Here's another thing to consider.

How would we even know what "cruelty" and "kindness" are, had we not been given opportunities to actually experience them? Would we even have such words or concepts, in the complete absence of the actual experience?

Does a rock worry about cruelty or kindness?...most probably not (as far as you or I can tell). It probably has absolutely no awareness of such things. We do. But if we had never witnessed or experienced either cruelty or kindness, and if no one else we knew or heard of ever had either...then we would have no conscious awareness at all of either concept. We would be ignorant of such issues, and not prepared to make intelligent decisions regarding them.

This may provide you with one clue as to precisely why cruelty and kindness are both known to occur in this world of manifestation and experience. Not because God is punishing anyone or showing favoritism, but because it is incumbent upon us to know the difference between cruelty and kindness, and we seek out (usually unconsciously) situations that will provide us with the opportunity to learn about these things firsthand.

We have to work too, in order to accomplish something. Why? How cruel of God, when he could just give us everything! Well, try just giving your child everything, from day 1 till the day he (or you) dies, everything that child can possibly think of or desire...and see what happens as time goes by. The child will become a helpless, hopeless, useless lump of boredom, despair or something worse. That's why we have to work to get things. It strengthens us and brings forth our hidden potential, which is really quite marvelous.

Of course, you can, if you want to, believe that this whole Universe and cosmology and YOU YOURSELF with all your ideas and concepts just happened by accident...blind chance...and natural selection...in which case you are playing in a self-created game (your little scrambling mortal life) which is guaranteed by its own chosen rules of play to end finally in your defeat and extinction (like a pinball game). If that makes you happy, well, okay. It's your game.

This is a case of a god imagining that it's a worm...or worse yet, a mere biological machine, destined to be thrown presently on the junkpile. Gods can imagine anything they want to. They are very powerful. Only the mortal mind and ego are so clever and simultaneously so ignorant as to take delight, or at least cold comfort, in concocting a story of reality that ends in their own inevitable demise. They figure they win if the "other guy" meets his demise first. A most unfortunate attitude. There is no "other guy".

- LH