While browsing through one of my books this morning, looking for something entirely different, I happened on this:
"God has not created suffering; intelligence has accepted it to be free."
This is the best answer I've ever heard for those who doubt God's existence because they question how a good God could allow all the suffering in the world. (And honestly, I've certainly never heard a churchman of any caliber explain it satisfactorily.)
This bald statement has nothing to do with sin or temptation or condemnation or original sin, or the devil, or "fallen" human nature. It is the simple acceptance that with freedom comes risk; and the implied acknowledgment that it is worth it.
It's not really a new idea. After all, we Conservatives are always saying that Liberty makes us "free to fail". But in this spiritual context, so simply stated, it was revelatory for me. It shifted my perspective, and made me see the world, life, intelligence, creation and God a little more clearly.
Eliphas Levi; Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual. Page 186
The image is "Baphomet", a drawing by Levi, that is well-known, but almost always misunderstood. It is a symbol of "the light" [note the torch] of transcendent spirit [note the upright pentagram], enlightenment, of unity of opposites [phallus/breasts; spiritual/sexual; human/animal; hands point up/down]. It's a good thing. It ain't the devil...no matter who tells you different - the horned god was a venerated deity before Christianity. This is not to say it has not been used by the ignorant as such - some supremely foolish so-called "Satanists" without a clue have actually adopted this as their sigil...one that by definition, is in direct opposition to whatever teenage angsty idiocy they imagine they 'stand for'...
The Gunslinger
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