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Many questions, few answers

From the Bhakti List Archives

surfing • August 4, 1998 


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): 

" Â…..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