The Rubik's Cube: A theory in defense
of the existence of God

We've all seen the Rubik's Cube; that six sided enigma that has perplexed simpletons and the brain-powered. To some mathematical geniuses, it is just a fascinating equation, one that can be solved using a minimal amount of moves. To me, it was, and remains to be, a luring quandary.

I started playing with the cube when I was 10. I studied books on the cube, and would spend hours trying to solve it. When I eventually solved, (with the help of some suggestive books), I decided to mix and match different approaches in solving the cube. (I've never been quite good at following someone else's approach.) I had Rubik's cube books that claimed the cube could be solved in 45 seconds or less. I've never been able to solve it that quickly. My fastest time was 70 seconds.

When I was younger I focused on results, (e.g., how fast could I solve it, why is it so hard to turn at times). I wanted to do it faster and faster. But alas! 70 seconds was the best time I could get. Eventually, I got bored with the Rubik's Cube, and I put it away.

Within the last six months, I mentioned at a show about my Rubik's Cube abilities. After this show, a girl came up to me, holding out her cube, asking me to solve it. I froze. I hadn't seriously tried to solve the cube for more than (Gulp!) 20 years. And because the cube is not a mathematical equation to me, (geometry was the only math I disdained), I was stuck. I couldn't solve it. I couldn't remember my moves. I walked away embarrassed that I even mentioned my Rubik's Cube days.

I went home determined to solve the cube, once again. Within hours, I was able to solve the cube; I rediscovered the process. It's odd how things start to come back to you when you haven't done an activity for so long.

This time around, though, I was intrigued by the process, the "how," and not the "how fast." There are hundreds, maybe thousands of ways to solve the cube. I have my series of 20+ ways. One approach that remains consistent with me is that I start off solving the cube by working on two opposites first. The color patterns are always the same: red/orange, blue/green, white/yellow. Therefore, if I choose the yellow as my first color, the white side will follow. Before fully completing those two sides, I arrange the corners of the four remaining colors, and then I finish the rest of the two colors with which I began.

Upon completion of the initial colors, I work on completing the remaining four sides. However, in order to complete the remaining four sides, one must be willing to "upset" the order of the two completed sides. When I am solving the cube I don't even pay any attention to this disturbance; it is what is necessary when I am trying to solve the cube. I thought about how wonderful of a metaphor solving the Rubik's Cube is for life. If there is a lot of distractions and disturbances and confusion for a relatively simple cubed equation, what more can be said for the distractions and disturbances and confusions within the multi-variables of life?

As some of you are aware, I am intrigued by philosophical and religious meanderings. I love to sit and ponder; this brings me joy. Lately, I've been reading and listening to discussions about Evil. For those of you who are unaware, the problem of evil is the chief weapon for atheists in their defense that God does not exist. Personally, I believe God exists. Yet, I can't just ignore this serious premise: If God exists, why would God allow evil? If God is loving and benevolent, almighty and omnipresent, why would God allow bad things to happen to good people? Why is there suffering?

For the sanctity of blogging, and for the sanity of my reading audience, I will keep this discussion to simplicity; yet, I recognize that even simplified, this discussion can be discoursed equally as well with mushrooms, as with sobriety. By the very nature of this discussion being philosophical, some of you may bow out right about now. For those of you who are still around, let us enjoy one another's company.

I can get bogged down with themes such as the local and global arguments from evil, the idea of God, the hiddenness of God, and the suffering of animals to approach this discussion. However, time and interest is of the essence; therefore, allow me to draw upon my rediscovery of solving the Rubik's Cube as a general, but faulty, approximation of why evil exists.

Earlier, as you may recall, I mentioned two salient points concerning the cube that I would like to infuse within this discussion. First point being, there are multiple methods to understanding and solving the cube. Secondly, the process in which I take requires the disruption of seeming perfection in order to obtain holistic perfection. In other words, I must first destroy the two sides I solve in order to complete the remaining four sides.

Could not the Rubik's Cube, in theory, be seen as a working metaphor to address this question? What if life, as we know it, (or life unbeknownst to us), is working to achieve some level of perfection? And what if this journey is far more extravagant than some simple cube? What if the mathematical computations are played out through billions of years, with infinite possibilities, with pieces (i.e., people and things) that don't necessarily fit within their given time and space, and can only later be understood through reflection or the revelation of other factors? What if God is beyond the scope we place on God? Beyond the books and sermons and suicides and prayers and judgments and boxes in which God so neatly fits? What if God can only be God? What if stopping all the evil would no more be of God than stopping all the good?

When I solve the cube I solve two opposite sides first; the opposites work in tandem with one another. They work together and rarely against each other. What if these opposite sides were to be seen as love/hate, evil/good, suffering/healing? What if to God the framework is not greater and lesser evils, but rather, greater and lesser goods? And what if it is about the intentions of things, rather than the acts themselves? For example, if I say to you is a mother evil if she purposefully shoots her child? Would it matter if I told you the mother was mentally ill? A criminal? Or if I told you that the mother had been wounded during war time, dying, and her eight year old girl would be raped, tortured, and killed by her captors. Would that make a difference?

We can only see through this glass darkly. We are trapped within the immediacy of our time. We attempt to understand the pieces of this cube we call life, but we don't know the intentions or strategy of the Cube Solver. Onlookers can only gasp and remain baffled by the movement of life within God's hands, and what appears to be the destruction of perfection, what we label as evil, could in the end, be set to serve the greater good.