God, the Afterlife, and Our World

In case you prefer to watch and listen.

God. The creator of the universe. A big subject. One thing I think we can safely say about God is that God is not physical. The creator dwells in a realm we think of as spiritual. This realm is more evolved than our physical world or even the physical universe as a whole. It’s more like the spiritual world we enter at death than the physical world we live in now. If we believe in God at all, we think of God as a spiritual being of unimaginable power and intelligence who empowered the Big Bang that brought forth the physical universe. But God’s creation is not God’s home. Less certain is the degree to which God actively watches and governs the universe with its trillion-plus galaxies. 

My assumption, or, better still, my working hypothesis, is that God is supremely wise and good in addition to intelligent and powerful. Many people find this hard, even impossible to believe when surveying the pain and suffering all around us. I will try to show here why this world of hardship and pain is consistent with God’s watchfulness, goodness, and even love.

So here we are: Why did God create a world in which there is so much suffering–one in which there is so little evidence of God or the heavenly world we believe awaits us. If you were God, would you have created a world like ours? Can you justify God’s creating the flawed planet we live on? Can’t you imagine doing a better job of it if you were God? There is an answer to this question known as the Free Will Defense. Let’s see if it works for you.

Let’s begin with an analogy. What do we most want for our children? Good looks, smarts, popularity, wealth, power, fun, happiness? Nothing wrong with these, but are they what we most want? Not if we are wise. What we most want, or should want, is noble character, virtuous habits, plain old goodness.

But how does one go about creating goodness? Can God will it and, poof!, out pops a good person? That’s a logical impossibility, like a square circle. Goodness has meaning only in a world where beings can freely choose something that demands a sacrifice from them, something that’s hard to do, something we’d rather avoid. 

 When raising our children, don’t we tell them to tackle the difficult duty rather than drift into meaningless activity? To clean their room instead of vegging out in front of the TV? Why do we do this? Because we want them to grow up into dutiful, thoughtful, compassionate human beings.

That’s what God wants too. But nobility of character does not come cheap. Unless morally challenged, we don’t grow – just as spoiled children don’t mature. So, since God desires nothing so much as for us to become mature, dependable, generous, loving beings, God challenges us continually. 

God has given us a world full of physical and moral challenge, and God hopes we will use our freedom to choose the good over the bad, and do it habitually, despite tremendous temptation to goof off and give up. To do so is to bring value, excellence, and ultimately joy into the universe, and that is what God wants. It’s what we should want too. Does this explanation of suffering work for you? 

The philosopher John Hick, whose book Evil and the God of Love is our generation’s best expression of the Defense, put it this way: “It would seem, then, that an environment intended to make possible the growth in free beings of the finest characteristics of personal life must have a good deal in common with our present world.”

The University of Pittsburg philosopher Nicholas Rescher goes further. He believes that our world, despite all its injustices and undeserved suffering, is an optimal world, the best of all possible. He takes the line that “physical evil represents the price of an entry ticket into the best arrangement possible within the limits of inevitable consequences.”

A final objection asks why God doesn’t jump in from time to time and remove undeserved evil. Why didn’t God “take out” Hitler or Stalin, for example? The San Francisco State University philosopher Jacob Needleman takes a dim view of a supernatural deity who jumps in to solve our dilemmas whenever we ask. It would demean and enfeeble us. 

 We need to take responsibility for the mess we’ve made on our planet and in our own individual lives. If God gets us out of all our scrapes, we’ll never be motivated to do our best. And we’ll never evolve into better beings. We would be like travelers on an unending vacation on a Viking long ship cruising the Danube with all our needs met. Think of how boring that would eventually become. 

We thrive when we encounter challenges and overcome them. We love watching sporting events like NFL football games or NASCAR racing because they showcase competition, and competition, the more strenuous, rugged, or dangerous it is, the more we value and even enjoy it.

Most importantly, we find meaning in life when we confront systemic evil in our society—or individually in ourselves–and work tirelessly to remedy it. In hating and doing our best to remove it, we become good. There is no other way. 

As Rescher puts it, being born on earth is a package deal. It might not by our reckoning be a perfect deal, but it is the best that God—supremely wise, good, and powerful—could imagine or bring forth. And we would be wise to play our part. If we do, a good afterlife will be our reward. That is also part of the deal.

Stafford Betty, Professor of Religious Studies, CSUB, (ret) is the author of When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying?, Heaven and Hell Unveiled and his novel, Guardians of the Afterworld. His latest book, The Hell Dwellers: A Novel about the Dark Side of the Afterlife is coming in 2026. Stafford can be found at staffordbetty.com.