Last night my wife wanted to go to a Christmas party that would require me to make small talk with a bunch of people I didn’t know for several hours.
I decided to stay home alone and resolve the Problem of Evil.
And here is the Resolution:
God is Functionally Non-Omnipotent.
Considering the experience of our daily lives and atrocities that occur on a daily basis it is obvious that a Good God is not in control of daily events. From car accidents to cancer, child abuse to cholera, tsunamis to schizophrenia, and from terrorism to racism, sexism and corruption the world is full of pain and evil.
Yet there is love and beauty and kindness and generosity. There is moral progress gained by courage and sacrifice. There are cures and treatments and therapies and solutions and technological advancement. There are powerful personal transformations. There are epiphanies and life changing enlightenment. There is cooperation and community. There are signs of transcendence and a Higher Power everywhere.
There is a carefully landscaped Garden overgrown and full of weeds.
A Da Vinci’s Gran Cavallo. A masterpiece abandoned in the planning stages.
What I am actually solving for is not the answer to “The Problem of Evil”. I am solving for the answer to “The Problem of Simultaneous Good and Evil that cannot be explained solely by Darwinian Self-Interest”.
A compelling explanation is that God is Functionally Non-Omnipotent. It is impossible to know if God is actually limited or has chosen limits. If God has chosen these limits it is impossible to know why these particular limitations were chosen. We can speculate but those speculations are always ultimately unsatisfying to say the least.
God always works for good in any and all situations. The calling for humans is to cooperate with God in the progressive mitigation and elimination of pain and evil while promoting love, peace, health, and human flourishing.
God doesn’t dictate instructions and solutions. God only works at the level of spirit to inspire, transform, and guide. God is present and works in that space between stimulus and response called consciousness. But God cannot override natural law and cause and effect.
God is the Invisible Hand guiding us through awareness and expanded consciousness. God cannot ‘zap us’ into expanded consciousness. It only comes spiritually and organically.
In all of this a God Algorithm calculates God’s engagement vs. God’s limitations. God is always working for the most possible good within the parameters of the God Algorithm.
The only path to peace that I can see is to accept life on life’s terms and trust that there is an ultimately reasonable, loving and beautiful explanation. As we accept reality and surrender to Life we increasingly open ourselves to God to be guided and shaped into humans who are expanding Love and solving Pain and Evil.