In this YouTube dialogue, a mental‑health therapist who works with survivors of severe sexual trauma asks Eckhart Tolle why a divine "chef" would create a world of intense suffering. Using the chef metaphor, the therapist expresses resentment toward a hypothetical God who serves a “rotten” plate to some people. Tolle validates the question and the feeling of resentment, then moves to a philosophical analysis of theodicy. He outlines the traditional argument that an omnipotent, controlling God either permits or causes suffering, which many take as evidence against God’s existence or as proof of a malevolent deity. Tolle references the ancient Gnostic belief in a demiurge—a lesser, hostile creator—who is blamed for worldly pain, and he critiques this view as a misinterpretation. He argues that the core mistake is assuming God is a controlling power figure; instead, God should be understood beyond the paradigm of omnipotent agency. The conversation ends with Tolle suggesting that the conventional framing of God as a chef who decides the menu is flawed, opening space for a different, non‑controlling conception of the divine that does not hinge on the problem of suffering.
If there were a God, then how would he possibly allow this amount of suffering to happen? 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. They think.
Hello.
Hi.
So, my question for today, I'd like to phrase it using a metaphor that you used earlier this week. You mentioned the story of a man who had just had dinner and had walked around asking if there was a chef. And I loved that metaphor. I wrote it down. So I have some questions for the chef. Okay. Um, so I've been a mental health therapist for 10 years, almost 10 years. I've specialized working specifically with survivors of sexual trauma, survivors of very severe and complex trauma. I love what I do. I love healing people. I love helping people. I'm so good at it too. And yeah, I— so sometimes though, particularly lately, I've been finding myself working with a lot more intense cases where there's a lot of just so much trauma for these individuals that sometimes I feel a little bit hopeless for them at times because of all of the pain and suffering they've gone through. And so when, when I think about this question about— when I think about this metaphor of the chef, sometimes when I come out of these sessions and I think about Just as a person, I come out of these sessions and I'm like, okay, like, so if we're using the metaphor of the chef, I think, okay, why did, why did you make this? Why did you allow this to happen in your kitchen? And I get very upset sometimes. I think, you know, if there is a chef that's making the dinner that we're eating, well, why did that person get like A horrible plate. Like, their plate was like 2 months old rotten food, and this person got this gourmet food, and it makes me very upset sometimes. So for me, Eckhart, I, I just— yeah, like, one, I don't even know what's my question, honestly, but I have questions for the chef, and I have a little bit of resentment, if I'm honest, as a person.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Of course, what you are saying seems to be justified. The question is justified, seemingly. And if you feel a little bit of resentment towards the chef, that's also justified. And of course, traditionally, this is used as an argument by many people to prove that actually there is no chef. To people who say, if there were a God, then How would he possibly allow this amount of suffering to happen? 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, if there is a God, obviously. My morals are much higher than this God's morals. which probably means there is no God, or if there is a God, it's a malevolent being, they say. There was the, in early Christian times and pre-Christian times, there were the, there was a sect, a religious sect called the Gnostics, G-N-O, Gnostics, Gnostics, you don't pronounce the G, 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. So their belief was— and they had ample opportunity to prove because they pointed at all the dreadful things that were happening in the world. Look at the children suffering, look at this. It is, and 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. That, I believe, was not a wise conclusion, although there's a lot to be said for the Gnostics otherwise. So, the argument then goes, if there were a God, he could not possibly allow these things to happen. Therefore, it proves that we live in a random universe where things just happen randomly to people. That would be one possible conclusion. The other possible conclusion would be what the Gnostics said, and related to that, the Gnostics' conclusion would be to say there is also a destiny. devil in this world, the antagonist of God, and that this devil is creating all this suffering, and the devil is the— this is a traditional Christian— the devil is the antagonist of God and is creating, making humans suffer and doing all this. So you have all these possible interpretations or conclusions, none of which I believe are actually correct. The starting point is the assumption— what I would say is the erroneous starting point is the assumption that there is a God that is a controlling figure that controls events from somewhere and makes things happen. Mm-hmm. Or allows things to happen that he could prevent. So, he's omnipotent, so either he uses his omnipotence to torture people, or he doesn't use his omnipotence and just lets things go, which, either case, not a very desirable God. So, the traditional argument actually for the nonexistence of God is this, all the suffering in the world. That's the traditional. But the departure of this is, in my view, a misconception of what God is. To see God as a power figure, a controlling entity that either makes bad things happen or does not prevent bad things from happening if he could, that would be— That's not the case. I would suggest that is a wrong way of understanding what God actually means.
