Source/Credit: Finger Lakes Times | Opinion-Editorial,
By Sardar Anees Ahmad | November 26, 2010
How can a loving God allow for so much suffering? Arguing that suffering only exists as a trial is insufficient. The argument below, largely adapted from a chapter from Mirza Tahir Ahmad’s Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge and Truth, argues that suffering plays a scientifically beneficial role in our lives.
To begin, consider that an entity is known when contrasted with its opposite. For example, we describe someone as “happy” because one can also be “sad.” Now, as sensory organs such as the brain evolved through the course of creation, the ability to understand pleasure and pain also developed. A primitive organism, with its underdeveloped brain and limited consciousness, is “happy” if fed and reproducing and “sad” otherwise. This is the limit of its understanding of pain and pleasure. Humans, however, are the most conscious beings. Therefore, their conception of pleasure and pain is the most developed and far more is required to satisfy even their fundamental needs.
Along with biological evolution, therefore, we also observe a continuous evolution of consciousness. Suffering is the mechanism by which this evolution occurs. For if there was no struggle for existence, what need would there be for progress? So, a person who is able to experience pleasure must necessarily be able to experience an equal amount of pain. The economic concept of “utility” espouses a similar view. Also, if God’s employment of suffering was flawed, creation should prefer death or a lower state of consciousness to its current state of existence. Instead, creation is largely willing to suffer beyond measure just to survive. Suffering, therefore, could only be questioned if it served no purpose in creation.
But what crime have babies born into poor households or with genetic defects committed to deserve such a punishment? The answer is that every experience of happiness is not a reward for a previous action. So, one cannot say every incidence of suffering is a form of punishment. When healthy children are also born to bad parents, who would argue that a child is healthy because his parent’s were good people? “Cause and effect” is not the same as “crime and punishment.” One may argue that at least the most severe genetic defects should not exist. But removing the current extremes would result in a new definition of “extreme” which would also be unacceptable. For example, if all mental disabilities were removed, physical disadvantages would be considered extreme, and then physical imperfections, and so on. The only solution would be to have no variety at all.
But why not completely remove suffering so equality exists? This, however, would require removing pleasure a proportionate amount. The pursuit for equality would lead us down the evolutionary ladder to the most primitive form of life. Here, all creation would be content. But our consciousness would be primitive as well. No progress would occur because no need would arise to struggle for a higher level of existence.
Suffering, therefore, is required for evolution to occur, most importantly in the evolution of consciousness. But what role does suffering play in the relationship between man and God? We read, “I have not created the man, high and low, but that they worship me” (Quran 51:57); “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). Therefore, the purpose of creation, according to the Abrahamic faiths, is to gain higher and higher levels of God consciousness. Suffering is as integral to this spiritual evolution as it is in biological evolution. Suffering, then, is a blessing in disguise – one of the greatest blessings of all.
Read original post here: Not Every Experience Is A Reward
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