Bhagavagd Gita - Session 29- Track 2909

…meaning there by: man can make mistakes, God can never make mistakes. This is one of the distinctions. As a result if there is evil in this world, evil can be result only of man’s actions, but evil cannot be traced to the Divine. God cannot be responsible for evil. You have to explain the world in such a way that God does not become responsible for anything that is wrong in the world, because God is God; He is perfect, supreme, no blemish in Him. Now, these statements are correct statements and yet…now, you see God, according to this view is the creator of the world, not necessarily ‘manifester’ of the world, He is the creator of the world: there is a difference between ‘manifester’ of the world and ‘creator’ of the world. According to this view, God is not the ‘manifester’ of the world. God is not like the spider: God is like the bird who makes the nest out of the materials which are available, but makes the nest. So, according to this view, God is the creator but not the manifester. God is so different that this world, how can it be the manifestation of God! this world of dirt and mud and all kinds of conflicts and all kinds of evils. God is the ‘creator,; He has put together many materials: what is good in it is because of divine governance, divine creation; whatever is evil is because of nature of matter itself is such; what can you do! It is not God’s fault. Whatever is wrong in this world is because of the very nature of matter is like that: God has done His very best whatever out of whatever is available. If there is something wrong in the world, it is because man is such a stupid, such a wicked, such an evil person, therefore whatever evil is there is because of man’s nature, not because of God. It is true however that God is very kind, He is doing is very best, all best things manifest on God. So what He does is He is trying to put an order upon this world: this matter and this man, these are the two elements in the world; world is only consisted of two things: matter and man. Matter is dirty by itself and man is capable of error and sin; therefore all that is disorderly, all that is wrong, all that is evil is due to man and matter. God has created in the sense that He has put them all together and having put them together puts an order on them. Now, this order He has imposed upon these two. So whatever order you find in the world is due to God, but the rest only man and matter are responsible for it: there is a schism between man and God; schism between world and God. There is a gulf between the two.

Now, this order which is put on the world and on man is what is called “The Law”. All order is due to The Law. So, you might say that God has put a Law upon the world and upon man: this Law is the ‘Divine Law’; therefore this ‘Law’ is the ‘Law of Justice’: God is ‘just’. And this Law, if broken is unjust, all injustice arise when this law is broken: all the evil is nothing but breaking of the Law of God. Therefore God, whenever there is breaking of the Law, intervenes and puts you into the just-ness; that implies that God punishes you. So God as ‘Judge’ and God as a ‘Punisher’, these two concepts are derived from what is called ‘Deistic’ concept of God.

Now, most of the people who have studied different concepts of God, they find great justification in this concept and yet some feel extremely uncomfortable. Why has He created this kind of world? Even if matter is what it is, even if man is what it is, if He is really supreme, can’t He rub out the dirt of the world? What is this order that He has placed here in this world, in which this disorder continuously goes on? So, this question is not answered by the ‘Deistic’ concept. Why has He created this world in which man can commit so much of an error? Can’t He enlighten him so well; if He is really supreme can’t He enlighten him, so he does not commit any error at all? Instead of judging and all that sort of thing, why this cumbersome process? If He is really supreme, why does He not do this? These two questions are unanswerable. Even though many people tried to make somersaults in answering these questions, those who are ‘Deists’, they tried to answer these questions, but ultimately these two questions remained unanswered, if you rightly, impartially examine these questions. If God is supreme, even if He has created an order, why has He created such an order in which disorder continues to go on? Why not complete order? Why not that kind of world? What is the justification of it? Even if you say that nature of matter is itself dirty, what can He do, He has done His best! What is this supremacy? Why can’t He mirror out and polish it so well? Is this so important as that? And why can’t He enlighten these individuals, men, so well that they really do the right thing all the time? Why is this judge’s judgement whether he will do right or wrong? He knows that these individuals, poor human beings are so incomplete, imperfect, ignorant, having known that they are ignorant why should you punish them if they do wrong? It is natural that they are imperfect if they are so ignorant, doing wrong things would be natural; if it is natural why do you want to punish it? What is this kind of system that God has created that when something naturally happens, you still punish! Child naturally would like to see television: you have a television, then you say to the child, ‘now, don’t see the television’; it only means that you are not like God, omnipotent, so that you will also give such an inspiration to the child at the right moment only he will see the television and at the wrong moment he will not. But this method of punishing the child is very wrong. Even educated parents today believe that punishment is not the right method of educating the children. So, that which is not right even for an educated parent, would it not be more right for God himself, If he is a real educator, a true inspirer, true merciful, then why this system? This was the argument of Buddha against ‘Deism’.