An article by Sha'Tara, a local writer and friend.

The Omnipotent, Benevolent and Compassionate
                
[thoughts from  ~burning woman~   Sha’Tara]

I saw something with my mind a few days ago that convinced me that an omniscient, omnipotent Deity who is also benevolent and compassionate in the absolute sense cannot exist. 
The conviction began from a feeling and after some reasoning, was arrived through what I take as simple logic.  Yeah, I know, don’t try to mix logic and God in the same sentence! (or lifetime!)
Observation: an old woman was sitting on a bench along a wind-swept piece of road.  The sun had gone behind high gray clouds and the easterly wind whipped around pretty good at that place, near the westernmost end of what we call Sumas Prairie.  The old woman, as she sat waiting for a bus, was knitting what looked like a child’s garment.  Her hands were red from the cold and she was huddled pretty good in a big heavy coat a couple of sizes too large for her. 
I’m an ordinary person (not endowed with super powers that I’ve noticed) and I was on my way to another ‘service call’ as I passed her sitting in the wind, and my heart went out to her in a fierce way.  I don’t know why she was there, but I could imagine that she would have been much more comfortable sitting by a warm fire to knit what will probably be a child’s Christmas present from grandma.  Likely the child will never know that some of that sweater was knitted in a bitter cold wind under a cloudy sky on an open bench at a bus stop. 
This got me to thinking what I would have done at that moment, had I been a compassionate deity endowed with absolute power.  There was no doubt in my mind that I would have approached this woman and at first, shielded her from the wind.  Then I would have spoken in her mind, letting her feel my presence and my love for her.  And sharing her thoughts, I would have joined with her in that moment, alleviated her physical pain, comforted her, given her a warm place to sit and knit, perhaps by a fireplace, perhaps with a cat purring in her lap, perhaps with a small glass of brandy, and perhaps… who knows.
Then I got to thinking, as I tend to do, about all the other old people, alone and forgotten, or about those who didn’t make it through the day because they had no food and no one to love them. 
From that, I tried to imagine what it would be like for me to be an omnipotent deity whose nature is compassion and unconditional  love.  How could I ignore the plight of so many on this one world alone, and do nothing while the few bask in luxuries they can’t even enjoy while millions suffer needlessly and die long before their allotted time is up because of injustice and ignorance that support tyranny?  I wouldn’t be able to hide behind the cop-out of ‘free will’ when I realized that the victims of force have no free will because they have been robbed of their choice; when even death is not a choice but an inevitability.  How could I not ‘see’ the crying, starving babies and their distraught mothers?  How could I not ‘see’ the injustice?  How could I tolerate even for a moment those who speak my name and deny justice to the innocent all at the same time?
There is but one answer to those questions:  I could not!  Even if I wanted to; even if I had made up certain ‘rules’ whereby my intervention was curtailed, I could not deny my own nature.  I would act with absolute certainty and effectiveness. 
Oh yes, I’ve heard all the arguments from the sated and the well-fed, that ‘God’ allows evil because ‘man’ is endowed with free will, or as a test for those who are basically good.  But that is a totally hypocritical argument by God apologists who know nothing of the nature of compassion and certainly have no concept of what it means to be of an absolute nature.  Whatever ‘God’ is, it is an absolute entity or it is a meaningless concept.  If absolute, and if it is true that God is love, then you have your answer: such a God cannot exist, based on the conditions extant on earth. 
There are powers, spiritual forces, authorities, entities, hierarchies, even ‘ET’s’ certainly, who rule ‘in the heavens’ and ‘below the heavens’ or ‘under the heavens’ but they are not absolutes.  They are, like Earthian leaders and power mongers everywhere, simply the ones ‘at the top’ for the time being.  None of them are omnipotent and certainly none of them are compassionate in nature.  None fit the profile of Absolutes. 
That being said, I’ve often worked with the concept of ‘absolutes’ and if one is honest, it is a topic best left alone.  It is not possible to know an absolute although absolutes (say, absolute zero, for example) can be speculated upon.  But that’s all it can be: speculation.  God, as the people of earth claim understanding of, is pure speculation because as an absolute it cannot be known.  The same must be said of the so-called ‘Source’ – that elusive idea that gives rise to so much low-quality fodder for those enamored of cheap religion and cheap science.  The only ‘absolute’ I can conjure up is that life, whatever its source, is open-ended.  There are no boundaries except those we erect in our own minds, or those our controllers have us believing in.  We are not living in an envelope outside of which there is nothing, or which contains all that is.  Why should there be such a thing?  We are, as in, we exist, and if miracles or mysteries there be, well, that’s us, and all that surrounds us or that we may be aware of.   Either it’s all miraculous, or none of it is.  That’s simple enough.
To conclude then, if there is benevolence and compassion, it is not within the purview of an absolute deity, but within mine.  And yours, don’t forget.  One of the miracles and mysteries of life is that we can change, and cause change to happen.  Knowing that, all we need is abandon what is not working and apply some new (or seldom tried) methods.  While compassion is very costly to the individual, it carries no burden for the collective.  As more and more individuals choose to become compassionate, then the costs to each also diminish.  Compare this to the force of aggression and defense whose costs to individuals and the collective keep rising exponentially while families become homeless and eventually are left without basic needs for sustenance.  
Choice.  Life’s other mystery, that today we could choose life over destruction. 

“Wisdom is a curse, Trystin, and it’s usually bought with pain and suffering.  Your alien seems rather perceptive.”
(from ‘The Parafaith War’ by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.)