From whence, oh God, comes all the world’s evil and killing?
Do you wish it gone but are unable, or able yet unwilling?
Do you not wish to nor have power, or are you willing and able?
Can your existence withstand reason, or is it all just a fable?
Perhaps you’d love to vanish it, but from the task do cower,
But how then are you God if you do not have all power?
Or maybe you could easily banish evil, but really don’t care,
Well then, you’re just wicked and unworthy of my prayer.
If you’re neither willing nor able, you’re both wicked and weak,
How can we find relief from this suffering, where can we seek?
But if you’re all-good and all-powerful, why the awful upheavals?
If you desire and have the power, why not remove all the evils?!
Come, my child, let us reason together as I did with men in days of old,
You do not understand goodness nor power, but you are honest and bold.
If you are willing to peer through the beginning and view the larger plan,
Even will I, the Lord, reason with you as a man that you might understand.
You are My child and lived with Me in eternity before coming to earth.
Under My watchful eye you grew and matured before your mortal birth.
There came a point you could progress no farther on My side of the veil,
You willingly embarked on this educative quest knowing all it would entail.
You chose this path forward knowing it would include forgetting that choice;
Exercising your voice to work towards that which would cause you to rejoice.
Proven herewith, they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; however,
They who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads forever.
To act independently, and not to be acted upon, is fundamental to being,
Otherwise, you are merely the object of a greater power’s decreeing.
Thus, agency is more than the ability to choose—it is the essence of your existence;
Power to choose and accountability are both required for its eternal subsistence.
If my children were stopped from choosing evil, their agency would become void,
A precipitous spiritual genocide would ensue, being and agency destroyed.
Also, if choices did not have set consequences, then action would have no meaning,
Agency is void without accountability as it would require controlling intervening.
A given cause has a set effect, reward and punishment distil naturally from free will, which
creates a feedback loop where good choices goodness instill; while choosing evil limits future
choices until, one’s freedom is reduced to nil.
I gave My children their agency, and also commandments that they should love one another,
and choose me, their Father; but behold too many are without affection and hate each other.
In their self-destructive rebellion, they pour out misery upon the whole earth;
Even the innocent drinking in the fruits thereof from the day of their birth,
But I turn this adversity to their good that they may attain their full worth
From Eden to Golgotha: mankind’s first transgression to the crucifixion,
I planned for and form glory from every malediction.
This same mercy I will work within every human life,
Turning suffering to glory: refining heavenly bliss from earthly strife.
And every child who slips from mortality to eternity in her mother’s weeping embrace,
Is immediately released from pain into My arms to see My tear-filled smiling face.
The blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against the wicked at the last day,
Promote justice in time, and I will handle eternity—vengeance is mine, I will repay.
Justice will reign, but an almighty gait must tread lightly not to crush independence,
Remain blindly lost in the illusion of now, or trust in My divine superintendence.
A child with a mortal disease, who does not understand at all,
May start to think the doctor is causing his bitter gall.
Even when following the wisest protocol,
Pain can temporarily increase, before subsiding at all.
Only with experience will the child learn to trust the doctor’s call.
My plan of happiness is only in the beginning of its implementation;
Abolishing evil prematurely would actually facilitate its perpetuation.
Extrapolating My character from idealizations of your temporal reflection,
Will not yield understanding unless you know the nature of eternal perfection.
I dwell in the midst of eternity—past, present, future always before My face,
At one with the eternal realities—law, light, intelligence in all of timespace.
Unto what shall I liken these kingdoms, that you may understand?
Eternity, viewed from the limiting and protective sphere of time, would be as if
The compounding effects of any momentary decision perpetuated to its fullest
And complete conclusion instantaneously. One enraged moment in time,
Without the existence of time, yields the result of eternal raging.
While perfect meekness, once attained, will continue without aging.
Imagine an arrow flying through an infinitely long hall;
With no friction nor gravity, nothing to make it fall.
It does not matter how immense or small,
Everything happens at once with no way to stall,
Unless perfectly aligned, the arrow will eventually hit the wall.
So it is in eternity, a law for every kingdom with bounds and conditions,
All beings who are not able to abide in law cannot justify their positions.
If any being is out of perfect unison with law in any degree of resistance,
Proportional bounds must be set to keep that being in continual existence.
Just like an unruly child running through the mall,
Or a disorderly adult publicly abusing alcohol.
Making a ruckus or starting a brawl,
Mom grips his hand; police respond to the call.
Not obeying the law of their realm was their downfall.
Unable to swim in the infinite ocean, through the probation of time you are carried;
Mankind sails through eternity as a hatchling swan upon her mother’s back is ferried.
While adversity is necessary, I am not whipping up hurricanes nor smiting with cancer,
If expedient these would be expunged, but as with human evil there is a deeper answer.
All that emanates from Me is eternally good, that which is enlightening and edifying,
But earth is an off-course arrow, out of unison with eternal law, so is slowly dying.
The decaying body and earth are conditions I am moving you past, not a sentence.
Time was granted to prolong your days, and thus provide a space for repentance.
A realm must be suited to its inhabitants, else like watching home from a black hole,
Mortals thrust into the eternal realm would disintegrate, aging wildly out of control.
Left to swim alone the endless waves would crush my fallen children out of existence;
A broken law triggered death; you only live long enough to repent with My assistance.
Behold, I will liken these kingdoms unto an eternal sea from
which is plucked a drop of temporal existence.
Time is like taking a drop of water, then letting it fall back to the infinite sea,
Which creates a probationary period, in which you can choose to be free.
The constant now of eternity thus stayed, you make mistakes and grow by degree.
Wrongs repented of before that reckoning will rightly not be required of thee.
Wrongs inflicted upon the innocent, I also bore while hanging upon that tree.
Pure as the drop left My finger, and all will be cleansed before returning to Me.
Death and pain, natural disasters and disease are the natural effects of falling free.
All temporal existence is just the duration of this drop’s fall back into the eternal sea.
Lost in time without memory of who you really are, you grapple with the reason,
That a good and powerful God could allow such suffering to exist for a season.
As hard as it is to see now, you are the sick child and I AM the good physician,
Forgetting you chose this path; you now question as I bring the plan to fruition.
Blinded by time, you wonder how this suffering can be made up for in a future state,
You want the perfection of eternity now despite the consequences, you cannot wait.
You imagine a god that forces mankind into a state opposite his nature to bring relief.
But I change human nature, then work back through time to make glory of past grief.
Distorted by a temporal prism, you conflate goodness with comfort and power with control,
But remember the selfless offering of the travailing woman in pursuit of a higher goal.
By the very nature of the thing, all suffering is temporary while forever will live the prize.
While seeking to control others is unsustainable as it necessarily leads to the tyrant’s demise.
Cast the scales from off your eyes and unstop your ears,
trying to understand the infinite through the finite is more difficult than it appears.
The key that evades you, the light that can persuade you, the truth that will aid you, is that real
goodness and supreme power are parts of a whole that can only exist in its fullness as one.
As immutable as the physical law, which man’s greatest minds have only partially described,
this one law fills the immensity of space in which all moral cause and effect is circumscribed.
Becoming a law unto yourself is not true power, it is wielding perfect truth justly,
Flying the sure course down the infinite hall, cleaving to light and truth robustly
You seek love not merely because your heart is following some fleeting infatuation,
Your eternal soul is drawn to this law because all glory is dependent on love for its perpetuation.
A deep and perfect love is the only principle upon which all-power can exist and be shared,
And only with all might and intelligence can omnipotent love thrive unimpaired.
Supreme goodness is the property of being aligned with eternal law in such a way
that full independence and ability to exercise power can be maintained in the everlasting day.
Eternal law is the natural flow of happiness in all heaven and earth,
A behavioral mechanism that can operate in the timeless realm unlocking true worth:
Those decisions whose consequences lead to increased power and freedom for all.
The straight course down the infinite hall.
Anything short of this is evil, which is always a temporary ploy,
because evil is distinguished by that which can only destroy.
Whenever power is abused, might misused, a law refused, it is the perpetrator that is bruised
and stands accused. Time veils the full force of evil’s self-destruction; but in eternity, power can
only be proportional to goodness, and goodness the only path to glory.
Being flawed would mean I would cease to be God
When understood correctly, your paradox is actually a self-contradiction;
a Euclidean depiction within the universe’s curved jurisdiction leading to a self-refuting fiction.
Like saying light cannot be both hot and bright because splendor veils full view of the sun,
Reductionism collapses under the dynamic interaction of laws working together as one.
Surely I have borne your griefs, and carried your sorrows at the oil press I kneeled,
The chastisement of your peace was upon Me, and with My stripes you are healed.
I suffered that you might be succored, took upon me death that you might live again
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for His friend.
Have faith that you once knew Me, and you will know me again.
Learn of Me and choose the path you chose once before.
This suffering shall be but a small moment.
Then time, evil, and suffering
shall be no more.
by Les Cookson
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