The ignorance surrounding the laws that rule life is what leads
us to believe that God remains absent and indifferent to
the fate of his own children

 
In the O Globo newspaper, in its 11th of January 2005 issue, republished a text signed by the columnist William Safire, from The New York Times, questioning the Creator about what happened in southeast Asia, writing: “After the cataclysm, with pictures of parents mourning their dead children, which hit the collective consciousness all throughout the world, a few questions arise that can shake one’s faith: Where was God? Why such an almighty and benevolent deity allows for such evil and sorrow to fall upon thousands of innocent people? Why did they do to deserve so much suffering?”.

I was queuing up at a supermarket’s checkout when a lady made a comment about the tragedy which happened at the Kiss nightclub, in the city of Santa Maria, State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, angry with the Creator, accusing him of being unjust and cruel, for His allowing the deaths of so many College students at the flush of their youth, just at the dawn of their lives.

Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech given during his apostolic trip to Poland, when visiting the AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU concentration camp, on May 28^th, 2006, also questioned the Creator by saying:

“So many questions have been raised in this place! Once again the question pops up: Where was God during those days? Why was He silent?...

... In a place like this words fall short, deep inside there’s only a horrified silence, a silence that is an inner pledge to God: Lord, why were You silent? Why did You tolerate all this?...”    

Where He has always been 

In the face of the questions raised by the American columnist, by the lady in the supermarket, and pope Benedict XVI, although I don’t have God’s proxy to say where He has always been, it is right to say that I’ve never been absent from His work, and in order to defend Him from the image of unjust, I must initially say that the greatest philosophers and scholars of cosmology and metaphysics dedicated their intelligence to the understanding of God’s figure, thus creating Theodicy. Two subjects of this science were: the existence and the essence of God.

We owe, however, Thomas Aquinas, author of the Summa Theologica, the proof of the existence of God, based on the following metaphysical arguments thus synthesized:

1)    If in the world there is movement and change, which are characterized by the coming and going of things, there must first be an engine which is not moved by no one else, for if everything was moved we’d have effect without cause.

2)   There’s an absolute primary cause, transcendent to causes in general; therefore, if there are second causes, there must be a primary one, because second causes are effects.

3)    There are contingent beings, that don’t possess in themselves the reason for their existence, that are, but may well not be; if there are contingent beings, there must be a necessary being.

4)    There are different degrees of perfection in things, related to beauty, to goodness, to intelligence and to the truth; there must then be an infinitely perfect being, for the relative requires the absolute.

5)    Furthermore, there’s the proof given by the order of the world, by the complex organization of the Universe and by the government of things, all due to a martial, superior, absolute and necessary intelligence. 

The spiritualistic conception of God 

Based on such reasoning, thus demonstrating God as being the Supreme Intelligence of the Universe and the Primary Cause of all things, His essence is of a spiritual nature, according to the answer given by the Superior Spirits to question number 1 of the Book of Spirits.

In order to better understand Him, we usually give Him adjectives which, by doing so, we limit Him and make Him more accessible to our narrow understanding. Therefore, we relate God’s attributes, as posed in question number 13 of this basic work of the Spiritualistic Doctrine: is eternal; is unchangeable; is immaterial;  is unique; is omnipotent; and, finally, is sovereign just and good.

According to Spiritualism, God is set apart from His creation, as clarified in question 77 of the Book of Spirits, thus repelling the pantheist doctrine, which conceives Him as an integral part of His own creation.

In this sense, the concepts of immanence and transcendence are inseparable when analyzing Him, as determined by the dualist conception that admits the separation between the substantial essence of God, the Creator, from His creation.

As we know, the immanence of God means His spiritual presence in everything, as a final and universal cause, once He is the creator of all things and beings. However, God’s immanence does not stop His absolute independence from the Universe that He created, and that’s what we call transcendence. Therefore, immanence and transcendence are integral parts of Divine nature, for, without the first, God would make Himself strange to the Universe and he wouldn’t be, for that, infinite or perfect. Without transcendence, God would be identical to the Universe and also imperfect, as the evolving Universe itself.   

Without reincarnation it is hard to understand 

Unfortunately, although the columnist William Safire, the lady in the supermarket and the Pope admit the existence of God, it is hard to comprehend His justice, in face of the suffering of the victims of the tsunami, the 239 young people who disincarnated in the fire of Santa Maria, the more than one million and five hundred thousand Polish and Russian Jews exterminated in AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU, whether ignoring or not knowing the fundaments exposed here.

This happens because traditional philosophies and religious beliefs, based on the hypothesis that man was created for one single existence on the Earth, cannot explain the individual differences between men and collective suffering, such as the ones caused by the seaquake that hit thousands of people, the fire in the Kiss nightclub, the ones exterminated at AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU, and immediately conclude that God is unmerciful and cruel to his children.

However, the solution to this apparent enigma lies in the palingenesis, in the law of reincarnation, the only one that can explain logically the individual and collective differences in Mankind.

Through successive lives, we may perfectly understand the operation of the law of action and reaction, the same one that works upon the individual, the family, the nation, the races, at last, the collection of inhabitants of the worlds, which form collective individualities, an expression coined by the Spirit Celia Duplantier, in Obras Postumas (Works from the After Life), by Allan Kardec, about collective expiations.