Now the idea of some vast alien Being hovering over us and controlling our lives can either seem very unsettling or very comforting, depending on what we believe about God’s Character. Happily for us, the relativists are wrong: reality is not created by us. God is who He is, and if we have misconceptions about Him, they need to be unlearned if we are going to live in alignment with His truth. The truth is that God is good. He is not some sadistic monster who gets off on leading His creatures down paths of torment and destruction. God is a very kind and generous Creator who wants human beings to experience His best. But because God is not a doormat, He isn’t going to accommodate our bratty behavior. When we fight Him, He will come back at us with discipline. When we resist Him, He will put us through miseries in order to break us down. And because God created each of us with different purposes in mind, it is necessary for Him to put us through various kinds of hardships now in order to prepare us to get the most out of our experience in eternity. The paradise chapter hasn’t started yet, so we need to throw out the dream of “peace on earth” and recognize that this place is always going to be filled with hardship and strife. This is a training and shaping ground—it’s not the rest period. We’re here to be changed in positive ways through both negative and positive experiences. Getting the most out of life comes through total submission to God’s will for us, not through trying to control our own futures.