Goodness

Bad Things Are Good?
Maybe everyone is right: all the 'bad things' that we go through teach us lots of character things and give us points of connection with others. Maybe the bad is not actually bad but good.

That explanation works if I only consider my life. My problems aren't too hard, so it's okay for me to say that maybe I am blessed. I may be poor financially and have a long, round-about career path and a hard life ahead of me, but I have very valuable family and friends, and I have learned a lot academically. I had to choose my battles, and the process of choosing what to engage is not so much a process of energy-conservation as it is a process of learning what is important.

Through hardship, During hardship, I learned that I need to be married to make it through life (I am not strong enough on my own -- I get very lonely when my life slows down). I learned that I should care for my family and that I actually do care for my parents and my siblings. I learned that I love my friends very deeply and would do almost anything for quite a few of them. I learned that I really care about people finding the truth, and I like to help people on that journey. As someone recently asked me, "Who is the best comfort to a cancer patient?" A fellow cancer patient. Maybe my use to the world will be as a fellow doubter, a fellow philosopher.

Maybe the whole point of the hardship was so that I could connect and speak sympathetically to others who have been through hardship.

But, I'm left with my original fears about how people conclude that god is good:
1. Some people are able to accept that god is good just because their lives aren't really that bad. There's no personal proof to them that god may not be good, and they don't really actively look out and absorb how hard it is for others around the world.
2. If their lives are that bad, then they believe in god not so much because they believe it is the truth but because it is nicer to hope in god and an afterlife than to just accept that their life sucked and will never be better.

God's goodness comes down to this question for me:
Is it good for god to let this world run by humanity's free will?
Because we hurt each other and kill each other and enslave each other and destroy each other. Is it better to be controlled and forced to live harmoniously or is it better for us to choose?

When you love someone and you hurt them so badly, you kind of wish that someone stopped you from doing it. Sometimes I would rather God take my free will away and stop me from hurting other people.

If we had the options of having the world as it is now, where free will reigns, or having a peaceful world where god controls us all and we just get to enjoy the life he made for us, which should we prefer? I have no answer right now.