God means many things to different people. So, it is very difficult to discuss it, unless everyone involved is on the same plane of definition. But who is God?
Largely, God is believed to be the entity which created this universe. The believers have created God and the same people have created evil. When discussing the personality of God, he is always considered good. So, his counter power, automatically dons the hat of evil and bad.
To clarify that, good and bad are attributes of deeds and God is not an attribute. So, God cannot be called as the epitome of goodness and fairness and evil as the opposite. God is a field, a dimension which does not have entity, a bundle of energy and we can say, God is the source of all creation.
In order to debate this, we need to understand how we perceive good and bad, wrong and right and holy and evil.
Let us take a scenario to analyze this. A thief robs a house and starts running as soon as the cops arrive. The cop begins to chase him. A little later, the thief reaches a temple, and hides there. The cop misses him and heads to another temple. They both pray. The thief makes a sincere prayer that he should not get caught. The cop makes another sincere prayer, that he becomes able to catch the thief.
Now, whose prayer will God answer? Both have made sincere prayers. Can God grant both their prayers? That will become a paradox then.
Now, let us extend the scenario a little. The thief had stolen in order to help some poor people. Now whose prayer will God answer? Does God see the deeds committed by a person, or the person himself? This allows us to understand that, good and bad lie in the same spectrum, just like how truth and lies fall in the same axis. What is good for one is bad for another, which makes it a very relative thing. There is no good and bad in this world. All actions are the same. Only the consequences are good and bad. Drinking alcohol is not bad. The consequence of drinking alcohol and harming the body is bad. Cheating on a partner is not bad. The consequence, which is hurting and snatching away the happiness from the other, is bad. And thus it goes.
I’ll throw another scenario. A young girl needs money to watch a movie, and steals it from her mother’s purse. The mother will never notice it, as it is an insignificant amount for her. The mother never gets to know, hence she is not hurt and the girl feels she did not do anything wrong, and is not guilty. No one knows that the money has been stolen. Everyone is happy. Is this whole act good or bad? One can argue that concealing is wrong. But who says so? Then, I say that concealing that pimple on a face and making others believe that one has clear skin, is also wrong! Thus, without a consequence we cannot define good or bad.
Similarly, holy and evil is also a very dual concept. If, Holy is all those things done in the name, memory and dedication to God, it gives God, an invisible manual, describing all that he is and that he is not. And all that he is not becomes the Devil. And if God and a counterpart exist, it defies the belief that God is omnipotent. And if he is omnipotent, the Devil is indeed a part of him.
Or is it because the existence of one thing also means its opposite exists? Or is it all about presence and absence? In this world, there are events which happen according to our will and those according to nature/power/God; some in our control and some that are not. Pleasurable, happy, joyful and peaceful actions and events like, birth, good fortune, happy times, luck, truth, peace of mind, laughter, moderate and timely rains and prayers for example are attributed to God and goodness. While death, misery, failure, pain, draught, cyclone and calamities, for example, is attributed to bad and evil.
So, with this clear distinction of preferences and differences, it is us who have given God and the Devil, their own unique form. While this remains an eternal debate, the existence of God and Devil is a very religion specific belief system making it a hard one to generalize.
And like it is said, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it is really up to each one of us to see, spot and recognize the God and the Devil in and around us in order to make life a blissful experience.
Fri February 19, 2010, 17:26:24