The middle brother Ivan is taken with brain fever, and experiences an extremely vivid hallucination in which the devil appears in his room and attempts to convince Ivan that he exists and is not a manifestation of himself. Here the devil explains that he doesn't destroy himself because people want him to live.
No, they say, live, because without you there would be nothing. If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen. Without you there would be no events, and there must be events. And so I serve grudgingly, for the sake of events, and I do the unreasonable on orders. People take this whole comedy for something serious, despite all their undeniable intelligence.He continues about how pleasure is more sweet because of suffering. But the passage that follows is the one that caught my attention.
I suffer, and I still do not live. I am an x in an indeterminate equation. I am some sort of ghost of life who has lost all ends and beginnings, and I've finally even forgotten what to call myself.Earlier in the story Ivan denounces the existence of God, because, like many of us, he doesn't understand how there can be evil in the world if an omnibenevolent God exists. This passage conveys a familiar feeling that I don't have a word for. I also felt this when I was struggling with the problem of evil. I was an atheist for many years. Now I've come to believe in God, but not evil. It's a long journey that I might go on to explain here in the future. What interests me most is that many people can believe in the presence of both God and evil. I can only believe in one or the other. It seems that Ivan is the same way.
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Whereas I believe in neither God nor evil. But I do think I could reconcile belief in a benevolent God with the existence of evil. It does require accepting that God both created and allows the continued existence of evil, which does conflict with many people's conceptions of God, I suppose. For me, the keys to reconciling these two seemingly contradictory things are:
- God is benevolent in a bigger picture sense, but not necessarily trying to guarantee the happiest outcome for every individual in every situation. Kind of like how a parent must in some cases allow their child to attempt something and risk failure, perhaps even get hurt, in order that they learn some greater lesson.
- God is benevolent but also unwilling to meddle in the world. He created the universe with a benevolent plan, and at the end of time, he will act benevolently. But he allows things to take their course in between, which includes evil. Why? Well...
- God, by his very nature, cannot be fully comprehended by human minds. Just because we cannot comprehend how the existence of evil serves a greater purpose does not mean that it cannot and does not do so. Just as children often cannot understand why their parents do certain things, even though the parents realize those things are necessary and good in the long run.
Like I said, though, I don't believe in God or evil. But I think if I wanted to believe in both a benevolent God and evil, I could wrap my head around it with the above logic.
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