Many questions, few answers

[Guest guest]

Most of us who are seekers have many questions for which there seems to

be no satisfactory, logicals answers. It is difficult for the intellect

to accept that a ready-made answer may not exist in a form which is

cognizable to the logical mind. An atheist for more than forty years of

his life, British author CEM Joad was rudely awakened by the mass

killings of innocents during World War II and the utter helplessness of

humanity to prevent it. Members may perhaps be interested in perusing

the following extract from his book: GOD AND EVIL:

 

Like so many other introspective persons, Joad too battled with the

enigma for which there is no satisfactory solution: the obtrusiveness of

evil and the absence of a logical explanation for its power and its

continued existence in an universe owing its origin to God, who is

omnipotent and benevolent. After arguing convincingly in the first part

of his book that every explanation to reconcile the two was bound to

fail in logic, he proceeds to state (at page 112 of his book):

 

" …..the conclusions of the intellect deny that the orthodox God of the

religious hypothesis - omnipotent and benevolent, could have been the

creator of the world; and deny it precisely because of the fact of

evil. But if the intellect denies what the heart demands, what then?

....perhaps the deadlock is a sign of, perhaps it is even a punishment

for, intellectual arrogance...The considerations which have set my mind

working again on the problems of religion are of an emotional order..the

emotions are those connected with inadequacy. The life that lacks

religion lacks, so I have come to feel, fullness and roundness, and the

desire to find that true which I have always believed to be false, to

know something of that which I have thought to be unknowable grows as

the years pass by. One is dismayed by the evil at large in the world and

in oneself, depressed and humiliated by the inadequacy of one's efforts

to cope with it, humiliated then by the inadequacy of one's own self. It

is from precisely such a feeling of humiliation that, religious writers

have often urged, the search for and need of God, take their rise. What

is more, the seeker who is inspired by such a mood may not be wholly

without hope of succeeding in his quest. For alienated by intellectual

pride God, they (the Seers) have assured us, draws nearer to those who

approach Him in humbleness of spirit."

 

Blessed indeed are those whose heart is filled with love for God and the

intellect is surrendered to him unconditionally. Strangely, having no

questions, they have all the answers!

 

Adiyen Dasan

MK Krishnaswamy