Emmet Fox writes, “When you know the Truth of Being, you are, as a literal fact and not merely in a rhetorical sense, the absolute monarch of your own life. You make your own conditions, and you can unmake them. You make and unmake your own health. You attract to yourself certain kinds of people and certain conditions— and others you repel. You attract to yourself riches or poverty, and peace of mind or fear—entirely in accordance with the way in which you govern your kingdom.
“Of course, the world does not know this [the “world” meaning the “external projection of a mind that believes it’s thoughts”]. It supposes that the conditions of one's life are largely made for him by outer circumstances, and by other people. It believes that one is at all times liable to unforeseen and unexpected accidents of one sort or another, any one of which may seriously inconvenience or even completely ruin his scheme of life. But the Truth of Being is just the contrary of all this, and, since mankind has nearly always believed the false version, we cannot wonder that history has been so full of mistakes and suffering and trouble.”
- Emmet Fox: “Sermon On The Mount” p. 87
...this is the answer to why, if God is benevolent, there is suffering in the world. It’s confusion about the true nature of God. When I have God straight in my mind (and understand that God is Reality prior to any story), then I find that there is no suffering in the world except the suffering I bestow upon it with my story.
When someone says they don’t believe there’s a God, what I think they’re saying is that they don’t believe there’s a perfectly good SUPERHUMAN MAN on a cloud making decisions for everyone (...at least that’s what I was saying when I said I didn’t believe in God). If that’s the definition of God, I don’t believe in God either. But I have a different definition: God is Reality. God is “what is” prior to any thought or belief I lay upon it.
Prior to any thought of suffering, there can be no suffering.
And so God, by this definition, causes no suffering.
The suffering is all my own and only if I am believing that thought and only as long as I’m believing it.
And there’s nothing wrong with it, except in my mind, when I believe the suffering I imagine. As soon as I don’t, it’s gone.
When I’ve got the Truth of Being straight, the condition of the world is entirely in my hands.