When we are suffering, does that mean that God is angry with us?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Is that clear? Question.
When we are suffering, does that mean that God is angry with us? Answer. Not at all actually. The idea that our present material sufferings are a result of God’s personal wrath or vendetta against us is born of a very negative and materialist conception of God.
Many of the religions of the world, especially the Abrahamic religions don’t really or clearly differentiate between the material and the spiritual realms. And that is why often they say that material prosperity is a sign of God’s grace and material adversity is a sign of God’s wrath. At one level, this conception although not directly in terms of God’s involvement is there in the Vedic literature where material prosperity is understood to be a result of good karma and material adversity is understood to be a result of bad karma.
So we have the four Purusharthas Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. So Artha which is material prosperity is a result of Dharma is a result of doing religious or pious activity. But if we look at these four Purusharthas, Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha this whole system is set up by God but God is not directly involved in the system.
God is personally in his own abode transcendental to everything material. And he wants us to come out of material existence and return back to him to be eternally happy with him. And as long as we are in the material world God is sorry for us because as compared to the amount of happiness that the soul can enjoy in relationship with Krishna both material happiness and material distress are actually sources of distress.
Just like a billionaire’s son wandering on the street sometimes is given alms of dry and meager food and sometimes is given tasty and good food. But in both cases that millionaire’s child is suffering because of his or her bereavement from his millionaire-billionaire father. So irrespective of the moments of pleasure or pain that he gets underlying that is the reality that that person is suffering.
Similarly, from Krishna’s point of view underlying the material pleasures and pains that we get is the sad reality that this world is a place of misery. So the correct understanding is that suffering is not exactly a result of God’s anger but is a consequence of our own past karma. And when we understand this then we become careful to do better karma in future.
So God’s anger is not directly involved in this. The system of karma works under the supervision of the various representatives of Krishna and the law of karma in that sense is of course under the overall sanction of the Lord but it is not expressive of any particular vindictiveness or revenge or anger from God. And we should focus primarily on changing our karma by harmonizing our actions with the eternal principles that are given in the Bhagavad Gita.
And there are specific exceptional situations when a person’s suffering may be a result of God’s anger and that is when such a person offends a devotee. So in the Chaitanya Charitamrit or in the Srimad Bhagavatam there are incidents when a person very malevolently with an evil and envious intention, desires and endeavors to blaspheme or hurt a devotee. At that time the Lord may personally intervene to punish the offender.
But these situations are exceptional and we don’t have to go into a hyper-imaginative zone where if we are suffering in any way that it is because of the offense to a particular Vaishnava. Because even if it is because of an offense to a Vaishnava ultimately what do we have to do? We have to reform our actions. So the primary focus needs to be not on that God is angry with me but that actually God is sorry that I am suffering and God doesn’t want me to suffer and He has guided me about how I need to change to be able to become free from suffering and if I try to change that way He will help me along the way in changing.
So if a child walks off or jumps from a 10 story building and falls down is the father angry with the child? Is the child fallen down and broken in his head? The father is more concerned primarily and he saw that the child is suffering and what the child needs to do is that understand that there is a law of gravity and that he should not just walk off the 10 story building like that. So more important in that situation than the specific anger of the father is the lesson that is to be learned by the child. Similarly law of karma is not at all an expression of God’s anger.
It is a mechanism for our individual education and it is not that Krishna is malevolently expressing His anger through our sufferings but rather we by choosing to go away from Krishna are bringing suffering upon ourselves and these situations when sufferings come upon our lives can act as reality checks when the painkillers and anesthesias of material enjoyment which hide the miserable nature of material existence are temporarily removed and without the painkillers and anesthesias we can see the real condition of material existence in its naked and harsh reality and that can inspire us to turn towards Krishna wholeheartedly and taken from a devotional perspective sometimes misery becomes the impetus for taking shelter of Krishna in a wholehearted way in an exceptional situation where a devotee is very sincere and then the devotee suffers adversity then adversity may well be the special mercy of Krishna for bringing the devotee closer to Him Lord Krishna tells Maharaja Yudhisthira that to that person whom I show special mercy, I attract that person to myself by creating circumstances in His life where everybody else rejects Him because of His misery and adversity that He is going through so it is not that Krishna is creating some special suffering because of His own agendas basically that person’s karma is being used in a general case, unless that person is a very exalted, advanced, pure devotee for most of our seekers it is our own karma that Krishna allows to come in our way that will inspire and impel us to turn towards Krishna so in this case, suffering far from being an expression of anger of Krishna can be an expression of the mercy of Krishna so to conclude essentially a devotee is always focused on how can I serve Krishna so even if it be the case that Krishna is angry with me, and most of the cases when we are suffering, it is not that Krishna is angry with me as I said, most often it is our own karma coming upon us because of our violating the impartial immeasurable laws of karma but even in the exceptional case when we have offended some devotee and have led to have been led towards the reactions then also the focus is not on Krishna but on our reformation so if we have a focus, Krishna whatever situation I am put in, I want to serve you please guide me how I can serve you and please give me the strength to serve you accordingly then we will find that far from Krishna being angry with us, Krishna is ever ready for us waiting right in our hearts to guide and empower us to embark on the course that will lead us to the ultimate happiness