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Do Bad Things Happen to Good people ? Part 2 of
2
From the book "Endless Love"
By Ravindra Svarupa das.
Submitted by Manoj
In the Bhagavad-gita Kma explains that you and I, like all living beings, are spiritual entities, souls. We now animate bodies made of matter, but we are not these bodies. Our involvement with matter is unfortunate, for it is the cause of all our suffering. We rightly belong in the spiritual kingdom, where life is eternal, full of knowledge and bliss. There everyone is joyously surrendered to the control of God as they directly serve Him in love. Every action is motivated exclusively by the desire to satisfy God.
But some of us perversely wished God's position for ourselves. We wanted independence so that we could try to enjoy and control others like God does. Yet we cannot, of course, take God's place; He alone has no master. But to grant our desires, God sends us to the material world, where He now controls us indirectly, through His material nature and its laws. Here we can forget God, strive to fulfill our desires, and have the illusion of independence.
Yet we are controlled by the laws of nature, and these force us to perpetually inhabit a succession of temporary material bodies. In ignorance, we identify ourselves with each body we enter, and we suffer again and again the pains of birth, old age, disease, and death. Life after life we transmigrate through plant, animal, and human bodies, sometimes on this planet, sometimes on far better ones, sometimes on far worse.
Once we take a human birth, our destiny is shaped by karma. In the Bhagavad-gia (8.3) Krsna succintly defines karma as ''actions pertaining to the development of material bodies." This means that there are actions we do now that determine our future material bodies. What kind of actions? Those motivated by material desire. We may do them directly for ourselves or indirectly for our extended self-our family, friends, community, nation, and the like. All such acts sentence us to future births in the material world, there to reap what we have sown.
Karma is of two kinds: good and bad.
Every civilized society recognizes a set of commandments that have divine authority and that regulate material enjoyment. Such commandments, for example, restrict the enjoyment of sex to marital relations and oblige the wealthy to be philanthropic. They also encourage religious and charitable acts, which earn the performer merit. And they prescribe atonements for transgressors. Thus people are allowed to pursue material enjoyment, but they must observe moral and religious codes. And those who follow these codes, who live pious lives of restricted sensual pleasure, are assured of even greater enjoyment in the life to come.
If we act according to scriptural regulations, the Vedas tell us, we will produce good karma and in future births enjoy the benefits of our piety. For example, if a person is born in an aristocratic family, is beautiful, well educated, or wealthy, he is reaping the benefits of good karma. The Vedas also tell us that if a person is extraordinarily pious he may be reborn on one of the higher planets in this universe, where the standard of sensual pleasure is far greater than anything we have on earth.
Conversely, there is bad karma. We create bad karma when we disregard scriptural injunctions and restrictions in our pursuit of sensual pleasure-that is, when we act sinfully. Bad karma brings us suffering, and misfortune, such as birth in a degraded family, poverty, chronic disease, legal problems, or physical ugliness. Exceptionally bad karma will take us into animal bodies or down to lower planets of hellish torment.
The law of karma is as strict, relentless, and impartial as the grosser natural laws of motion and gravity. And, like them, it applies to us whether we know about it or not. For example, if I eat the flesh of animals even though I can live as well without it, my bad karma will force me to be born as an animal and to be slaughtered myself. Or if I arrange to have a child killed in the womb, I simultaneously arrange for myself to be killed in the same way, again and again, without ever seeing the light of day.
So when you and I were born we inherited, along with our blue eyes or our black hair, the consequences of our past good and bad deeds. We have a long history, and the happiness and distress our lives will bring is set. We are indeed children of destiny, hostages to fortune, but it is a destiny we created for ourselves, a fortune self-made. And in this life we are continuing to create our future.
But of all this Kushner is unaware, and he can make no sense of his suffering. He has the unshakable conviction that God owes him an agreeable and happy life - that God is obliged to arrange matters for his satisfaction. But God fails, bringing on Kushner's crisis of faith. It can only be that God is either bad or weak, Kushner reasons, and then settles for weakness.
Yet, in spite of Kushner, God is both all-good and all-powerful. But He does not engineer our suffering, we do. We are the authors of our karma. And it is our decision, not His, that brings us down into the material world, into the realm of suffering.
So the answer to the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is "They don't". All of us here in the material world are - how shall I put it? - not of the best sort. Reprobates and scapegraces- each of us persona non grata in the kingdom of God. We are sent here because we seek a life independent of God, and He grants our desire as far as possible. But since His position is already taken, we can only play at being God while deceiving ourselves that we are independent of Him.
At the same time, the material world reforms us, teaches us through reward and punishment to acknowledge God's supreme position. For by natural law we are rationed out the pleasures we desire according to our observance of the divine regulations, following the ways of good karma. The practice of good karma, then, amounts to a materially motivated religion, an observance of God's orders on the inducement of material reward. By this practice, spanning many lifetimes, I may, it is hoped, become habituated to following God's commands and reconciled to His supremacy. Thereupon I become eligible at last to take up the pure and eternal religion, in which, completely free of all material desires, I serve God in loving devotion, asking nothing in return. This religion, called bhakti in the Vedas, causes my return to the kingdom of God. The acts of bhakti are karma-less: they produce no future material births, good or bad.
From the Vedas; then, we learn of two clearly distinct religions, one pure and the other impure. Practicing good karma can elevate us in the material world, secure for us a vast life span on heavenly planets, and so on. In other words, it can make us first-class inmates of the material world. But bhakti alone can release us from the prison altogether. Even the best karma cannot free us from suffering, as Krsna warns in the Bhagavad-gita (8.16): "From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery where repeated birth and death take place!' But bhakti destroys all karmic reaction, extirpates all material desires, revives our pure love for God, and delivers us beyond birth and death to His abode. There we never taste temporary, material pleasure but rather relish eternal, spiritual bliss by serving Krsna and thus joining in His bliss.
It is a signal of virtue of the Vedic tradition that it distinguishes so clearly between the religion of good karma and the religion of bhakti and offers bhakti purely, without compromise Most of us, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jew, have been taught a kind of common karmic religion: God has put us on this earth to enjoy ourselves, and if we do so within the ordained limits, not forgetting, to show God gratitude and proper respect, He will see to our success. We should ask God to meet our needs and fulfill our lawful desires, for He is the greatest order supplier. If we are observant and good, He will reward us well in this life and even better in the next.
This is the religion Kushner professed: "Like most people, my wife and I had grown up with an image of God as an all-wise, all-powerful parent figure who would treat us as our earthly parents did, or even better. If we were obedient and deserving, He would reward us. If we got out of line, He would discipline us, reluctantly but firmly. He would protect us from being hurt or from hurting ourselves, and would see to it that we got what we deserved in life!'
Of course, Kushner begins to reconsider his religion when he discovers that it doesn't Work. At this point most People (like the marble contractor) become atheists. The idea of God as order supplier is thus responsible for a great deal of unbelief. But Kushner wants to preserve his faith in God, or at least in God's goodness, by denying His power.
Kushner's chief defense of his position is that it is "religiously adequate' that is, comforting. You will recall that he accused conventional theodicy of making people feel worse-causing them to feel guilty and to hate God. The explanation of suffering I have presented shouldn't make anyone feel worse. True, it says that we cause our own suffering, yet the point is not to make us feel guilty. The point is to let us know we've made some mistakes and should correct them. And why should we resent God for our suffering? Suffering comes by the law of karma. But karma is the impartial working of causal law. Hostility toward God is what has put us under that law; it certainly won't help us get out. For His Part, God is making every effort to get us out: He comes to this world from time to time to teach the path of bhakti which will destroy all our karma, He sends His representatives throughout the world on the same mission, and He even stays with us as the indwelling Supersoul during our sojourn in the material world, ready to give us the intelligence to approach Him when we put aside our ancient enmity.
Kushner has the right instincts: he too would like people to cease their enmity toward God, and he even recognizes the ignobility of worshiping Him on the condition that He satisfy our demands. But if only we recognize God's limitations, he says, we won't be angry at Him when things go wrong in our life, nor will we worship Him for the satisfaction of our desires. Kushner thus urges the religious adequacy of his own theodicy.
But it is far from adequate Kushner's problem is that he cannot overcome the conditioning of karmic religion. He needs something more spiritually powerful than good instincts to free him from the implicit hostility toward God, the unconscious, deep-seated unwillingness to serve Him unconditionally, that binds the conditioned soul to karma.
Kushner is still hostile. Because God did not satisfy his demands, Kushner must think of Him as ineffectual and weak. Kushner once thought of God as a parent who always gratifies our desires. But now Kushner views Him as needing our forgiveness-for having failed as a parent: "Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations ... as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?"
Kushner asserts that his hostility toward God is no more but what he has really done is simply change the form in which it is expressed-from rage to condescension. And this idea of God will only support our unwillingness to acknowledge His supremacy, and thus it will help keep us in the material world, where we will continue to suffer. Thus Kushner's theodicy will not make us feel better; it will only make us feel worse
Furthermore, if we think God weak and ineffectual, it is certain that we will not be able to surrender to Him fully and serve Him without any personal consideration. The condition that makes such service and surrender possible is His promise of complete protection. "Declare it boldly," Krsna tells His disciple Arjuna, "My devotee never perishes." (Bg. 9.31) Because we can depend upon God completely, we can surrender to Him completely: "Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Therefore you have nothing to fear." (Bg. 18.66)
If we accept Kushner, we will always have to look out for ourselves; we will have to act for our own sake, and so we will remain involved with karma. Our service to God will never be total and unconditional. Indeed, as long as we insist on taking care of ourselves, God will leave us to our own devices.
But if we accept Krsna, if we give up independent action and depend completely on God, devoting all our effort to His service He will take complete care of us. We shouldn't expect God to remove all inconvenience, but if difficulty comes we should simply tolerate it, recognizing that our residual bad karma is playing itself out, and continue to expect God's mercy.
God will minimize the karmic reaction due us, but the ultimate way He protects us is by bestowing spiritual consciousness upon us and destroying the ignorance by which we identify ourselves with matter. Krsna describes that consciousness in the Bhagavad gita(6.22-23): "In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses.... Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken even in the midst of the greatest difficulty. This, indeed, is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact" God frees us not so that we can goof off, not so we can get some reward but so that we can serve Him wholeheartedly, without any other concern.
So if we accept Krsna, we can solve the problem of evil. That solution doesn't lie in rejecting either the goodness or the power of God, but rather in taking advantage of that goodness and power to perform pure devotional service-and in that way end all our suffering forever.
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