Recently, I had the pleasure of a wide-ranging interview with Rodger Nichols of Cover to Cover Book Beat. At one point, he asked how a creator, who loves us, could enable others’ free will to harm us. After a bit of discussion, I admitted I don’t know. You can listen to the whole interview at Del H Smith - Discovering Life's Purpose: Re-examining The Club - YouTube.
The interview was an incident of the Experiential Learning process which I describe in the book Discovering Life’s Purpose. Experiential Learning is simply reflecting on what you can learn from what you experience in life. My reflection on the interview was one of those learning experiences.
My reflection began with what I already know. Our creator loves us, invites us to eternal life with it and has established the purpose of our lives - to love our creator and all its created as selflessly and unconditionally as we are able. If you share this knowledge, shall we see where it might lead us? If not, would you consider assessing the sound reasoning, which establishes this knowledge, in the Meaning of Life Video Series? If you find that reasoning establishes this knowledge to your satisfaction, would you join our pursuit?
Most people wonder why a loving creator would allow perpetrators to carry out atrocities, warlords to commit genocide and any of us to do horrendous harm to others. Surely a loving creator would clean up its act. Why doesn’t it reign in free will?
In Could Free Will Be Your Most Dangerous Gift, we reflected that the true love, which our creator craves from us, must be freely given by us. No matter how much it craves our love, it must make itself powerless to make it happen. It must submit to our free will. Only our exercise of our free will can enable the eternal intimacy to which our creator invites us and which is the meaning of our lives. Although our creator is unquestionably able to constrain our behaviour, can it allow itself to disable our free will?
Do not all parents want everyone to love all the children they procreate, unconditionally and equally, whether or not they are equally loveable? Would our creator not want everyone to love all of its created equally, whether or not they do evil? Of course, it joins us in hating
the dreadful things evil people do. But wouldn’t it want us to join it in loving them even when they do evil?
Do not all parents know that their children can only mature and achieve fulfillment in life by lifelong unconstrained access to life experience – the good and the bad? Would not our creator know that as well? Like us, it doesn’t like it when its created are exposed to, or choose the bad from time to time, but, like us, it knows that that exposure is a prerequsisite of achieving a fulfilled life. But, wait! Wouldn’t you try to intervene if your children experienced the bad throughout their whole life? Why would our creator not intervene to prevent a lifelong hell on earth?
What do you think of this perspective? Is not our whole earthly life no more than a short afternoon in our eternal lives? Our creator wants us to grow into an eternal life of unconditional and selflesslove of it and all its created. To enable us to achieve that love, can it allow itself to prevent us from fully experiencing the good and the bad throughout
that short afternoon?
Del H. Smith conducts research into life’s meaning and is the award-winning author of the Amazon Best Seller, Discovering Life’s Purpose.