No, they're not, categorically.
What's a problem?
A situation I deem disagreeable. It might be disagreeable because a fact or circumstance itself is out of alignment with my wishes, or because I deem uncertainty, complexity, or a sequence of rebuffs and reversals disagreeable.
But this is all in the eye of the beholder.
If I do not deem something disagreeable, it's not.
Panning out from that, the situation itself is also not 'sent' by God.
Any situation is a combination of (a) the facts of the material world, operating as a vast mechanism, with even apparent chaos yielding to analysis, revealing deterministic patterns and (b) human will. Human will itself is argued by some to be free and by others not to be (in other words all part of the deterministic pattern). I happen to opt for the former, at least from a pragmatic point of view.
If human will is part of the deterministic system, it is not free, and the entire mechanism of the universe is a clockwork orange (apparently organic but actually mechanical). In that case, with sufficient omniscience and processing capacity, all things can be foreseen, so things could be 'sent' in advance by God as part of the originating design.
However, if there is one instance of free will in the universe, the entire deterministic system is thrown out of kilter because of the butterfly effect, so things can be sent only 'ad hoc' (and then, unreliably, because human will might intervene). The ad hoc sending of things to try us would, in this instance, necessitate the overriding of physical laws to adjust some element of the mechanism (to make something happen that would not otherwise happen) or the overriding of free will (which would effectively nullify the assertion that there is free will: free will that is free until it is overridden is only the sometimes-tolerated appearance of free will). Both senses of overriding are implausible.
Under another reading of the universe, God is Good and Good is All. The material universe is clearly a place of suffering, so God did not make it. This is the logic of A Course In Miracles, and is much simpler (per Occam's Razor) than explanations of how a Good God causes or permits gross suffering.
T-in.2. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way :2 Nothing real can be threatened.3 Nothing unreal exists.4 Herein lies the peace of God.
The material world, under this reading, is a perceptual blip in an eternity of peace and love. Anything occurring inside it is outside the scope of what God can access, because God can access only what exists. The totality of the universe is a 'tiny mad idea' that arose and was extinguished in the moment it arose. The entry point to this essentially unreal universe is our perception, and it only in our perception that God can play a role, namely to undo the false interpretation of what appears to be 'there' (= forgiveness), which is the prerequisite for us transitioning back over the borderland bridge to knowledge of the Allness and Goodness of God. The error is made; the error is undone; when the error (the tiny mad idea) is undone, the status quo ante is restored. Here, nothing is sent because nothing is there. The ego (collectively and in apparent individuality) projects the material world into apparent existence, and its insanity is governed by the ego's insane laws. The ego sends things to try us, not God: the trying being its point: it wants us to perceive problems, so guilt originates out there, and we never challenge the real source: our perception of our separation from God (the 'sin' behind the 'guilt' being the 'destruction' of the unity of God: the stone that shattered the utopian crystal palace in Notes From The Underground). If the real source of guilt is identified, we will seek to correct the error, undo the false perception, and 'Poof!' goes the ego along with its universe: both are entailed by the tiny mad idea, at which we now laugh:
T-27.VIII.6. Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as separate from himself and done to him. 2 Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. 3 In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. 4 Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. 5 It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time.
As ever, any perception that God is delivering anything but Good is actually a projection: It is we who are delivering the not-good to ourselves; we repress this; we deny this; and we project it out, specifically onto God, and, to reconcile this with other beliefs about God, we construe evil as God's necessary method to bring us to light. This woeful construal leaves us in the nightmare universe of salvation residing anywhere but here: at a distance, always just out of reach, in Eliot's rose-garden (behind the door at the end of the corridor we never walked down): jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day. It also smacks of infantilisation of us (which, in diminishing the power of the mind, places real salvation plumbly out of reach) and magical thinking (of the superstitious kind), like a tired, battered reliquary that contains nothing more than a false facsimile of a genuinely holy object.
One passage (from ACIM) describes the pseudo-spiritual and pseudo-intellectual positioning of God's hallowed solution out of reach:
T-9.V.6. What, then, should happen? 2 When God said, "Let there be light," there was light. 3 Can you find light by analyzing darkness, as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian, by acknowledging darkness in yourself and looking for a distant light to remove it, while emphasizing the distance? 4 Healing is not mysterious. 5 Nothing will change unless it is understood, since light is understanding. 6 A "miserable sinner" cannot be healed without magic, nor can an "unimportant mind" esteem itself without magic.
Thus, sloppy thinking supports the ego's goal: to place the responsibility elsewhere, under whatever guise most readily draws a veil across reality.
No, the responsibility lies with me:
T-2.VII.1. You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. 2 I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. 3 I know it does not exist, but you do not. 4 If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. 5 I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. 6 This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. 7 It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough.
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