Preparing for the Miraculous

214 eleven talksThe ProblemThe intractable problem of evil and suffering is glaringlypresent in the written testimonies of all cultures past andpresent. It is the cause of consternation when confrontedwith the Holocaust, a tsunami or other catastrophes, as wellas when confronted with the torture and the vicious or randomkilling of a few or even a single human being. To thisproblem every religion has to find an answer in order tojustify the actions of its God, whoever he is supposed to be.Sri Aurobindo considered the problem as follows in The LifeDivine: “God being All-Good, who created pain and evil? Ifwe say that pain is a trial and an ordeal, we do not solve themoral problem, we arrive at an immoral or non-moral God– an excellent world-mechanist perhaps, a cunning psychologist,but not a God of Good and Love whom we canworship, only a God of might to whose law we must submitor whose caprice we may hope to propitiate. For one whoinvents torture as a means of test and ordeal, stands convictedeither of deliberate cruelty or of moral insensibilityand, if a moral being at all, is inferior to the highest instinctof his own creatures.” 1In modern day philosophy and science we find theproblem voiced for instance in this way: “When you considerall the physical suffering that there is in the world;when you consider the stupidity of a good number of people;when you consider the cataclysms of nature; when youconsider that all of human life is only a transitory phase ofthe universe, I think it is difficult to suppose that [the] omnipotence[of God] could not possibly have done better.”(Bertrand Russell) “The universe we observe has preciselythe properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, nodesign, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind1 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 101.