Question: I like to believe that God exists, but sometimes things happen in my life which make me believe otherwise. Please help me.
Answer by Romapada Swami: Life is full of experiences and challenges which test our faith and bear potential to strengthen it. For doubt to arise as you describe is not uncommon. But it is resolvable by reflecting upon the conception of God expressed in Bhagavad-gita, which will likely result in an adjustment of what conception of God we presently ascribe to.
Here is one beginning point of contemplation: Being transcendental and absolute, God is situated above our limited differentiation of good and bad, arrived at by worldly estimation. For example in Bhagavad-gita, Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, describes Himself as the well-wishing friend of all living entities, reciprocating with them according to their approach to Him. He is all-benevolent, and He is omniscient, knowing past, present, and future perfectly well.
Sometimes things happen in our lives which we cannot see the good in; we cannot see how God could be there, or feel His support. But we lack His vantage point, as much as a child is unable to hold the big picture and see from the matured angle of vision of the parent. The mother and father are always keeping the child’s best interest at heart, acting not only for the child’s immediate well being, but for his or her long-term benefit as well. The child may not understand, or even think the parent is mean, doesn’t love them, etc, but it’s only because the child cannot see what the parent sees (at least in the case of a truly loving parent).
And so it is with us; we are unable to see from God’s higher perspective how everything that happens and doesn’t happen in our lives is for our ultimate good.
That ultimate good is on the basis of the spiritual conception. We are spirit soul, part and parcel of Krishna. We are not the body or mind. Our constitutional nature is to eternally serve God, Krishna, in full knowledge and bliss. Having forgotten our real nature, we have come to this material world – a realm God has created to reciprocate with our desire to try to enjoy separately from Him, AND to reform our desire to return back home to Him in the spiritual world. Toward that end, Krishna has enacted the law of the karma in this material world. Thus things happen in our lives which are the reactions of our own past actions.
Again we can look to the example of dynamics between a loving parent and their child. In order to guide the child on the most beneficial path, the parent will reciprocate with the various behaviors of the child, teaching him or her that every choice, positive or negative, brings a corresponding consequence, positive or negative. Similarly, Krishna allows us to experience the reactions of our past actions in order to guide our present choices on the path back to our spiritual existence of eternality, knowledge and bliss in loving service to Him. Remembering this, we can find Krishna, God, existing, benevolently, in every experience of life.
