“Gasp! Wavering faith in God… how dare you! Take back that outrageous claim lest we should anger God or even worse, fall out of favor with Him. Gasp! GASP!”
The preconditioned part in me has a panic attack at the mere suggestion of a hypothetical disloyalty to God on account of thy seeking. And understandably so, for here I am trying to shake the foundation of my belief system while still standing on it.
But truth be told, I have an absolute and phenomenal belief in God. It is so absolute and so phenomenal that it really shouldn’t require any kind of qualifiers. So let me rephrase that – I believe in God.
I have felt the Universal energy’s guiding presence many a time in my life, if not in the life-altering, “OMG-it’s-a-miracle”, chicken soup for soul kind of way, then at least as quirky, pint-sized mysteries wrapped in amusement and reassurance.
- Like this one time when my home phone receive a random call that stopped after the first ring, piquing my curiosity well enough to draw me out of the kitchen in search of the handset only to find that, I had accidentally left the safety gate open and my wobbly, less-than-a-year-old had quietly crawled halfway up the stairs and was about to take a tumble. Thanks to the call from black hole, I was able to avoid what would have turned into a stressful afternoon filled with mommy guilt and baby tears. Interestingly, there was no missed/received call on the phone display and never before and never since had my phone done that phantom call trick, so there is no way I could pin this on a technical glitch.
- Once, I had to pick up my spouse at the Amtrak station in Ann Arbor very late in the evening. But five minutes into the drive with my GPS messed up and no signal on the cell phone, I found myself jouncing on a pitch-dark, gravelly side road wondering where I might have taken the wrong turn. Long story short, I was driving freestyle for 20 minutes getting on and off interstates without knowing if I was even driving in the right direction, guesstimating my way around, and letting the traffic lights make the decisions for me by taking only those roads with uninterrupted green lights. Coming to terms with the fact that I was officially lost a good while ago and batshit scared about the prospect of having to ask for directions in what looked like a no man’s land, I came up to the first stop sign in that entire adventure trip, or was rather led up to a stop sign, half-dazed and exhausted only to see another sign board next to it with an arrow that said ‘Amtrak’.
You say ‘quite interesting’. I say ‘quirkily reassuring’. But we both agree it’s pretty awesome.
Then from where comes the question of disbelief, mistrust, and wavering faith?
Well, I take a look at my life and there is abundance of love; there is downpour of blessings from the floodgates of heaven; undoubtedly, there is green pastures, still waters, and dandelions floating about. Then I turn around and look out my window, I see the other side of reality manifested in people’s lives as tragedies, hardships, crimes, and pain, worst of which is the unthinkable horrors that little children are forced to endure at the hands of vile humans.
Ask any religious zealot why there is suffering in this world and half of them would candidly agree that there is no logical answer, while the rest would wield the scripture with tenacity and talk about trials in life as hidden lessons, test of will or a means to a greater good. A part of me is willing to accept these explanations for grownups, because honestly, it is easier that way; but I could never wrap my head around the sufferings of children no matter which way it is sliced and diced.
When a man sees tribulations, he can choose to disown God or endure it for the sake of the lessons behind it; but when a child is put through hardship, he perceives only pain and betrayal since his moral compass is not yet set to true north. Then for whose sake are the trials that a child is forced to go through?
I came across a similar question from a man about his granddaughter who has a medical condition, in the FAQ: Faith, Destiny, and Free Choice section of www.chabad.org, a website I frequent for my moral dilemmas. After honestly accepting that there is no good answer, the rabbi added the following:
“An exactly opposite scenario from your granddaughter can exist: if little Adolph Hitler, or any person that has done truly horrible things, had been killed in an auto accident at two years old, how many tears would have been shed at the ‘unjust loss of this innocent babe’?”
Please take a second to let that sink in.
Yes, it flies right over my head too. I am not clear about the context in which the good rabbi made this statement, but am I to infer that when a child brutally suffers at the hands of a pedophile or is tragically killed in an accident, it is actually the Universe interfering in order to prevent the child from growing up into an even worse sinner? Or is it some kind of a twisted lesson for his parents and society to learn from the tragedy in order to make the world a better place, which means the child was nothing more than a scapegoat?
This is where I struggle with my faith. I trust in God in relation to my life; I even have faith in His intentions for humanity in general, but in situations like these my faith goes off-centered.
How can a person’s faith on God/Higher Consciousness whose very nature is said to be love, be anything but wavering when that same entity also allows suffering in innocent beings? How is one supposed to progress on spiritual path where the quieting of the mind, transcending of the ego, and experiencing of oneness is all in relation to an Absolute Consciousness which appears to be less than perfect.
Herein lies the rub.
But if I were to play God’s advocate, maybe there really is no answer to such questions because my edged mind is not yet ready to understand an edgeless God.
Maybe Consciousness is not supposed to be perfect because this higher entity is not like the traditional definition of God, where every action and reaction has been accounted for, where every event that has and will happen has been predetermined. Maybe this Consciousness is rather just our collective consciousness that is constantly recalculating and evolving based on our ability to transcend or descend.
So maybe all I can and should do for now is push through my wavering faith, quiet the thoughts, and settle into that deep stillness where, who knows someday I might even find an answer.
Until that happens, as a fine writer once said,
“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.”
C.S. Lewis
