The Design

I've been researching about the existence of evil with the help of various books. My current read, at this time, January 11, 2023, is Evil and the God of Love by John Hick.

The various thinkers over the course of time have presented their views and I respect their views. But for a layman like me, it didnt make sense. The one thing that I seem to not agree upon with most, is that they viewed the world, this form of our existence as the final form or destination. However, I seem to have a different view. Let me try to explain.

We are a work in progress, going towards our destination. The evils, sufferings, trials of this world are a part of the process.

This is my analogy. A factory owner has machines, that makes marbles. He is proud of His marbles. His staff does an impeccable job at making marbles. The marbles go through various different machines at different stages of the manufacturing. All marbles, however, start off as glass and silica. They are heated over 1700 degree Celsius, to a point where it loses its identity. It is no longer the solid glass as it used to be. It is liquid. It cannot even identify itself anymore. That is not the end of the marble though. It continues to go through more processing. It gets cooled, cut, rolled, compressed. Some color is added to it in the process and rolled again for hours till. Same colors are added to other marbles as well and rolled for the same time, but produce different results.

Then there is filtering. Not all marbles come out perfectly round. Some cool down faster and end up a different shape. Some are too small. Some get attached to other marbles. Some even break. 

The process of the production of these marbles is our life. We are in the process of becoming who we are to be at the end. The heating and cooling is to our becoming.

Now, our Factory Owner, our God, has perfect staff. His divine angels. However, one of His beloved staff didnt follow His directions. He challenged the Factory Owner's process. But instead of firing that staff, Factory Owner accepted his challenge. The Owner knew His process and He knew His design. So He allowed the disgruntled worker to go ahead and try and mess with His process. He was aware that the disgruntled staff might be able to make some marbles come out out of shape, which was also a part of His design. But He knew His process that the marbles that are to come in the perfectly round, beautiful shape, WILL COME OUT SO.

Hence, when things go bad, not our way, when we endure hardships and turmoil, we are still in the process of becoming the marbles we ought to be. The disgruntled staff will try to mess with our process and try to guide us into other processes, but we ought to stay on the path that is by design of the Owner. Only then we'll get to be who our Owner wishes us to be.