“If you think there is really a god then why do evil things happen?” (Someone recently posed this question on Myspace.com and I would like to reply)

This is a question that has long troubled people. Why is life filled with so much pain and hardship and suffering when everything has been created by an omniscient and benevolent God?

Think about the kind of world that there would be if no one ever died, if there were no poisonous snakes, insects or dangerous bacteria, if no creature preyed upon another creature or if nothing ever decayed. There are some religious sects distributing literature which shows a world that would supposedly exist after the establishment of God’s kingdom, and you see drawings of lions and lambs happily grazing in the same field while wholesome looking families are holding hands nearby. This is not what God has planned for humanity, it is not at all the way the world is like or will ever be like.

If a cat destroys a nest of young robins, we can’t say that it is an evil act. It is the nature of the cat to prey upon small creatures. Similarly, humans are not all saints. All humans are a mixed bag of “good” and “bad” tendencies. Some people manage to control their basic instincts and learn to treat others around them with kindness and understanding. Some people are not able to do this, and hence there is conflict in our human society. At times, people with lesser developed moral stature prevail and crush others beneath them, and at other times such injustices are righted. Life is a back-and-forth fight of opposing tendencies. It has been going on since time immemorial and will continue in the future.

Yoga philosophers explain this more broadly saying that in nature there are two basic tendencies: one force (Vidya Maya) pulls all things towards the nucleus of the cosmos (God) and another force (Avidya Maya) pushes them away from the nucleus. Roughly speaking the force which pulls us towards the nucleus is responsible for “good” and the force which takes us away from the nucleus is “bad” but both are an integral part of nature.

The struggle and interplay of these two tendencies is responsible for the kind of world we live in. Now the question still remains, why did God create this kind of world? There is no logical answer to this question, but where scientists and intellectuals have to keep mum, simple minded religious devotees have an answer. They say, “Because the Lord loves drama.”

Wouldn’t it be rather boring for you, and for everyone else, if your favorite baseball or football team won every game, every year? Would there be any kind of suspense or action to savor?

View the cosmos from this perspective and you will be able to accept the imperfection and strife that exists, side-by-side with all the good things that make up this world.