Art by Will Schofield

Accordingly, if God is to bring an ordered world out of a chaos of finite actualities, any development that God can promote will have to conform to these correlations. The positive correlation between the capacity for intrinsic good and intrinsic evil means, as already indicated, that the increased complexity that makes greater enjoyment possible also makes greater suffering possible. Greater complexity of experience overcomes triviality, but it does not guarantee bliss, for it may open the door to discord so great that the positive enjoyment of experience will be virtually eliminated. The reason is that the condition for great enjoyment is the capacity to receive the feelings of others into oneself. This is good if the feelings the others contribute are by and large harmonious. But if they are not–if one’s body is wracked with pain, if loved ones are mutilated–then the sympathetic appropriation of their feelings becomes the source of great suffering. In fact, the suffering can be so great that sympathetic appropriation can seem more a curse than a blessing, and practices can be undertaken to seek to eliminate or at least minimize this capacity. One can choose harmony over intensity, thus reverting to a more trivial existence in order to advert discord.

Excerpt from Process Theology, an Introductory Exposition by John B. Cobb and David Ray Griffin

Tags:actualityGodjohn cobbprocess theologysuffering