Q.
172
Why would an all-knowing God begin the
process of creation knowing that it would
be corrupted by evil and lead to so much
heartache?
Joshua Einsohn
A.
My history teacher, Eric Benke, answered this question for me on
the fi rst day of ninth grade. Why the question came up has been
lost in the haze of memory, but it was one of those rare moments in
life when a Big Question is answered and you can almost feel the “click!” as
something inside slides into place.
He said (and I paraphrase), “If God just wanted everyone to just say,
‘I love you I love you I love you!’ he wouldn’t have given us free will. He
would’ve made a lot of wind-up dolls that weren’t capable of choice. But
that’s not what he did.”
Click!
It’s up to us to choose whether to love or hate. It’s up to us to choose
whether to discriminate or accept. It’s up to us to choose whether to look out
for each other or look out for ourselves. When we hurt ourselves or someone
else, in a way, we hurt everyone.
If there is heartache in the world, it’s often because we (in the most pro-
found sense of the word “we”) have failed. We are fl awed and will continue to
make mistakes, but if there’s a little bit of God in all of us, if we choose to say
“I love you I love you I love you!” to one another, then we’re truly on the path
away from evil and suffering.Rebecca Bowman Woods
A.
One early group of Christians, the Gnostics, developed an elabo-
rate group of deities and within that group, the Creator God, or
demiurge, was jealous, violent, and inferior to the Supreme God
of Truth. The church eventually declared gnostic beliefs heretical, but it’s not
tough to imagine why the gnostic Christians had a problem with the Creator.
Look around: Wars, oppression, and the destruction of the environment
are the result of God’s decision to give us the freedom to make choices. Add
natural disasters and accidents to the equation and we’re left wondering if it’s
all some kind of cosmic joke.
One of the ways that God created us in God’s image is by giving us the
power to create. But we also have the power to destroy. Part of our challenge,