We should never lose faith in God, writes AJIT KUMAR BISHNOI
We get troubles from three sources in this material world. These are aadhyatmik, aadhibhautik and aadhidaivik. Explaining these, aadhyatmik is what we give to ourselves. These are entirely our own creations. We cannot blame anyone for these. Aadhibhautik is what others give us. We can choose to blame them but the nature of the material world is such that this is bound to happen. Aadhidaivik are natural disasters or what the material nature gives us in the form of excess heat, biting cold, too much rain, earthquake, etc. This is again due to our presence in this material world and no one can escape from it. Rather than blaming our luck, we should accept the reality.
Now let us take up the role of God in all this. God, as the controller/superintendent of the material world, has set rules for the functioning of the material world. These rules are enforced by divine forces. We get what we deserve either by our own misdeeds or caused by our presence in the material world, which is naturally painful. God does not normally interfere in the working of the material nature. However, in case of those who are connected to him or are his devotees, he does intervene.
Even in those cases, God intervenes because his devotees will not be able to handle the troubles faced by them. In most cases, God allows the troubles to come in due course to his devotees also and lets them face them with his help. This he has promised in the verse 18.58, which states, “Having my consciousness you will cross all impediments by my grace.” God does not want those connected to him to become soft. That will make them unfit to live in this world.
God has clarified in no uncertain terms the reason why he does not interfere/intervene in the normal course in the two verses of the Bhagavad Gita. The first one reads like this: “Neither acts of anyone attach to me nor there is desire on my part for the fruit of action of living entities.” (4.14). The other verse is: “I am similarly inclined towards all beings, no one is hateful for me; and no one is dear, ie I have no preconceived and prejudiced notion towards anyone.” (9.29)
But in the same verse, God goes on to clarify in which cases he does help out, when he states, “However, those who worship me with devotion, they are in me and I am also in them.
And he has explained why in the following two verses. In the first one he says, “He becomes righteous soon only; achieves lasting peace. O Kaunteya, believe that my devotees never perishes. (9.31)” And in the other verse, he clarifies, “O Partha, neither in this world nor even beyond there is his destruction, because O Tata, doer of welfare acts does not end up badly.” (6.40) “These people who worship me with undivided attention, meditating on me, for these regular practitioners of yoga, I help in getting what one does not have and security of what one has.” (9.22) And God assures complete protection to his fully surrendered devotees in the verse 18.66, when he affirms, “leaving all duties, take my shelter only; I shall release you from all sins. Do not worry.”
Then, if someone knows all this, why does he or she lose faith when troubles strikeIJ The reason is simple. He or she has built wrong expectations that God will prevent all troubles from coming, which, as stated earlier, is not true. God only prevents those troubles coming to his devotees, which will effectively be intolerable to them, ie will be beyond their capacity to tolerate. For the rest, as pointed out earlier, God allows them to come. God did not do it for Arjuna and he is not likely to do so for anyone else. God allowed Arjuna to face his challenges. Yes, he helped Arjuna. The lord even assured Arjuna that Arjuna’s enemies had already been killed by him. (11.33)
I hope now we have more clarity about the role played by God when troubles are faced by us. We should never lose faith in God no matter what.
Bishnoi is a spiritual writer and can be reached at spiritual@ajitbishnoi.com