Let's get down to business! Does God Exist?

Alright, here goes! Get ready for something dense and confusing! You'll notice that throughout these entries I'm going to raise many more questions than I provide answers for. I think that's one of my new favorite things to do actually; I like to collect interesting questions more than collect answers. Alright... on to it!

I'm starting to wonder if it's important to decide if God exists.

Ever since I lost faith that the church is the one true church, it hadn't seemed to me to even be an important thing to ponder. It seemed/seems obvious, once I shuffled off the traditional LDS worldview, that if God exists, he's entirely absent. There may be more evidence for a God that's malevolent than there is for a benevolent one. A huge hangup of mine is the existence of gratuitous suffering. Gratuitous suffering, to me, is suffering that serves no purpose. We often hear that people are refined by suffering, that there are lessons to learn, or that it helps us build compassion. It's also often explained that in order to honor agency, people have to be able to make bad decisions which can cause suffering. I have no arguments against any of those explanations. Indeed, the ability to transmute suffering into something positive is one of the most redeeming qualities of the LDS concept of God. Yet, there exists ample suffering in the world that doesn't accomplish any of these things. Take child starvation in Africa for example: How is this refining these children? What lessons are being learned? Whose agency is needing to be preserved in order for this suffering to happen? Whose bad decisions brought this suffering upon these children? How are these people who have never heard of Christ, learning to rely on him and allow his atonement to comfort them? To me, this suffering serves no noble purpose, and is therefore gratuitous and unnecessary. There are countless other examples of forms of gratuitous suffering, and it's not going to brighten anyone's day to go through them.

If God is All Loving and All Knowing, and All Powerful, then it becomes very difficult to explain all the gratuitous suffering in the world. If he loves us, and has all power, surely it's possible for him to set up a world where this type of suffering does not exist without disrupting personal agency, personal growth and development, and the ability to cultivate compassion for mankind. If he could have set it up this way and chose not to, then, well, I don't think he's worthy of my admiration or worship.

Then the following question flew into my funnel:

Why have I set up a scenario where God must be All Loving, All Powerful, and All Knowing in order to exist? Why haven't I questioned this assumption? Could a God exist who is not completely powerful or knowing?

The next questions that follow for me are: Is a God who is not all powerful or all knowing worthy of worship? What is the point of cultivating a relationship with this God? Say I send a prayer off, but my own conception of God deems him powerless to answer it, why offer the prayer? If God is incapable of stepping in to relieve gratuitous suffering, then does that necessarily mean he's incapable of blessing as well? How can I reasonably expect God to take an interest in me or intervene in my life, when he set up a world with gratuitous suffering? Why does it matter if I take a stance on his existence if his existence doesn't influence my life?

Still, though, these issues might not be enough to make it unimportant to decide if God exists. It might still be pragmatically worthwhile to make an active choice to believe in a God, albeit a puny one by LDS standards. If I were to offer up a belief in this limited God, it would be a huge relief for my wife and family.

What boundaries would I have to set for myself if I were to make this conscious decision to believe? What would it mean for me to open myself up to belief again? How would I interface with the church if I choose to believe in God? How would LDS teachings influence how I conceive of God?

I would have to unequivocally reject dogma of any nature. My new favorite thing about myself is the freedom to think critically, openly, and without restrictions imposed upon me. I love to question basic assumptions myself and others make and imagine what altering those assumptions changes. Perhaps some would characterize it as pride, but I'm not willing to give it up. Any sermon, scripture, or ritual would have to merely be a point of consideration. Nothing would be allowed to be forced upon me as True. Recognizing that if a God exists and has the capacity to communicate with man, any message from him is mediated through an imperfect vehicle. To turn a popular LDS phrase on its head, all preaching, including from the brethren, would be "the philosophy of men, mingled with scripture". Every point of consideration is ultimately settled by me - whether by conscience, the spirit, logic, however you feel most comfortable defining it - I am the controller of what I allow to be a governing Truth. To quote Joseph Smith, "I want the liberty of believing as I please, it feels so good not be trammeled." (WoJS, 183-184)

Throughout the process of writing this, I'm closer to feeling like this is something important to decide on. Even if the only God I could reconcile with how I observe the world would have severely limited capabilities, it still might be pragmatic to make a choice one way or another. Up until now, I've simply defaulted on a position that God doesn't exist. I could very well end up right back there, but it's important to at least give it an honest thought and make a more conscious choice.

See how much fun this is!