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Thirst and Suffering in Modern Western Society JOKO

BAN G KOK, BAN G KOK,
TH AI L AN D
Thirst and Suffering in Modern Western Society
An American abroad
By G. Apollo MacKenna living the life of a
TEFL teacher in the Land of Smiles.
V I EW MY CO MP LET E P R O FI LE

PREFACE - October 2006

PRE VIOUS POSTS

How many times have you heard, “everything happens for a reason”?
It’s normally understood to mean that some outcome, usually
positive, explains why something negative occurred prior to it, a very
comforting idea when faced with an otherwise inexplicable tragedy.
The sufferer seeks to ameliorate pain by holding hope that he or she
is not the victim of a cruel, random and meaningless universe.
Whether the belief is held during the tragedy itself or in hindsight
after a positive event deriving from the tragedy, when used this way,
everything happening for a reason is a metaphysical concept. It
implies that there is a fundamental and benevolent order to the
universe wherein consequences become the reason events occur. It is
a backwards causality. A rational person taking a logical, skeptical
point of view won’t take as fact that there are silver linings behind
every cloud, and clearly disagree that an assertion that clouds are
caused by silver linings.

Taken out of it’s usual platitudinous context, everything happening

for a reason becomes stating the obvious. Everything does happen for
a reason; everything has a particular cause or set of causes. Our
innate desire to understand the world better drives humanity to try to
discover those causes. The sciences developed as tool to learn why
things happen, and that causes precede events is part of the scientific
order of the universe.

Consider for a moment the nature of time itself. Einstein told us that
time is the 4th dimension. We experience time as a linear progression
because of our limited perspective. Imagine living in a two
dimensional universe, a plane, like a sheet of paper. That plane could
move through a three dimensional universe and would experience the
travel in a linear manner. If we could see through the 4th dimension,
we would see that the future already exists. It brings into question
the whole concept of one thing preceding and causing another. In a
Euclidean world, point “A” on a line does not bring point “B” into
existence simply because it comes before it in the particular
perspective we take. Traveling on that line, it appears that “A”
causes “B”. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.

In the philosophical debate between free will and determinism, the

Einsteinian conception of time provides a scientific model by which a
deterministic universe can be better understood. It is equally valid to
say that the past determined the present as it is to say that the
present determined the past because only one set of events would
create the present reality as it currently exists. Furthermore, present
events are occurring in order the create a future that we cannot see,
but already exists.

In this essay, I endeavor to maintain a rational and logical point of

view. while holding some presuppositions that I do not take the time
to defend because they are not the subject of the essay. The first
presupposition I have already mentioned, that we live in a
deterministic universe. The second is that there is a force that
created this universe. We have labeled this force “God”. This essay is
not about defending a belief in God against those who would say that
this belief is inconsistent with the rational and logical point of view I
want to use.

Baba Ram Dass described three ways people come to believe that
there is or might be a God. The first is through faith. Throughout
history there have been learned beings, and they say there is a God,
and by having faith that what these beings have said is true, the
person believes as well. Faith can’t be defended with logic, although
it easily attacked. The second way one can come to believe in God is
through direct experience. Through meditation, prayer, drugs, or
being thrown from a horse on a hot day, one has a transcendental
experience, one experiences God first hand. The third way is through
deduction. The person has a feeling that there must be more than
this everyday reality and studies the words of the worlds religions,
theologians, spiritualists, and concludes that they can’t all be nuts.
Maybe there is a God; he or she doesn’t know for sure.

It’s for this last group that I direct any convincing I am trying to
accomplish in this essay. The traditional view of God in almost every
religion is that God can and does influence humanity directly. How
can that be true looking at the world today? What kind of God allows
the world to be how it is today? If everything happens for a reason,
wouldn’t it be God determining those reasons? My essay looks for
those reasons.

Main article written Winter, 1993

Revised 2006

I. The Question of Causality

Why do babies die? Why do people suffer? Why do wars continue? Why
is the modern world a seemingly cruel and meaningless place offering
few answers to life’s most important questions? Why is that we can
travel to the moon, end diseases, connect the whole world
electronically and yet still can’t overcome our tendency to fear, hate,
kill and oppress one another?

These are tough questions to answer, particularly if one also holds a

conviction in an all-powerful, ever-present, all-loving divine force.
The question of why God allows evil to exist is not a new one.
Although theologians of many religions have explained the tragedies
as being caused by Satan, sin, karma, or the numerous weaknesses
and shortcomings of humanity itself, only a few dare put the causality
behind suffering into the hands of God. Putting the "fault" on God for
modernity is challenging as it leads to the conclusion that if God
created the likes of Hitler, then God cannot be truly benevolent. Even
if one accepts this causality, one is then faced with the question of
why. Why did God make Hitler?

A temporal perspective explains historic or personal tragedies in the

context of our physical, empirical reality. One knows why babies die;
the science of medicine attributes a cause of death. This scientific
perspective is not restricted to the hard sciences; sociologists have
explored at length the crisis of meaning in modernity, and use terms
like anomie, disenchantment or differentiation to explain social and
historical dynamics. The political scientist uses game theory and
benefit analysis to explain why war has always been a part of human
history. All these scientific answers are true and valid on a certain
level, but for the individual who asks why, on a metaphysical level,
life has been so full of tragedy for our species in this era, these
scientific explanations offer little.

Answering these questions purely on the basis of their scientific

causality is like answering the question of why we eat by saying that
we eat because we put food in our mouths, chew, and swallow. We
eat because we are hungry. Yet, if one looks at the act of eating
alone, one would not know about hunger. It is the same with science.
It can teach us all about the dynamics of how evil operates in the
world, but it has not been able to answer the question of why evil
exists in the first place.

II. God’s Plan

A disciple once asked his master, "How can l know if something is part
of God's plan?" The master replied, "If it were not, it would not exist,
not even for an instant."

Reconciling reality with an omnipotent, omnipresent and

omnibenevolent God troubles many socially conscious . There are
those who advise, "Fret not, it is part of the Divine Will, and God
works in mysterious ways." For some, this simply not enough. Even if
God's essence is unknowable, his ways are all around us. His ways are
our ways, and through thoughtful examination, they can become
known. It does not require a revelation, only insight and imagination.
A sociological analysis of human history can reveal God’s plan within
our troubled past and present.

On the surface, this kind of an examination might lead the objective

analyst to conclude that God is a cruel, violent, and unjust force,
handing out death and suffering to those who have prayed for help.
By looking at world history over the last hundred years, it's easy to
see how this could be the interpretation one would make. This is a
short sighted way to look at the world. It's like saying, to return to
the eating analogy, that teeth are violent and cruel because of what
they do to food. No one would say this.

Teeth have their function, Without them, hunger could never be

satisfied. Violence and human suffering serve a similar function as
teeth: breaking things down.

A self-loving individual who puts himself through suffering can only

be called irrational when the purpose of that suffering remains
unknown. Think of the runner. The athlete experiences a great deal
of pain, and does so in an act which, on the surface, reaps no reward.
No one is observably more healthy after a single run; the benefits
only show up over time. It is only because the runner knows the
health benefits of their activity that she continues in the face of pain.
Of course, some run for the sheer joy of running, but would they have
found that joy if they hadn't been motivated by that initial desire to
keep fit? Human existence is very much the same way, but we have
yet to understand the benefits of our pain

III: Capitalism Science and Technology

I have been painting a picture that focuses on modernity's problems

and not its advantages. This is an unfair portrait, for in modernity's
advantages we can find the key to understanding the metaphysical
purpose behind its problems. The modern age's greatest contribution
to human development is science and technology. That frequently
maligned church of our age, science, has awoken in us the awareness
that we are God. Perhaps this isn't so readily apparent. Science has
changed the whole way we look at the world; it has changed our
mentality and eliminated boundaries. The belief that human
capabilities are limited has been replaced by the idea that through
science, anything can be accomplished. Science is miracles manifest.
We have gone beyond manipulating our environment; we now
actually create, control, and destroy it. Beyond just coexisting with
the other life on this planet, genetics has allowed us to actually
create life and alter it. The impact of our increased awareness of our
own power has not yet, for the most part, transferred to a greater
awareness of our oneness with Divinity, but it has eliminated the
inferiority complex humanity suffered under for thousands of years.
In previous ages, humanity was separated from the Gods by the
incredible powers those gods were seen to hold. Now, similar powers
are at our own disposal.

Technology is the handmaiden of science. Technology, like science,

has become increasingly criticized for its negative societal impacts.
Despite these valid criticisms, who can deny all the benefits that
technology has brought us. Without it, you would not be reading
these words right now. It is technology that has given us the tools to
put our thoughts into words more easily read the words of others
readily and inexpensively. More communication leads to greater
intellectual stimulation and greater understanding of our world.
Right now, each of us has the ability to pick up a telephone, instantly
reach around the world, and find out what's going on from Bermuda
to Bangladesh (2006 note: initial version written pre-internet). This is
a good thing. Just as the advent of agriculture freed man's attention
from survival and allowed him to build civilizations, technology has
freed us from the boundaries of our own civilizations and allowed the
free exchange of ideas on a global scale. Technology has brought
about the Global Village; cultural exchange between peoples now
happens at the speed of light. So then, if technology and science are
such wonders, why did God cause them to develop first in only one
part of the world? The west used these scientific and technological
gifts to dominate and oppress the rest of the world and is the root of
many conflicts to this day. Moreover, the west's own advancement in
these fields led them to feel superior over the other cultures of the
world, which in turn became a further justification for the many
tragedies of imperialism. God planned it this way.

In order for science and technology to impact a society on a major

level, the social organization of that society needs to be keyed to
promoting economic development. The Caliphs of Islam held science
in high regard during their many centuries of rule, but the way of life
of the common people did not change much during that time. It is not
science itself that creates technological progress. Only when science
exists within social structures that promote its development does
social change accompany scientific change. Capitalism is one such
social system. Technology has always given its possessors a market
advantage, but only under capitalism has the concept of gaining a
market advantage been deemed so important. Without capitalism,
the English landlords might have never driven the peasants off their
lands, the wool industry might have never exploded, and the
Industrial Revolution would have never happened.

Even with the premise that God is omnipotent, we can start looking
for God’s influence on history by looking at religion’s impact on
society. Both science and capitalism emerged from somewhat
religious sources. Pre-modern scientists like Newton and Copernicus
were deeply religious men who believed that understanding the
universe meant understanding God. Capitalism emerged as the
dominant economic system in the west in large part because of the
Calvinist doctrine of predestination and divine grace. They believed
that you were one of God’s chosen or you weren’t, and there was no
way to know for sure. Accumulation of personal wealth was seen as
sure sign of God’s favor, and hence the medieval antipathy for avarice
was set aside. A three century marriage between science and
capitalism has brought us to where we are today, a world where what
once seemed miraculous has become commonplace. This has not been
achieved this without paying a penalty. Western society itself has
become mechanized and we have lost a communal sense of meaning
in life

IV: Calloused Hands

When a westerner really comes to know and appreciate the culture of

one of the so-called non-developed nations, there comes a moment
when he realizes that the peoples of these nations are, for the most
part, much happier than the people in the west. Anomie is another of
the invention of the west. The unceasing urge for personal validation
through commercial success that has allowed the west to create
incredible scientific and technological advancements has also left us
wanting. There is never a sense of enough in western culture. The
hunter-gatherers, rice farmers, shepherds, and fishermen of the Third
World do not have the amenities of "comfortable" living the
westerners deem as so important to happiness, yet, they are happy.
Provided, of course, they are not starving. It's hard to be happy on an
empty stomach.

Let us compare the human race to a single human body, If a body was
faced with a task that would cause the part of the body that did the
actual work to become sick, callused, and rough, would one wish that
upon the whole body? Do the work with one part, and share the
benefits upon completion. The rest of the body would then work to
heal the damaged area. This is what has happened. Western culture
has been humanity's "hands". It has built things and learned skills, and
in the process, became callused and hard. Much of the rest of the
world has remained technologically "backward". We can see an
exchange occurring. The west brings its advanced technology to the
rice farmer, increasing his yield and decreasing the risk of starvation.
The east influences our culture through its philosophy and religion.
Never before has the wisdom of Asia, Africa, and the Native
Americans attracted as much attention in the West as it does today.
They have something the West has lost in its rationalistic pursuits of
wealth and scientific facts. Our culture senses this. We long for their
sense of community, their sense of personal meaning in their lives,
the ability to experience the joy of life itself. Each culture on this
planet serves not only the needs of its individual members, but also
fulfills a role in a greater planetary organism.

God has given the west science, and also giving us capitalism,
brought the gifts of technology to the world. Inextricably linked to
these gifts is the maladaisical, meaningless, desperate, cultural
phenomenon we experience as the crises of modernity. To achieve
these modem miracles of technology, the west needed to put aside its
happiness for a while. Religion stayed with us, but as science became
the dominant version of "truth", it put religion at a different, lower
level. We broke God's first commandment to the Hebrews. We put the
God of rationalism ahead of the theological God, Without empirical
evidence, the very existence of God became questioned, God became
an option, not an assumption,

This may sound like a condemnation of the rationally dominated mind

set, To a certain extent, it is. However, in no way was their way of
looking at the world "bad" or "wrong". Western culture's deviance
from the comforting oneness of God was an absolutely essential part
of the development of technology. It has been part of God's plan that
the west should "sleep" for a while as it built the tools of humanity's
great future. The time of sleeping is over. The twentieth century was
about waking up,

V: Making the West Thirsty

The tum of the previous century was a time of great hope in western
culture. The typical western man at that time believed in the God his
church interpreted for him. There was very little direct experience of
God of the eastern variety. This man had total faith in capitalism and
science, The market and the scientist would cure all of the world's
ails. To him, God obviously held the West in a special light. The
technological, and what he saw as intellectual, artistic and cultural
superiority of western society stood as proofs of this. This
ethnocentric self-image needed to be torn down to wake the west up
from its slumber and see the big holes in its own culture, To do this,
God tore big holes in the fields of Europe.

World War One cast the first shadows of doubt over the West’s self-
image of superiority. Western culture saw itself as above the
“savages” of the rest of the world it had conquered, but the millions
who died in the trenches of the most horrific war humanity had yet
suffered showed the entire world that the West could be more savage
than any tribesman. The war’s mechanization of conflict and the
impersonal death of modern weapons reflected the mechanized and
impersonal aspects of Western society.

Historians point to the opposing alliances, tensions in the colonies

and unrest in the Balkans as the causes for WWI. These are all valid
observations, but only explain the triggers of the war. Again, I
believe you can see God’s plan in what was a horrific event by
looking at what came afterwards. God was starting to undo what he
had done with the West.

The period after the war saw another of the pillars of Western
superiority begin to crack. With the hunger, chaos and uncertainty of
the Great Depression, the West learned that capitalism was flawed.
Doubt arose in the reverence for the market as some godlike force
that would cure all in the end. The primacy of economic self interest,
a necessary evil in creating the modern world, began to be replaced
by a recognition that unchecked greed and avarice are in fact,
detrimental to us all.

We now turn to God’s purpose for the one man who perpetrated more
cruelty, inhumanity and hatred than any figure in history, Adolph
Hitler. The idea that Hitler came from God makes most people
absolutely cringe. The idea that there could be any justification to
the Holocaust seems on the surface absolutely ludicrous. We are all
familiar with the images. We all know the names: Aushwitz, Dachau,
Treblinka. What happened to the ten million slaughtered at the hands
of their fellow man remains the darkest moment in human history.
Yet to say that God had nothing to do with these horrors would be to
say that there are things outside of God's power. I do not accept this
definition of Godhead. God was responsible for every victim killed in
the gas chambers. If God had been caught, he would have stood trial
at Nuremberg. Would have made for interesting testimony.

To understand God's purpose behind the Holocaust, we must

understand how the world has changed since that time. Previous to
WWII, racism was an acceptable ideology throughout the West. It was
okay to hate someone because they were Jewish or Black or
different. The Holocaust showed the world, and in particular Europe
and the US, what happens when racism becomes a state ideology. The
Holocaust discredited racism forever. The anti-Semite became
equated with the NAZI which was equivalent to the enemy. The
Jewish people suffered beyond measure during this period, but in
doing so, they gained a state of their own, and the sympathy and
tears of the entire world. Most importantly, they helped discredit a
philosophy that had plagued humanity from the dawn of civilization,
and although weakened, continues as a problem to this day.

In the USA, the Holocaust indirectly aided the African American's

struggle to gain equal rights. The black soldiers who fought against
Hitler knew they were fighting a racist regime. Returning home to
the racist regimes of the American south, they sewed the seeds that
would became the civil rights movement of the fifties.

Worldwide, there is now a sense that if racism becomes a national

ideology, tragedies like the Holocaust will occur again. Although
there are remnants of the past, it would be fair to say that, on the
whole, racism has drastically declined since WWII. There are still a
great many racists in the West; the lessons of the Holocaust haven't
been learned overnight. The difference being that now racists are
seen as deviants within the society, whereas before, they were
accepted.

The book of Revelations speaks of numerous false prophets emerging

before the second coming. Hitler was one of them. Indeed, fascism
could easily be labeled a religion; it was certainly more than just a
political system. The fascists attempted to address the problems of
modernity and solve them. They offered their "believers" hope, a
sense of community, and meaning to their lives, all attributes
characteristically missing from modem society. Fascism was a religion
very much suited to its time; a very appealing false prophecy. The
racism of Hitler's brand of fascism discredited the whole movement
altogether.

Let us now turn to finding God’s hand in the philosophical and

cultural developments of the West. In my opinion, no work of art
more poignantly portrays the anomic condition of modernity than
Beckett's Waiting For Godot. Beckett shows us our culture waiting for
God, and going mad at the same time. It is not that we are going
mad because we are impatiently waiting for God. Instead, it is
because we are going mad that we turn to God for help. Even more
to the point, God has created a society that leaves individuals so
unfulfilled that they are finally willing to give up four centuries of
worshipping rationalism and turn inwards to look for the living God.

The chaos ,doubts, fears, and insecurities that have worked their way
into the very fibers of our culture are like the loud noise of an alarm
clock. They are telling us to wake up from our dream of materialism,
ethnocentrism, and rationalism to a God and humanity’s higher
purpose. The only way to the end the noise of a harsh alarm clock is
to realize the period of dreams is over. One must awaken and
consciously turn off the noise of the alarm. If one drifts back to sleep
again, so be it. In the back of one's head, there is the knowledge that
a new day has begun. We each will emerge into it and begin to enjoy
it at our own pace. Some are still sleeping, and the noise of the
alarm, the malaise of our time, will get louder and louder yet.

A glass of lemonade tastes much better to someone who is dying of

thirst than to he who has just drank. There are those Westerners who
are so stubborn and set in their ways that they need to be "dying of
thirst", so to speak, before they will accept anything outside of their
own realities. Creating that thirst has been the task of evil in
modernity. This century has filled western society with a great
spiritual and metaphysical thirst. It is a burning and consuming thirst.
For several centuries, we have been working like crazy building a
beautiful "garden" all around us. Now we have it. Food enough for
all. Shade. Flowers. Humanity's garden. Being persitent creatures,
we've taken the hoe of rationalism God gave us to build the garden
and forgotten how to put it down. Moreover, we've forgotten that it
was God who gave it to us in the first place. Now, many of us have
been filled with such a thirst that we are finally realizing how to put
the hoe aside, relax a while, and sip God's sweet lemonade.

That lemonade comes in many flavors, and none is inherently better

than any other. For some the lemonade is the teachings of Jesus
Christ. Others find it through meditation, love, a good book, their
family, yoga, or communing with nature. However it comes, it fulfills
the thirst.

As we have been so deep in the trap of the temporal reality, God has
made our thirst particularly tortuous. How else can we learn to
appreciate the flavor of the lemonade? It has never been denied from
us, as individuals. Many Westerners have come to know its flavor very
well. Yet, as a culture, God's plan for Western society did not involve
hanging out in his living room and playing. We were out in the
garden, working diligently with calloused hands and calloused hearts.
Now it's time we came inside. We bring with us the fruits of our labor
to share with our brothers from around the world. The Indians sat
near to God, playing and hearing his words. They have much to teach
us. The Chinese talked with their family in the kitchen. They have
much to teach us about the value of a family. Each culture has been
doing its own thing, and they all have something to teach. We must
not be overly proud of the barrel of goodies we bring from the
garden. We have forgotten things the others have not. Others will
want to learn from us, and we are already teaching them, but we
must help them not fall into the same trap we did. The garden is not
the only reality. Jesus said: "Lest ye become as little children, thou
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." He was telling us that in our
natural heaven-state, that is what we are: little children. Entering
heaven is a matter of realizing this. Like little children sometimes
do, we have let our fantasies become too real. We are playing "grown
up." We tell ourselves that as "grown ups", we no longer need our
parents. God laughs, and fills us with such a thirst that we can no
longer maintain our illusion, and we surrender to our need for His
lemonade.

I have tried to show that historical events can be analyzed in such a

way that even the most destructive tragedies can be given meaning.
The terrible spiritual condition of our society, which sociologists have
come to call "anomie", doesn't provide an established meaning to
existence. The question, "What is the meaning of life?", although
cliche through over use, is the most important question anyone can
ask.

Christianity is perhaps the finest code of ethics on the planet. Yet for
Western culture, it has given few insights into what role a person
should have in the world. Although it tells one how to live one's life,
the teachings of Jesus Christ don't provide much in answering what
life should be lived for. It doesn't answer the question: What is the
meaning of life? The clergy have had their answers, dependent on
time and setting. Life for the king, country, family, job, or this or
that political cause have been some of their answers to this important
question. How different from the Hindu, which defines a man's role
in life quite neatly: The first twenty yeats of a man's life is for
education, the second twenty for building a home and family, and the
last twenty for spiritual development. I am including this here
because as western society pulls itself out the garden it has been
working in for so long, each individual will face the question of what
to do now? At least under the old system, economic gain solved that
question. Making money never ceased. Now, each of us will have to
look within our own souls for Divine guidance to solve this question.

In any case, the events of this century need not be so meaningless.

When we can understand that, taken as a whole, this century has
been about making us thirsty, we can finally understand how God can
love his children and make them suffer at the same time,

Let us continue the historical analysis. The next great tragedy of the
twentieth century was the Cold War. Although the USA and the Soviet
Union never fired a single shot at one another, it can be argued that
no war in modern history had greater cultural and psychological
effects than the Cold War. In particular, its effects on American
culture was profound, and thus far, not very well recognized. The two
generations born under the shadow of nuclear war experienced bomb
drills, fallout shelters, the Cuban Missile Crisis, much rhetoric on both
sides, including statements about burying grandchildren and evil
empires. From the nightmares of death by nuclear attack came a
generation willing to stand up against a war like no previous
generation of Americans had ever done before. The peace movement
was born. The second generation, my own, born under the shadow of
the bomb was also profoundly effected by the Cold War, but in a
much more "thirst building" way than the former. This generation
grew up in a culture so familiar with the Cold War that nuclear war

became to be seen as inevitability. This fatalism bred a new kind of

anomie, one epitomized by a statement I heard frequently growing
up, “won’t matter after they drop the big one.” The American Dream
was dealt a severe blow.

In looking at events closer and closer to the present day, it becomes

more and more difficult to analyze from the theological determinist
perspective I have been using. The long term impacts of these events
are perhaps not yet known. Analysis and theory give way to prediction
and hypothesis.

One very current tragedy that does lend itself to this kind of analysis
is environmental destruction. It may seem pretty straightforward that
environmental destruction is a product of pollutants and bad policy.
However, to reiterate, nothing is outside of God's will. A certain
amount of destruction has been allowed to occur so that humanity
will begin to love the Earth once again. Certainly, this is already
happening to a certain extent. The last fifteen years have seen an
outpouring of environmental concern within the culture. Although
attitudes are extremely difficult to measure, my observations have
lead me to believe that recycling and other low level environmental
actions are done out of a feeling of duty. It has become the
individual's duty to his or her planet and community to do their part.
It indicates a growing altruism in our culture. Would this expression
of love for the planet and the community have arisen had not the
destruction of the environment occurred in the first place?

What I have been trying to accomplish in this essay is to convince the

reader that God's ways need not be so mysterious. Every moment of
every day is pre-determined, and if we make the modest assumption
that God is not crazy, some kind of understanding of God's plan can be
achieved by looking at what has already past. Any event in human
history can be analyzed as to how it helped build the world we have
today, a world which is not as pointless and devoid of meaning as
social scientists are so prone to conclude.

Anything can be figured out. Whether or not one is "right" or "wrong"

in one's analysis is not as important as the fact that an answer is
provided. To know with certainty the whole of God's plan is not the
goal here. Instead, the goal is to ease the troubled mind of the
socially conscious spiritual believer when he can find no method
behind the madness of modernity. Whatever higher purpose for a
disturbing world event that comes into the mind of a theological
social observer, that purpose is "right" if it shows how, in the long run,
our species benefits and evolves. It was God who put those thoughts
into your head in the first place. They cannot be "wrong". This lesson
will become more and more important in the near future. The times
will become more and more chaotic and confusing as our cultural
thirst becomes stronger and stronger. In the face of growing hate and
fear worldwide, first have faith that God has his plan. Second, try to
understand what that plan might be

. I recently accompanied my family on a skiing vacation to Whistler,

British Columbia. In this playground of the well-to-do, I spent an
evening roaming the streets with my camcorder in hand, and
approached random people and recorded their answers to a single
question: “What is the meaning of life?” Most of the young drunk
skiers responded that it had something to do with beer. One guy said
as he walked along, “The meaning of life is that there is no God. As
my favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzche once said, ‘God is dead
and we have killed him.’ God is man made.” He paused for a
moment and then continued, “There is no God. Otherwise, there
wouldn't be starving children in Somalia, and I wouldn't have all these
problems in my life." When troops were sent there a few weeks later,
I though of that random encounter that snowy evening. Indeed,
atheists often point to the very existence of suffering in the world to
support their assertion for God‘s non-existence. Yes, God made
children starve in Somalia. God did it for a reason, too. Finally, our
over-inflated armies were put to humanitarian use. The farms of the
United States could feed half the world if needed. God's purpose
seems pretty clear.

Another benefit of the theological determinist philosophy is its

usefulness in alleviating the difficulties of neurosis and depression on
an individual level. My previous analogy of a glass of lemonade
tasting better to the man dying of thirst came to one evening just as I
was drifting off to sleep. I became instantly aware of how that single
metaphor could explain the meaning behind the crisis of modernity, a
dilemma that had been bothering me for some time. Moreover, it
explained the purpose behind a very difficult period in my own life
that I had recently come out of.

For many months before that, I had been beset by a disturbing period
of neurotic angst. I wasn't sure if I could ever be happy again. I was
feeling very alone, depressed, and desperate. Finally, one evening, I
sat down and read, cover to cover, a inspirational book which had a
profound impact on me years before as an adolescent. The evening I
reread it, the words took on a new power and meaning for me.
Afterwards, I was a renewed man. My faith in my oneness with a
higher power had been restored and brought to even higher levels.
The neurosis disappeared. I felt very "high" all of the time. God's
message blew away the clouds of fear and guilt, and allowed the
brilliant sunshine to pour into my soul. I had maintained this renewed
feeling for several weeks when the lemonade metaphor I’ve used in
this essay came to me, and I understood why God had afflicted me
with the neurosis in the first place. The strong mental malady had
driven me to a point of such thirst that the divinely inspired words of
that book struck me like an ice-cold glass of the pink stuff strikes
someone who crossed Death Valley without a canteen. I had become
caught up in the garden of my everyday worldly existence, and
neglected my spiritual development. God was calling me in from that
garden.

Just as there is a plan for humanity as a whole, God has a plan for
each and

every person on this planet. Whenever you face a difficulty in your

life, don't look here and there for blame. It's nobody's fault. Certainly
don't try too hard to find out how it's your own fault. You don't need
the guilt. Understand that every barrier you I encounter came from
God in his love for you. God has a lesson in every difficulty. If this
lesson reveals something about your own nature that needs changing,
then change it. Soon, these barriers no longer appear to be barriers.
Instead, they become chapters in a textbook of life. God didn't put
you here to suffer, but God does put suffering into lives for specific
reasons.

Sometimes, it can be very difficult to figure out what these reasons

might be. Sometimes, difficulties appear purely external. They seem
to offer no lessons for the ones who are suffering. To return to my
discussion of the Holocaust, what lesson was being taught to the
victims? Can we say that God was teaching something to the ones in
the boxcars being driven away to their deaths? Sometimes God's
lessons are for the larger community. The needs of the many do
indeed outweigh those of the few. Moreover, the human race is a
single entity that only appears to be divided only when one observes
it from the inside. The individual's suffering is the suffering of the
whole. In this case, the suffering of those in the boxcars taught the
world about the dangers of racism. When their souls are reborn in
their next lifetimes, they will have learned something from the
experience of their previous lifetimes. They will be born into a world
where the philosophy that brought their deaths is slowly fading away.
In the same way that time reveals the purpose of historical events,
the lesson for individual tragedies may also take time to be revealed.

I think of the parents whose child is suffering from cancer. How can
they be consoled? Would they not be more accepting of the idea that
a random gene mutation caused the cancer as opposed to God?
Perhaps this is the very lesson they, and all of us, need to learn, that
even the most sad, tragic, incomprehensible losses of life are a
product of God's will. If they can never overcome their grief to see
this, the memory of the pain will remain. When they too are released
from their bodies, and once again in the oneness of God, they will
become aware that the loss of their child was a part of a greater
plan. Perhaps they will suffer similarly in their next lifetime to
deepen the learning.

Everyone has heard the saying that behind every cloud there is a silver
lining. Normally, we only hear this when some sort of problem in our
lives yields unexpected benefits. It goes beyond that. The whole
reason the cloud exists is the silver lining. Seeing beyond the clouds
can sometimes be difficult, but it is the first step in making those
clouds disappear.

When I suffered under the weight of discontent and neurosis, I was

being made thirsty by God so that I could taste his message more
profoundly. Those who are happy and content in their lives react to
the word of God quite calmly. They smile and say, "Oh, that's nice."
For the individual in the throws of some personal crisis, the word of
God will change their lives forever. Take the case of Saul of Tarsus.
Do you think he was happy running around arresting all those early
Christians? I don't think so. His was not the profession of a happy
man. He undoubtedly had heard what these early disciples were
saying, and perhaps, somewhere deep down, he agreed with it.
Perhaps he was being torn apart inside by a conflict between his duty
to protect his community, and his sympathy for the "dangerous" new
sect from Palestine. Saul was a man "dying of thirst", so to speak.
When God/ Christ came unto him and bade him to do his work, his
condition before his conversion made the experience overpowering.
Paul, filled with the God's power, then went out into the world and
spoke with such conviction and profundity that Christianity
remembers his words second only to the words of Christ himself.

The same process is operating in modern society. Western culture over

the last few centuries has been acting much like Saul of Tarsus.
Certain of our moral superiority, we have used our superior arms and
power to oppress others. These others have a message for western
culture. One that we once knew, but lost in our worship of rationality.
The last 100 years have been a drawn out version of Saul being
thrown from his horse. Our old identity of superiority has been
smashed, just as Saul was humbled by the presence of God. Slowly,
ever so slowly, in our confusion and sickness, our society is crying
back to God, “What do you want from us!?”

P O S T ED B Y J O K O A T 2: 17 A M

5 COMME N TS:

 MARIA LAWSON said...

I JUST FINALLY FOUND YOUR PAGE!!

I WILL READ IT IN FULL DETAIL TONIGHT OR TOMORROW.
I DONT WANT TO RUSH IT.
SEE YA AT MYSPACE!!
MARIA/& PIGGY
5: 11 P M

 Anonymous said...

very interesting.
it was long but very good.
yes suffering does happen so to that we can know how to comfort
someone who is going through what we have been through.
i learned alot since my mother died in 2003 from alshiemrs.
i learned to spend more time with our loves ones! hug them even if
they are mean to us.
i cant write all ive learned but i learned.
anyway, you are a very wise guy.
keep writting!!
its my passion as well.
i may not do it as you do, maybe i dont use all of the right words etc,
but we share that in common.
now write something specifically on jesus.
i dont think he is/was god.
what do u think??
maria lawson from myspace!!
6: 16 P M

 Anonymous said...

Insightful essay and more telling of your thoughts and beliefs than
what was presented in the video. Very thought provoking. Interesting
that I read it today as my faith was recently put to question. Haunted
by that question once again...why? For now meaning excapes me.
12: 50 A M

 Hyper-Intellect said...

With pauses, I read this entire essay with interest.

Based upon my writings, you already know that we agree on some

very important issues - before reaching separate conclusions.
Including here.

So it should be no surprise that I find this a thoughtful, well-written,

and very thought-provoking piece.

In hopes of getting even more out of it, I plan on reading it again at

a later date.

Warm regards, Joko.

10: 11 P M

 Harriet said...

Ah so, grasshopper, very well put. In so far as why does God let bad
things happen, Deuteronomy 29:29. If we were to understand all
things there would be no need for God, we would be god.

Faith is a gift from God for which we are grateful. The nature of
faith is to beleive not question, that is why it is called faith.

What does God want from us? He wants on ly two things,

Mark12:30-31
30) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31) The second is
this:"Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no cammandemnt
greater than these."

As you begin this new journey , I hope you will remember we are all
missionaries for Christ. Be well.
8: 36 A M

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