One point about the world that is often brought into the debate about whether God exists or not is suffering. What sort of God would watch as his creation rips itself apart with violence? What kind of God would let his followers die of pain?
The people who ask this question are often the ones that take the metaphorical version of religion – mythology – to be all there is. They imagine God to be some kind of “guy” (a big huge, all-pervading guy, but a guy nevertheless) sitting somewhere up in heaven passing judgment on all that exists in this world. They ask what he could be thinking when he unleashes terrible trauma upon them. Some imagine him taking joy in it all. As someone recently said to me on Twitter, “God, if he exists, is a sadist bastard.”
The error in this is obvious. Human beings have a bloated idea of their own importance. And our imagination assigns human characteristics to everything. So a storm becomes cruel, an earthquake becomes murderous, a wild animal is seen as a devious monster. This is mythology — a subjective way of looking at the universe. So God, according to this view, becomes something with human proportions, human attitudes, human tendencies, and even a human appearance.
More importantly though, I think what makes people complain about suffering is the belief that they are somehow the centre of the universe. It is the same belief that people had back when they thought that the Earth was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around them. It is the same belief that caused Socrates to drink poison and the findings of Galileo to be challenged. They chose to look at the big picture. But people simply refuse to come to terms with the fact that they are only a small piece of a puzzle that is far greater than them.
Look around and you will find that everything suffers. The breakfast you had this morning caused some life form – either vegetable or animal – to die. Millions of germs die every time you sneeze. You hurt grass every time you walk on it. Animals either kill and eat each other, or they die of starvation. It is suffering both ways. Life progresses by feeding on itself — science calls it the food chain. That is the way the world works. You are not only suffering, you are also causing an equal amount of “suffering” to the world around you.
In fact, if you pay it even a little thought, you may conclude that this is the only way the world can work. If we use a machine metaphor for the world, we find that suffering is merely our subjective view of friction. No machine can work without friction. Things need to rub against each other, corrode each other, in order for any machine to work. Without friction, there would be no machine.
People who ask, “Why can’t all the suffering just go away? Why can’t we all just live in peace?” are wishful thinkers. They don’t realise that in order for the world to even exist, someone or the other must suffer. What we call suffering is subjective. We only get sentimental about it because it happens to us, or to creatures we include in our idea of “us”.
Oddly enough, on the human level suffering serves to enhance the imagination. It makes man aware of his smallness and helplessness. It teaches him that he doesn’t matter as much as he thought he did. It makes him humble. It seems to say, “You are no different from that baby deer in the forest who was mauled to death by ravenous lions yesterday on National Geographic. It happens to everyone and everything. Get used to it!”
A child that hates school but is made to go anyway suffers. A guy who has to put up with a sour boss in office suffers. Someone on a deathbed waiting to die of a painful cancer suffers. It is all the same thing. Some suffer more, some less. The difference is of degree, not of kind.
Interestingly, man is the only animal that can work through suffering. While a crippling disease will truly “cripple” an animal, history is full of examples of human beings who made the world a better place in spite of their own personal suffering.
The scientist Stephen Hawking is paralysed from head to toe. The great Helen Keller was deaf, mute AND blind (my imagination fails when I try to put myself in her shoes). Beethoven was deaf (and he was a musician). These people not only did things, they actually did them better than others.
Reason? They didn’t allow their suffering to drag them into selfishness. They didn’t fall into the trap of thinking that someone up there is exclusively targeting them with misfortunes. They looked beyond themselves, into the world around them and decided to contribute to the betterment of the people around them.
Their suffering taught them a lesson, and they were intelligent enough to learn it.
Completely satisfied with your answering one of the questions that regularly hits my mind. Likewise, totally humbled when remembering really challenged people who had the power to give “flowers” to the world instead of grudges. But knowing myself very well, dear vimoh, allow me please to say from time to time “Why, God, why?”
Wrong way to answer that question. What do you think is the answer according to Gita and Veda?
i found quite a few readings on “Theodicy” helpful when contemplating the topic of “suffering” and “evil” from a European perspective.
Whoa.. Absolutely. Pain is the essence of life. There is so much more you learn when in pain, than when you’re bouncing in joy. Suffering makes us humble and more mature. It’s the best course in life’s lessons.
I truly cherish being suffered. Really. No, I’m not insane. Why do you think I read the whole thing and wrote a comment in agreement, eh? I enjoy suffering.
Another crap excuse for God!
You come up with yet another logical and reasonable explanation about suffering which seems right. Then why believe in God? So it concludes that God belief is like sedation drug. It gives temporary relief from mental pain even though no God is going to comedown and rescue you from suffering. People will suffer or not anyway, while your fiction God watches real-life Saas-Bahu soap.
No wonder articles like this draw strange believers like Deepti(comments) who say they like suffering. I mean most people like these can’t even comprehend in their ten lives how painful a true suffering can be.
But as usual you will put yet another spin on it. Go for it.
Don’t believe in God if you don’t want to. It’s not compulsory. But what I fail to understand in your behaviour is why you bother asking questions if you have already decided what your answer is. And if your answer to that is that you are not asking, then my question is why bother commenting? People are commenting here because they either agree, or disagree, or are curious. You seem to disagree, are definitely not open-minded, and also, at the end of the comment, ask me to go for it.
What is your point? If I had to guess, I would say you have nothing better to do right now and are just passing time. In which case, do it elsewhere. Like Wikipedia for example.
I am doing it for your own good. Trying to save you from yourself.
I think I should dilute the tone of my statements though.
For that great mission the telephone is a better medium, no? Why sully my site?
It looks like you haven’t actually answered the question that is the title of the post. At best, you have given arguments for not complaining about suffering. And also, it seems you have focused mostly on physical suffering while the real suffering is mental in nature, driven by moral and existential dilemmas.
The reason I have provided according to my understanding is that suffering exists because it is the way the world works. I have said that in the post too. Although I admit, it may not be the ultimate, absolute and definitive “reason”.
As for mental suffering, it is not possible to classify it as something separate from physical suffering. Mental suffering happens because of what happens to us physically and physical suffering affects the mind. On the other hand, purely mental suffering affects the way we do things and thus the effects of it spill over into our physical existence.
As I said, suffering is our subjective (mental) view of (physical) friction in the (physical) world.
“… suffering exists because it is the way the world works.” It cannot be doubted by anyone. It is almost like an observation, an axiom. I think it answers the question in neither a limited nor an ultimate sense.
“Mental suffering happens because of what happens to us physically and physical suffering affects the mind.” I feel you haven’t treated the issue of suffering in sufficient depth. Suffering is not physical suffering. It is more like lack of happiness, something empty inside you; or stress, or depression. These are not necessarily the result of physical suffering. People having excellent health and all the material comforts also suffer. And often, such suffering is the cause of degradation in physical health of a person.
I think i was more trying to address the possibility of a world without suffering than trying to give a definitive answer to the question about why suffering exists in the first place.
As for the mental aspect of suffering, I have already answered your question. But since you can’t see it, here is another attempt. What I am saying is that all mental suffering is rooted in a physical reason. I think you are narrowing the definition of physical suffering to disease and ailment alone. One suffers gilt because of what he did (in the physical world), one suffers stress because of what is happening in his (physical) life. Physical aspects of one’s life are never 100 percent removed from the mental one.
And then, as you said, it spills over into physicality as “degradation in health”.
Hey Vimoh,
What I say might be totally irrelevant to your current topic, but just had something to share and as I like your insights over beliefs and life, I am just goint to write my thoughts as comments here. Its ok if you dont publish this comment in your site, if it is against your policy or something
. Just wanted to know your opinion on this.
I would start with what made this thought come into my head. Few days ago one of my relatives, he is a staunchest of believers in God. He is a hindu, he has been doing loads of poojas for years. On one particular morning recently when he was going on with his shlokas and poojas, there is one shlok regarding lord narayana it seems and after he finished the chanting as he turned around or something he saw garuda sitting on the compound wall of his house (He stays in Bangalore, so I should say this is not an everyday scene or maybe anyday scene in bangalore). He was very much overwhelmed and had this unexplainable happiness in him because this had lots of hidden meanings to him which I and you might not find relevant.
This made me think, this universe is a place where in if you really believe (or not believe) in something then the world conspires to make you believe (or not believe) in your assumptions. It doesn’t matter if you believe in God, a religion, if you dont believe in God but you will always get a particular pretty good reason to believe in your beliefs (or non beliefs). Its something like, maybe our mind has some connection with the outside world.
See in science also there have been so many assumptions made to give us amazing solutions based on little facts, like if something holds for a verifiable thing we can use the same formula for something non verifiable, we put the data in the formula and determine things.
So based on the small fact which I mentioned before, I can assume many of the beliefs in the history could also be very well be true like the idol of Shri Krishna turning after being pleased by Kanakadasa’s worship. I dont know but sometimes, in some way, things happen that enforces our beliefs.
Its like the world outside becomes what we truely, firmly believe from inside. It just enforces our beliefs, though no two belief might be the same and though they do live in the same universe.
I dunno if any of my ramblings made any sense. But just felt if it might be like this. Still a bit confused though, but somehow wanting to believe this theory and it might just be that, if I firmly believe in this, it also might turn out to be true
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Thanks for the great comment Deepak. You have said what I have been harping about for ages. People believe things because they want to, and once they do, the world makes it real for them. That is the nature of the universe (God). Krishna says in the Gita that whoever worships him in whatever form, he will appear to him in that form.
The world is subjective. Human beings have this amazing ability to live inside separate versions of the same physical world. One person thinks the world is a bad place, and he sees pain and poverty everywhere, even in places where there is the appearance of plenty. Another person believes in a good world and he finds hope and happiness even in the saddest of situations.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa lived in a temple but he followed all religions. He had visions of Kali, Jesus, and Allah. All the time.
The point is that the world gives you what you ask for (this is the basis of prayer). And each of us is free to choose. One person’s experience is never applicable to another. What your relative felt was for him. It may sound like a fairytale to others, but he will know what it meant. It is always a journey one has to make oneself.
“Interestingly, man is the only animal that can work through suffering. While a crippling disease will truly “cripple” an animal, history is full of examples of human beings who made the world a better place in spite of their own personal suffering.”
I’m not an expert about animal behaviour but I guess a severely crippled animal would fight for survival too, just like us. There could even be heroes among ants who do all they can for the ant hill’s benefit. There’s a good chance isn’t it?
It’s definitely possible. I won’t deny it.
hey vijay, i recommend reading the book ‘laws of the spirit world’ by khorshed bhavnagri. you may choose to agree/disagree with its contents, none of my biz, but it would certainly give you a better insight into the matter.
and no need to bother yourself with everyone’s comments here. a pinch of ‘darn-i-care’ attitude helps too
people think of god as someone who’s meant to help them make merry and fornicate, and as soon as the extravaganza fires back, its ‘to hell with god !’
I have read quite a bit of spiritualist literature. While there is no agreement on what exactly it means being there, the idea does hold a lot of interest for me. Thanks for the book recommendation kilroy. My list grows longer.
It’s ironic how all the three examples you quote – Stephen Hawking, Beethoven, Helen Keller – are/were atheistic by varying degrees.
@Ankur:
Almost everyone is atheistic to one degree or another. Even Jesus Christ was a non-believer to the people who crucified him. The Buddha was an atheist to the Brahmins of his time.
An atheist is defined by what he denies. So while the Hawking etc might deny the presence of the God exemplified by traditional religions, they do seem to believe in the power and responsibility of man. That alone makes them a believer in my book. Like Swami Vivekananda said: he who does not believe in himself is an atheist.
We humans are nothing but animals,social animals. there is suffering even in the animal world. we can see so much on discovery and animal planet.the difference is that we can communicate and think that we are intelligent.we are important because we think we are the superior species of all and that is the main reason for all our sufferings.we are constantly fighting with each other on issues and non issues,we want power,food,luxury,long life,oil,money and what not.and almost everyone wants the same.suffering is because we all are asking for the same things and not even GOD can give every one everything.suffering is the other side of the coin and we need to understand the true value of happiness.desire is the root cause of suffering,but does not mean that we should give up everything we have or stop dreaming. But we should know where to stop and start giving back the society what we owe.if most people do this,one day we will write on why there is less suffering in this world.
actually we suffer because of our sin. and those sufferings can help us to make our faith stronger. God allows those sufferings to happen because if he controlled us we cannot say that he really loves us. That’s why he gives us free will.