Why does Krishna sanction people’s doing bad karma – why doesn’t he just control their free will?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
If Kṛṣṇa is supreme, why does He sanction things? Why can’t He control our minds so that we don’t suffer or do bad karma? Actually, this is the very meaning of free will. Free will means that there has to be a capacity to choose. And why is free will necessary? Free will is necessary for the experience of love.
If a boy places a gun at a girl and says, love me or I’ll kill you, that’s not love. So, there is freedom which Kṛṣṇa gives us. Now, we do not have absolute freedom.
We do have finite freedom. And the amount of freedom that we have depends also on the past karma that we have. So, based on our past karma, we get certain resources.
And those resources, we can use properly or we can use improperly. Say, for example, by past karma, some person becomes an ordinary citizen of a country. By past karma, some person becomes the head of state of a country.
Now, so, relatively speaking, the scope of control that ordinary citizen has may be less than what the head of state has. But, how they use it is up to each of them. So, now, if somebody who by their past good karma has got a lot of influence and they abuse it, then they can cause a lot of trouble.
Now, they are allowed to do that because by their past karma, they have become entitled to that level of power. So, we all have free will and along with the free will, our free will is never taken away from us. But by our choices, the kind of actions that we do, the scope of our free will is sometimes increased and sometimes decreased.
So, when Kṛṣṇa gives us free will, the purpose is so that we can we can ultimately direct it towards Him. And we can learn to love Him. And it is in loving Him that we will find lasting happiness.
Without free will, we will just stand to live like robots. Sometimes parents and the children children don’t obey them, children do something which is troublesome, the parents may get irritated. But how many parents would want to replace their child with a robot? You know, I will get a robot.
It would perfectly do whatever I want it to do. But where would we love out there? So, when there is consciousness, there is free will and free will means that there has to be some scope for misusing the free will. So, Kṛṣṇa, He He gives us free will and He gives us influence of how much we can, how we can, to what extent we can use that free will based on our karmas.
So, that’s that. God is all good, but a part of His goodness is also that He has given us free will. Sometimes people ask, how can there be evil in this world if God is good? Or why would God make people who are inclined to evil if God is all good? Actually, it is not that people are inclined to evil.
It is rather that this world is itself a place where we have multiple options. And based on our past conditionings, based on our present culture, we are prompted towards certain choices. We always have free will, but certain choices become easier and some choices become more difficult based on our conditioning and our culture.
Some people, they misuse their free will. That is simply the way that misuse of free will is a possible consequence of the very presence of free will. But the presence of free will is for the reciprocation of love.
And Krishna, if he had removed the free will, then we would be robots. Krishna gives us the free will and He gives us the knowledge of how to use the free will. There are wisdom traditions all over the world.
God has Himself revealed Himself through different traditions at different times. And He is there as the voice of conscience in everyone. And through it all, He gives guidance.
And as we have the opportunity to use our free will properly, the more we use it properly, the more the habit of using properly becomes better, becomes ingrained. So, it is not that Krishna is responsible for the misuse of our free will. Krishna has given that facility so that we can use it properly and we can become happy by that.
When I was in Melbourne last year, a person asked a question. In this world, if God wants us to do good, why are there so many bad things? Why are the bad options so many and the right options so few? So, I explained, that’s how it always is in any multiple choice exam. Isn’t it? That’s how it always is.
In any multiple choice exam, there will be five options, four wrong, one right. So, like that, actually speaking, in this world, there are possibilities for misuse of free will. But if we use our free will properly, there is happiness.
And if we use our free will properly, it is possible only when there is the reality of free will. And that’s how the happiness can be experienced. So, Krishna sanctions some people to misuse their free will because they have done the karma in the past but if they misuse their free will now, they will get the consequences of that in future.
So, if…