Kushner said I am a rabbi I have never done anything bad in my life
and my child was born with this disease my child there is no question of doing
anything bad. Why did I suffer? Why did my child suffer? Is God truly just?
From God we can expect perfect justice
but the problem arises when in the court of God we see injustice, what injustice
why are we seeing bad things happening to good people? This makes us all squeal.
Why this person is so nice, why are bad things happening to him or
her Or we see the reverse. Good things
happening to bad people and that shakes our faith
Here Swamiji is giving you a paradigm that grow from within and succeed in life and
Swamiji in the world we see the reverse it is the 'chalu the chant' the person
who's clever and who knows all the tricks of the trade who's succeeding
what are you teaching me about how to succeed in life. Once I was asked to give
a lecture on his topic so I said let's ask Mr. Google first. I googled why do
bad things happen to good people and I came up with 1 million websites. This is
not alone my question this is the question of millions of people it's the
question of majority of the people. There was a Jewish rabbi called Harold Kushner
he wrote a book on this theme. What happened was he had a child who
developed progeria, progeria is a disease that causes premature aging. His poor
child started growing prematurely and in front of his eyes by the age of
fourteen he was manifesting the symptoms of an eighty-year-old and then he passed
away. It created a lot of questions in Kushner's mind. Kushner said I am a rabbi
I have never done anything bad in my life and my child was born with this
disease my child there is no question of doing anything bad. Why did I suffer?
Why did my child suffer? Is God truly just? So he considered two possibilities
either God is not all good as we are thinking him to be he's got a streak of
evil or mysteriousness in him that's why he is doing bad to good people
Or he is not all-powerful, he wishes to do good but he loses out because there
is the Satan and then Satan is victorious. So he considered these two
alternatives and he concludes in his book that God cannot be having any evil
in him otherwise he's not God. He settled for the second alternative that he wants
to do good but then you know Satan is so powerful and God is not all-powerful so
he uses out. This was his analysis but this analysis is not very accurate from
the Vedic perspective we don't believe there is any Satan, because if
there is a Satan who created Satan. God created him, why did God create as Satan?
There is no such thing as Satan there is only God
and absence of God. Just like light and darkness are they two entities? Light,
darkness? no darkness is not an entity the absence of light is darkness. When a
room is dark is there something in it? No it's only light being absent. Is heat and
cold two different entities? of course not, you keep taking away the heat and
what remains is cold. That is why you cool something remove the heat until
something reaches absolute zero, you cannot cool it further because you
have removed all the heat. In other words cold is just the absence of heat, so
similarly there is no being called Satan who's the source of evil, it is our
distance from God that is creating this evil. Then why is it that God is allowing
bad things to happen to good people? This is what we are going to discuss and the
discussion is going to throw up some very deep truths, you know the more
complex the question the deeper is the truth that it unearths and that is what
is going to happen in today's discussion. Let us first of all consider what is a
good thing and what is a bad thing. When we say why are bad things happening to
good people what is a good thing and what is
bad thing? Life is a continuum of events where some things are pleasant some
things are unpleasant. There was once a Chinese farmer he had
his patch of land where he lived with his family and one day a horse came
running in, a wild horse now horses are expensive and it was a
poor country so the neighbors came to congratulate, Wow!
you have got a free horse such a good thing has happened to you, the wild horse
ran into your farm. The farmer said good thing bad thing God alone knows. A few
days went by, the horse that was now living in the farm it ran away back into
the wilderness. The neighbors came to commiserate so bad your horse is lost
what a bad thing has happened to you. He said good thing bad thing this the
future will let us know. A few more days went by that horse which ran away it
gathered its twenty friends other horses and ran back with twenty friends. The
neighbors came to say my god you have hit a bonanza twenty free horses what a
nice thing he said nice thing or a bad thing that I am not so sure.
A few more days went by and the farmers young son he was trying to tame one of
those 20 horses and he was thrown off by this wild horse as a consequence
of which his leg suffered multiple fractures. Now he was lying in bed and
the doctor told him you will need complete two years to recover. The
neighbors again came to give their two pens they said Oh Rama Rama Rama. What a
terrible thing, he said terrible or wonderful let us see. A few months went
by the neighboring Kingdom declared war on this kingdom and the poor King had a
little army. To strengthen his army he asked his soldiers to go and recruit all
the youth between the ages of 18 and 24 from the countryside. The soldiers went
around, the children of all the neighboring farmers were recruited and
send into the battleground without certainty of their coming back
or not this farmer's son who was lying there with a fractured leg the soldier said
let him be. So now what was a good thing and what is a bad thing how do you
decide? The fact is there are always these dualities of events taking place
in our life. We wish to lead a linear existence, nothing unpleasant and
uncomfortable should happen to me but the fact is those things which are
apparently painful and difficult and challenging also benefit us in so many
ways and later on we say oh this was a blessing in disguise. The difficulties
become opportunities for progress that is the way this life is!