Is blaming past karma for bad things just a way to avoid blaming God?
Podcast
Transcription
Question: Is blaming past karma for bad things just a way to avoid blaming God?
Answer:
Yes, bad things happen to us but if you are honest good things also happen to us. When we are successful, we did work hard for that success, but so many other things fall in place. It’s only because all those things also fall in place that we become successful. Success is not just because of our own efforts. There are other things beyond us which also contribute to success. What to speak of success? Even our very existence is dependent on something beyond us for our existence.
When we live, right now we are breathing, we are not even conscious that we are breathing. We don’t consciously breathe. Certainly, we don’t produce the oxygen that we need to breathe. It is already provided. When a child comes to the mother’s womb into the world, the mother does not do anything special to produce milk in her breasts. Milk comes over there. So, we will see that there is much good that is also arranged, which is essential for our existence.
Suppose after this program we will have prasad. When we have food, we digest the food and we enjoy the food. We get some energy after that. If you consider scientifically or medically speaking, digesting of food is a very complicated process. I was in MIT, America, Massachusetts. They took me to a lab over there. They were actually trying to develop an artificial digestive machine. It’s like we have pacemakers and we have other machines. They found that it’s extremely complicated. You don’t need a machine you need a factory. It’s such a complicated process. So now, who is doing that? We just eat the food and we get energy after that. The only time we think of our digestion is when it doesn’t work.
The point here is that if we are to blame God for our bad things, then actually there are good things happening also, in which we are not doing them. If we are just alive, then there is more right with us than wrong. So many people die before they come to the age which we are living right now. If we observe carefully, there is some benevolent arrangement in the world which facilitates our existence. There is a foundation of benevolence in the world. There’s a foundation of goodness and on that foundation of goodness, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
If that foundation of benevolence and goodness would not be there, then even existence would be impossible. Therefore, this foundation of benevolence that is there, this whole system of good and bad that is there, where does the system come from? Sometimes people say that okay, so many bad things happen to good people. Therefore, there is no God. How can God exist if so many bad things are happening? Well possible. That could be an argument. But you could turn that argument around and say, okay, why should bad things not happen to good people? What do you mean? You know, bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. But why not? If there is no higher ordering principle in the world, then anything can happen to anyone. The very assumption that good action should lead to good results and bad action should lead to bad results, where is that assumption coming from? What is the basis for that assumption? It is because there is some ordering principle that whenever there is disorder, we ask why is this disorder there?
So, blaming God might seem simplistic. Blaming God could be one option, but there is a foundation of benevolence and goodness that enables our existence itself. Only with that foundation can everything else follow. We basically have three options. When we look at the world around us, that everything happens by chance, there’s no cause-effect connection and anything happens to anyone. So bad things happen because life is like a lottery. Some people win the lottery. Some people lose the lottery. It’s a very helplessness inducing view. That is not the way we function on a daily basis. We don’t raise our children telling, actually your exam is a lottery. Whether you study or not, it doesn’t matter. Either you’ll get marks or you’ll not get marks. Nobody lives like that.
One possibility is that everything happens by chance. The second possibility is that everything happens simply by God’s arbitrary will. God decides to send bad things for some people’s life, God decides to send good things for some people’s life. Why would God be arbitrary or partial like this? If that were the case, then why would there be a foundation of goodness, which enables our existence, upon top of which there is arbitrary good or arbitrary bad. The idea that God is to be blamed for our misdeeds, for our distresses, recoils against the whole concept that there is a foundational good in the world, on which there is good and bad. And anyway, if that is the case, again, it’s a very helplessness inducing view.
If God is against me, what can I do? Isn’t it? Ultimately, we have to go on with our life. We have to look at a worldview that is most practically beneficial for us, that is the most constructive for us. So, either it is everything happens by chance or everything happens by God’s arbitrary will. The third option could be something else.
Suppose there’s a cricket match going on. The cricket match starts, and you see one team starting score is zero, the other team starting score is two hundred. What’s going on? This is not fair. Now you could have three explanations for this. Why is it like this? One is the scoreboard works by chance. It just automatically puts any numbers over there. This team was unlucky, this team was lucky. The second option is that the scorekeeper is biased. The scorekeeper put extra marks over there and put a zero over here. The third explanation could be that it is a multiple innings match and this team is carrying over from the previous innings. So, this two hundred is a lead from the previous innings.
Similarly, if there are differences in the way we get in life, the most reasonable explanation in a game, if everything were by chance, there is definitely an element of chance in a game, but it is not that everything is by chance. The score doesn’t come by chance over there. And if the scorekeeper is biased, why would he even have a match over there? Without a match only decide this team is winning, that team is lost. The most reasonable explanation is that it’s a multiple innings match. Most reasonable in the sense that it is the most empowering. The other two explanations are most disempowering. If everything is by chance or everything is by God’s arbitrary will then there’s nothing we can do about it.
If you understand that it is by our own past deeds, then that creates a sense of purpose and power within us. If I do good deeds now, I can create a brighter future for myself. I have written the whole book on this topic called “Demystifying Reincarnation”, where this whole reasoning and logic I have explained systematically. This is the broad answer. We could blame God, but actually blaming our past karma is not a replacement for blaming God. Rather, it is the most reasonable and the most empowering explanation for what we experience in our day to day lives.
End of transcription.