FROM THE TREE TO THE CROSS

The most asked question about God is not where is he and where did he come from,   its  “If”  there is a God why does he allow the innocent to suffer for no apparent reason at all,  why do bad people and evil deeds get rewarded, while good people and good things get only hurt or destroyed in the end.
The typical answer is because of free will and that it’s because he gave us the ability to choose to do right or wrong that makes the world suffer because of evil, and the only way to remove suffering and evil would be to take away free will.

Im afraid it’s much more complicated then that though, for example right now in the heavens stars are imploding, entire galaxies are colliding with each other and the mysterious black holes are swallowing up anything and everything in their paths and obliterating it into what would be the equivalent of never having even existed.
It appears to have been suffering in this way for a very, very long time.

So why does the universe itself suffer 
Is it also because of our free will
Why couldn’t this suffering be contained to just our local solar system
Will our free will be removed in heaven?

Imagine the most complicated watch in the world like the vacheron with its 2,826 parts and 31 hands it is absurdly complex and every moving part must be designed and built to exact specifications in order to mantain a correct reading of time,
if anything becomes out of alignment or debris gets into the mechanical gears it would have an impact on the whole watch and cause it to give an incorrect time and eventually break, that’s why they seal the face of the watch with glass to keep dirt and debris out and prevent internal damage from happening.

Now take that watch example as an allegory and apply it to the way our universe works with its elliptical orbits of planets revolving around suns and gear wheel looking galaxies all pulling and swirling around each other, causing each other to move in time and what you have is indeed the most complex watch ever created.
We are living in a time piece,
a grandfather clock on the most majestic, unimaginable scale.
We are living on different parts of its mechanical gears and yet because of the enormous scale we don’t even realize it.
This “universe clock” was also created to work flawlessly and without any negative influence to throw its gears out of alignment, but an enemy within the watch started a chain reaction when he proposed a simple idea that spread like cancer and effected the whole watch almost instantaneously.

Imagine if our sun released its gravitational pull on the earth and just did what it wanted to do for a day,
we would be flung off into space and  would not survive 24 hours.
The moon and other planets that orbit with us would become projectiles launched into space and eventually collide with other planets, setting off a chain reaction of chaos like a falling domino line of destruction on our entire galaxy.

It’s not simply free will or the ability to choose or make mistakes that caused the damage and eventual collapse of this universe watch, but the crossing of boundaries that were put in place by the creator that caused damage, disorder and chaos in an otherwise perfectly tuned and balanced machine.
It began with a desire to do something harmfull and selfish, knowing full well the consequences and chain reaction it would start, and knowing it would cause God’s perfectly designed watch to fall apart and break yet doing it anyway.
This is what evil is.

We are living in the decaying remains of this time piece that the watchmaker performed a 6 day overhaul on in order to keep it ticking and from completely destroying itself from within.

Some will ask but why?
Why would God allow all of this to continue.
Why even make it in the first place if he already knew that it would fail and suffering would be the end result.

The answer is nearly as complex as the watch itself, but every watch maker has known that they can’t make a watch that will not eventually fail or be destroyed,
They knew that one day, all of their hard work would be as though it never was,
but that doesn’t stop them from making beautifuly complex watches that require years of meticulous effort, design, and craftsmanship.
Why?            Because they were creatively inspired to and if they didn’t make them then they wouldn’t have ever existed and no one would have had the opportunity to appreciate their work and the creative love and art that was put into it.

This is an oversimplification of this simple truth of course, and is meant as a way to relay these concepts in a format that is understandable and relatable to us.
The full picture is to large for us to see and to hard for us to understand and relate to,  which brings me to the next part of our watch that God designed and implemented from the very beggining as a way for us to relate to him.

His name is Jesus, and he was the spiritual embodiment of the creator himself, made flesh so that he could be among his own creation and we could see and experience his love and character first hand.
Although this adds a level of complexity to understanding this topic of why there is suffering in the world and why God allows it to exist or continue.
He is a necessary part of understanding it because his life was God’s way of showing us that he is not just some being in the heavens that we can’t see or that can’t relate to us and even though we don’t yet understand his purpose or reasons for why he hasn’t yet removed all that is wrong and made all things new again,  he can relate to your suffering and there is a reason and purpose for it.
His life would be proof of that because he felt all of it.
He suffered in every way that we do and then some, all the way to his cross.
He could have made or chosen any life for himself to live, any manner of pomp and circumstance that would have allowed him the power, wealth and leasure that we all seek and desire, but instead he chose a life among the poor, burdened with sorrow and suffering.
In the end He laid down his life as a testament and example of God’s never ending love for his creation when he suffered and allowed man, his own creation to shame and murder him by hanging on a cross.

This was also a recorded testimony and example proving the hatred and destruction of the evil forces behind the corruption and destruction of this universe.
It is a spirit of selfishness and anti love and will stop at nothing to have its way no matter the cost.
It doesn’t care if it destroys our souls
It doesn’t care if it destroys this universe
It doesn’t even care if it destroys its own creator.
There is a spiritual battle that is going on around us, but it is not fought only in the spiritual realm. The battlefield does not have borders, and the front line is your mind.
Every fear, every self doubt and every distraction or cause for division is a win for the enemy because that is all that he realy needs to accomplish in this world and in our lives is to keep us afraid enough or distracted enough or divided enough amongst ourselves in order to perpetuate the veil that keeps us blinded from seeing the truth.
Suffering of the innocent is one of his favorite weapons to use against us, and there is no denying the effectiveness of it
The enemy does not have morals, there are no rules in this war that he started because it is indeed a battle of good against evil, and the more collateral damage there is the better.

Yet this battle has already been won, and we are given the example of hope of what is to come when Jesus did not stay dead but rose from the grave.
Signifying that there is a greater purpose for why we are here suffering until death finally takes us, and that it is worth it because he himself did it.
There will be a new beginning where this time of suffering will seem as only a brief moment in the grand scale of the fathers clock, like just a tick of the second hand.

Although this doesnt make our suffering any easier now, or allow us to fully understand why it is necessary, I personally believe that it is best viewed as yet another part of our birth process, the earth itself another womb and the troposphere our embryonic sac.
Just as a child grows in a womb of darkness and uncertainty unable to see or communicate with its mother, but feels her presence and hears her voice, right now we are experiencing the growing and birth pains and the suffering of labor that comes with all new life, but we will emerge from this womb as an even better more experienced and fully developed child of God, born into a new world of joy, and endless possibilities because we will finally see our creators face and be free of this womb of suffering at last.

Until then, we can only take comfort in knowing that even though the time is running out on this clock of evil and sin, and that is why we are seeing the worst of it, we have nothing to fear because this is still his watch, and it is still in his hand.