering that, for example, as the words of the popular song called 'It Ain't Necessarily So' tell us: ‘...the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, ain’t necessarily so’?  Many I suggest.  Love based on fear then is not love (that’s the ‘love’ of a cult member).  It’s acquiescence. Desire to ‘do the right’ thing, because it’s the right thing and because you love good (and by extension God) regardless of whether or not there is a reward or punishment system in effect is true love.

Earlier in this article I referred to Superman.  Well, in the comic books Superman has a well-known ability called ‘X-ray vision’ the power to see through solid objects.  I suggest that God, if He exists, has a similar power too, in His case it’s called ‘X-ray perception’, meaning that God can perceive our real motives; such as the feigned ‘love’ of acquiescence, as contrasted with true Love.

Is it wrong to ask serious questions about deeply troubling situations in light of the evidence of the messages that spiritualists, prophets and others have shared which suggest that 1) a spirit world exists and 2) at the centre of this spirit realm is a supremely loving force that we call God - while here on earth terrors and cruelty run riot (not to mention natural disasters and common-or-garden bad luck abounds)?

You know as I’ve been writing this article, some might say paradoxically, I’ve been praying to my guides and helpers... and specifically to God, to help me to write something that is of benefit to those who read it and which is respectful of God’s position. I’ve not known where this article would lead or how it would conclude.  Clearly, I wasn’t led to suddenly easily make sense of all of the conflicting evidence in such a way that I could conclude with a ‘And this proves that evil doesn't really exist, it’s all just an illusion, God is Good, God is love...  and they all lived happily ever after’, ending.

At the end of the day, what I know (knowing goes beyond mere belief), writing from the perspective of a psychic/medium is that there is a spirit world (this has been evidenced to me and to my many clients many times over).  I understand, based on my experience that powerful loving entities from this realm (along with our departed loved ones) do interact with members of humanity.  I understand too that when I work psychically I do interact at times with aspects of God/dess.  For reasons best known to Spirit, I don’t yet know though (just like everyone else) of a way to adequately answer what are some seemingly unanswerable questions, regarding the existence of troubling, ongoing, wrongs.  However, I believe that Spirit (God) has led me to ask these questions in recent years, in order to move beyond received, limited (insulting?), dogmatic definitions of God’s character.  There is a Spirit Realm, which can provide proof of its existence and of its love towards us.  Yet, evil exists too, why?  I don’t think that this is something we can easily understand if we honestly examine the evidence and are prepared to overcome any biases that might exist to try to fit God into a pre-determined set of beliefs and apply simple (silly?) answers to serious, often tragic problems.  It is also understandable why, those who haven’t had any personal experiences of the Spirit Realm have doubts, or disbelieve entirely.  I respect honest conclusions like that.  I wish everyone already had personal evidence of survival.

Many times before in my life (particularly in recent years as my psychic/mediumship ability has become more pronounced) I’ve said that I sense that we (humanity) are potentially on the threshold of a giant step, spiritually speaking, as we, collectively, learn to deal with some of the serious problems of our times.  In much the same way that I have logically examined the mismatch that exists in the context of good and evil in the world and the evidence of the existence of a spirit world I’ve also tested and tested again the messages that I believe I’ve received from Heaven which exhort us to ‘wake up’ and unite, in Love, and, collectively, work together to make the world a better place, because in-so-doing we will be working with the Spirit Realm to help counteract the problems and challenges that confront us.  I am, I hope I’ve demonstrated (although I didn’t set out to do this) not wedded to any particular point of view, but, rather to the evidence.  It is evident to me that Love is God and that the more we all seek to exemplify this attribute of our divine nature the closer our world will come to harmonising with the primary essence of God’s character.  I think we need to re-vision our perception  of God.  Is God really some kind of elderly grandfatherly chap who lives in the sky?  Or, is God a vengeful bully who runs a short fuse all of the time, smiting people left, right and centre?  Or, do these images really reflect human ideas, born of times past... ideas which are now ready to be examined and, if found  wanting, rejected, based on the evidence, in favour of whatever new evidence - and clear reason - indicate? And might it not be so that sometimes the process of thinking might even mean not always being able to neatly make sense of the mismatch in the clear evidence of the troubled world in which we live and the existence of a loving Spirit Realm that spiritualism suggests exists, just as, currently science cannot neatly integrate Newton’s Laws with Quantum Mechanics?  (But better to think and wonder, than not.)

My psychic perceptions

My psychic perceptions lead me to intuit that somehow the existence of evil entities who are in a state of enmity towards God, towards the realm of beneficent spirit beings and towards we who live in the material universe… evil entities who are directly responsible for causing much of the suffering that exists and with whom a Good God is in a state of war now is (potentially) close to the mark.  What’s more, I sense that as this titanic battle is waged in the spirit realm (with effects that reach right into our physical realm) highly evolved souls do indeed incarnate in order to help humanity to begin to ‘wake up’ to our true collective divine nature (reminding us that we’re children of God) and what’s more, to be involved in the battle to overthrow the presence of Evil in the material world by inspiring others to reject Evil - and to choose good.  I think that not only God and a realm of beneficent spirit beings are involved in the process of the removal and eventual eradication of Evil but that many individuals (often called ‘Light Workers’) are too, here on earth, adding resistance right up-close and personal, on the ‘front line’.

Shamanism (the world’s oldest spiritual practice, which has existed in various forms for at least the last 30,000 years) has long taught of the existence of a spirit realm populated by a Supreme Being and an array of ‘lesser’ beings, many of whom are good and some of whom are wicked.  What’s more many of the accounts contained in some of the classical religions are predicated on this concept too (Greco-Roman, for example).  Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism and Islam all suggest something along these lines as well.  Shinto, and Buddhism in various ways too… and the list goes on,

As I recall the wide array of possibilities that I’ve considered in recent years (many of which are mapped out in this article) when I’ve wondered ‘Why?’ to perhaps what is the most challenging question we could ever consider(?) I’ve come to see that several of the possible answers I’ve laid out have gone some way to explain why our world is like it is, but, however, many of them fall at the final hurdle - because the final hurdle often (eventually) defaults back to the stark contradiction between how a supposedly omnipotent omniscient God could allow suffering and evil to exist if He also epitomises Supreme Love.  When this hurdle is removed, when we consider that maybe God is the most powerful, but not ‘All-powerful’ in the sense that some like to suggest (as they get tied up in knots wondering whether or not He can make a weight heavier than He Himself can lift) then perhaps, just perhaps, we might be moving somewhat closer to understanding the dichotomy between a God of Supreme Love and the existence of Evil?

Kerin Webb: Psychic/Medium, Bournemouth, Dorset, England.

Addendum:

Since starting to write this article I began reading (as mentioned above) a wonderful book called: God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer.

http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Problem-Answer-Important-Question-Why/dp/0061173975

Yesterday I finished reading this excellent book.  I thought therefore that I would mention that I was encouraged to notice that the author, Bart D. Ehrman drew many of the same (or similar conclusions) that I reached here (but that he did so in much more depth), what's more, my understanding of his stated agnostic position is that he too considers the mighty - but not ‘All-powerful’ God - hypothesis one of the most likely answers to our question, if God exists.  I commend his book to all who wonder about enigmas like this.

Bart D. Ehrman also spoke highly of another book on the subject of the dichotomy between the existence of a God of Love and the existence of Evil, which I’ve just ordered myself (as I write today on 1/7/11).  While I haven’t read this particular book, as Bart highlighted it in a positive light I’ll include the title here for you too, just in case you want to order the two books together yourself in order to explore this matter in more depth: it’s called When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Rabbi Harold Kushner: http://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Things-Happen-People-Self-discovery/dp/0330490559/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309537424&sr=8-1 ...my understanding from Ehrman’s book is that Kushner leans to the mighty, but not ‘All-powerful’ God theory too.

You might also benefit by reading the following books as well in the context of this subject:

The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death, by Dr Gary Schwartz:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Afterlife-Experiments-Breakthrough-Scientific-Evidence/dp/0743436598/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309537623&sr=1-1

The Truth About Medium: Extraordinary Experiments with the Real Allison Dubois of NBC’s Medium and Other Remarkable Psychics:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Truth-About-Medium-Extraordinary-Experiments/dp/1571744592/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309537680&sr=1-1

Transformed by The Light, by Dr Melvin Morse: Powerful Effects of Near Death Experiences on People’s Lives

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transformed-Light-Powerful-Near-death-Experiences/dp/0749912723/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309537542&sr=1-2

Beyond The Light: The Mysteries and Revelations of Near-Death Experiences, by P.M.H Atwater:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Light-P-M-H-Atwater/dp/0380725401/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309537764&sr=1-1

...and then by spending some time thinking.

Post Script:

This will interest you.  The other day, when I was thinking about some of the perplexing questions that I've subsequently raised in this article I said out loud 'Heavenward' words like this: 'I believe in a spirit realm... but not in the God I used to believe in'.  In the background I had the classical radio station called Radio 3 playing.  As if in answer to my statement, the host of the radio show, said: '...it's like you get a personal message from a Beneficent God, who says that you are doing well and that you will go further'. Coincidence?  A fluke? Or a message hinting that I'm on the right track? The timing was perfect.