Why?

Why?  That's the question we learn to pester our parents with, because they can never give an answer that doesn't draw another "Why?", until they resort to the "because I say so" be all, end all, this discussion of over answer.  It's the question that expresses the angst we all feel at times when bad things happen to good people and vice versa.  "Why her?", "Why him?", "Why me?", "Why now?"  I'm sure it was even asked when pristine victims were sacrificed to volcanoes.

The author of the biblical Book Of Job gives the divine equivalent of the parental "because I say so":  "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38:4,7  This passage was used as a prologue in the movie, The Tree of Life, about a family grappling with the death of one of their children.  So is that all we get, are we so insignificant and unimportant.   Or might there be an answer after all.

Revealed religion ultimately must resort to such an answer, because there can be no rational explanation for us, or Job, that could come from a revealed, personal, interactive God.   But, if God exists, there is an answer to the question, albeit a hard one that we must deduce for ourselves:  Free Will.  God must not interfere because to do so would undermine the gift of free will that God created the natural, rational universe to provide for us.  Can we make our hard moral choices and have them be our own if God is looking over our shoulder.  It appears that God has gone to a lot of trouble to put a barrier between us, a barrier of 13+ billion years and a Big Bang; and to place us (have us evolve naturally) on a natural, rational stage (the universe), in which to make rational moral choices.  God must not violate God' own laissez faire Prime Directive of non-interference without destroying our free will which is established for both God's and our benefit.

So when tragedy strikes or good fortune comes, we will still grieve or celebrate, but knowing the reason God won't interfere, we needn't be tortured with the question why.

A common question that usually comes up is, "Can an omnipotent God put something outside God's own control?"  Wouldn't that be a limitation on God's omnipotence if God couldn't?  There doesn't appear to be anything else God couldn't do in an instant.  God could create an infinite host of angels to sing God's praises, but they would ultimately be nothing but an extension of God, thus God singing praises to God's own self.  He could have created the universe 100 years ago or 6000 years ago with all indications that the universe had come to be13 billion years ago, and  with memories of our past, but that would have been a lie--the one thing that God cannot be or do.  God is Truth and Truth is God.  We, with our unfettered free will, are the only possible source of a lie in or out of the universe.  All other life is innocent.  We are the only ones with fully developed self-awareness, therefore capable of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We're the only ones who can put ourselves in the place or situation of another.

So if God is not personal or interactive, does that mean God doesn't want our love, or worship?  No, but  not even knowing if God exists we can't express it directly, and in fact we must use a proxy.  But what proxy would not be equivalent to idolatry?  Only one thing, Truth, the moral pursuit of which is what we should be about--whether God exists or not.

It's a hard thing to accept but the only difference between a deist, laissez-faire God and atheism, is hope--and, concerning the existence God, those are the only two reasonable choices.  All else is hearsay evidence for the irrational and supernatural in this totally natural universe, which has been so since its beginning.

Why is free will so important to us and God?  This profound quote has stood the test of  time:

"If you love something, set it free.  If it comes back to you, it's yours.  If it doesn't, it never was."--Richard Bach, Johnathan Livingston Seagull.