Eckhart TolleNYT Bestselling author of the Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle on Why God Allows Suffering

17 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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1:11

In this excerpt, Eckhart Tolle addresses a common objection that a benevolent God would not permit suffering, suggesting that such criticism implies moral superiority over any deity. He then introduces the early Gnostic sect, noting their two core interests: attaining direct inner knowledge of the divine (gnosis) and the belief that the material world was created by a malevolent, inferior deity—a demiurge—rather than the true God. Tolle explains that Gnostics pointed to the existence of suffering, especially among children, as evidence for this demiurgical creation, leading them to wholly reject the world. While acknowledging that the Gnostics had valuable insights, Tolle argues that their conclusion to reject the world entirely was unwise.

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And people say, if I were a god, I would not allow this to happen, obviously. And therefore, I'm morally superior to any god. In early Christian times and pre-Christian times, there were the— there was a sect, a religious sect called the Gnostics. They were interested in 2 things: direct knowledge of the divine through inner realization, but they also had a strange belief. And they had the belief that the entire world was created by a malevolent, inferior god, not the real God. They pointed to all the dreadful things that were happening in the world. Look at the children suffering, look at this. So they came to the conclusion that this world was a product, was created by a demiurge, a malevolent God, and they completely rejected this world. And that, I believe, was not a wise conclusion, although there's a lot to be said for the Gnostics otherwise.