We are required to believe that H-sh-m is not limited in any way, shape or form, and there is absolutely no limit to what he can do.
Since this must be true, my question is; Why did he create the Universe, in such a way that for us to be our best, there must be a transition we must go through, in order to ‘be’ our best?
More importantly; Why must this transition include any suffering at all, let alone the absolute horrific suffering people have gone through, during all parts of history?
I know the standard answer I have gotten, is that reward must come from earning it through effort which by definition must include suffering/struggling, or the reward is not appreciated.
But that begs the question.
G-d created the Universe in such a way, that this is how reward must be earned and appreciated.
He could have just as easily, created the Universe in such a way, that we could have earned and recieved reward and appreciated it every bit as much, without any suffering.
Or he could have simply given everyone their final reward and created them, such that they would appreciate it, without having to have earned it.
G-d created time and space, and all the laws of physics and rules regarding human emotions.
It was all up to him, so he could have created a universe where ‘earning’ reward was the ‘lazy unappreciative’ way to get it, and where sitting around doing nothing was the virtuous way of the Tzaddikim.
Or G-d could have looked all through history and simply told everyone “If you had actually gone through life, you would have suffered from such and such and at the end, earned a certain amount of reward. I (H-sh-m)have spared you going through all that and here is the reward, without you actually having to go through, any suffering”.
And he could have created the people, such that they would gladly accept, and love his judgement, joyfully.
Someone might argue that this would take away, free choice.
I have two points to make about that;
#1 H-sh-m could have done it the way I suggest, and still have given us free choice.
We might not understand how that could possibly work. But our not understanding, does not limit G-d, or stop him from having the ability to have done it that way, if he had chosen to do so.
#2 We do not really have much free choice anyway, we do not choose to whom, or where or how healthy or rich or other circumstances we are born and all those circumstances have a huge impact on how the rest of our lives will go.
All through life how rich we are and how healthy, tall strong or weak, etc… Are also not under our control so all this stuff about free choice as most of us usually think of it, is only a fantasy anyway.
Our only free choice is to do good or evil and even that might have some question about it (a person born poverty stricken for example and literally starving to death for lack of any way to earn money in a poor depressed country who then steals just to survive. Stealing is wrong but either he steals or starves to death).
So again G-d could have simply told us what our choices would have been and saved us the suffering from actually having to go through all the horrors that so many have gone through.
After all, at the end that is what happens anyway when we go to the Heavenly Bais Din, and are judged and either clensed of our averias and then allowed once clensed, to enter Gan Eden and get our reward or if we are judged to be Tzaddikim and get to go in right away without any clensing, first.
We want to be close to H-sh-m and bask in the Schechina, that and not ‘free choice’ is the goal anyway, so G-d it seems, could have just ‘cut to the chase’ as they say, and just given us our reward.
So since G-d can do anything and no one “forced” him to create a universe where the concept of evil and of suffering even exists, and since G-d could have made us just as happy and joyful as we will be in the end anyway.
Why did he ‘choose’ to have us suffer when it seems to me to be so obvious that it is not necessary?
Of course, people might answer we simply do not understand H-sh-ms ways they are too high for us to understand.
My response is that it does not matter how little we understand.
We can understand that G-d is not limited and that he could have done things differently, we do not have to have infinite intelligence to understand that basic concept.