ON BELIEVING IN GOD

ON BELIEVING IN GOD

It is said that Jesus Christ once had doubts about the existence of God. His faith was shaken because of the all round miseries and injustice. The demon King Ravana on the other hand always believed in the existence of God but did all ungodly things with the blessings of Lord Shiva boon (though with a caveat). He brought upon himself Rama’s displeasure knowingly as he thought that was the only way for him to get pardon for his misdeeds and thus get Nirvana.

We ordinary mortals keep on wavering between two extremes, believing and not believing in God. I am not competent to decipher the scholarly words of Upanishads and the very simple interpretation of those by our saints, sages and spiritual Gurus. And so I will like to deal with the subject in the way I understand it.

We remember God when are in some distress and do all sorts of rituals to please Him.  But if that does not help, we start cursing Him for being the reason of our distress because we think we have every right to do so as a Believer. As a believer we assume that no ill will fall upon us as the Protector is protecting us. Since it does not happen, we start cursing him and thus, indirectly negating His existence. The swings take us to the side of the non believers. This happened in Kathmandu when some 30 members of a family including extended family were killed in the earth quake on 24^th of this month particularly because at the time of the disaster they were performing ‘Saptahiki’ at their residence when the house came crumbling down engulfing the lives of most of the family members. At the same place all family members of a non believer were safe in their house. We start losing faith in Him when we are faced with such helplessness.

When we see other people suffering, we convince ourselves  that it is because of their Karma of the last life/lives. This does not apply to us as we see we have done nothing wrong, knowingly that is, in this life and so might not have done so in the previous life/lives also and thus God is not just with us.

Now when we are bestowed upon the good things of life, we give credit to our good  Karma in the last life/lives and hard work of this life and therefore take it as our rightful gain where God has nothing much to do except that He kept the accounts properly. And when we see people getting good things of life, we start suspecting their means of appropriating them. We start calling them names-thieves, corrupts without any proof. It does not occur to us that they too had good Karma of their past life/lives and honest efforts of this life.

 Fact is we have no clear answers and that is the reason why we keep on wavering from one extreme to another. The very foundation of our Faith is laid on the ‘assumption’ that there is one supernatural power who controls lives and punishes people for bad things and rewards them for good things. Among these people ‘we’ or ‘us’ are not included because we did nothing wrong and do nothing wrong. It is only ‘they’ who did and do wrongs.