It is now a few years ago, but when I first heard this statement, I was relieved. God did not create this world.
It solved so many problems!

“How can God tolerate violence, war, crime, abuse,…”?
“How can God let children be killed, let catastrophes happen, brothers live in hatred?”
“How can God let us abort children, beat children, abuse children?”

The answer is easy: If he would interfere if you would see an old man standing there, or a mighty hand would stop the “evil” behavior immediately, what would you say? Fall on your knees and repent? Ask for forgiveness, that this behavior would never happen again?

The Creator interfering since the beginning of history (and beyond) would have shaped life differently. We would always live in fear of God (what we do nevertheless, but with less intensity) and the old man appearing would arouse so many questions of why he made us in the first place.

So the Law of Karma seems more plausible to me: I do something “evil” (whosoever is in the position to decide over “good and evil”), and punishment of the same “magnitude” would follow. Be it in this life or the next. If there is only a process of learning involved.

But learning for what?
Learning to become a “better” human being?
Learning to live this life more effortlessly? Suffer less?

Swami Vivekananda, the brilliant and enlightened student
of Ramakrishna wrote in his “The Song of the Sannyasin”:

“Who sows must reap,” they say, “and cause must bring
The sure effect; good, good; bad, bad; and none
Escape the law. But whoso ever wears a form
Must wear the chain.” Too true; (…)

And doing so, bringing together Christianity and the law of karma. “And none escape the law!”.

If we now just exchange words by saying “Cause and Effect” instead of using the age-old word “karma” we do nothing but describe the same effect.

But isn’t all that we see cause and effect? I’m typing in a keyboard, you read these lines, a loooong chain of events led us both to this miraculous meeting somewhere in the depths of what we call the Internet.

Further, a much longer chain of effects has brought us here (seemingly) on a small rock called earth.

And now we are bound. “None escape the law”. Whatever we do (or not do) will always have consequences, making us more or less forgetting the chains that we wear.

God did not create this world. God did not create these chains. Who is the one playing in this play called “Lila”? Are there even others out there?

“²Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. ³In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. (https://acim.org/acim/en/s/313#6:2-3 | T-27.VIII.6:2-3)

We all know these lines too well.
The thought became a “serious idea” – although thoughts can never leave their source. Or in the words of Swami Vivekananda:

Too true; but far beyond
Both name and form is Atman, ever free.
Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold!

Believe in karma: there it is.
Believe in suffering: there it is.
Believe in separation: there it is.
At least it seems so.

No. God did not create this world. We did. I did. “THOU ART THAT”. In dreams!

Now, let’s all forget and forgive what seems to have happened. Let’s close our eyes and start to laugh all this away. A mere blockage of loves´ permanent presence.Where all is one, always was, always will be…

P.S.: Here is a link to the poem “The Song of the Sannyasin” by Swami Vivekananda:
http://www.ramakrishnamath.in/completeworks/?cat=1&paged=4 (Opens in a new window)