"What If God Were Innocent?"

When faced with pain, the first thing we do is find who to blame. People and superior beings are the most common targets. Sometimes it's easier to blame some sort of God because we can accuse it of anything and everything, and that God can't defend himself back. There are many times we simply don't understand why things happen. They catch us unprepared to handle a tough situation.

"Why, God? Why did this happen to me if I'm a good person?", some ask. We usually don't find an answer. This makes dealing with pain even harder.

Yesterday we had the pleasure to meet the Sri Lankan poet, Indran Amithanayagam. He read a poem from his book, "The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems". Not only did he recite beautifully, an excerpt from his poem kept floating in my head for the rest of the day:

"but what if the ocean /were innocent, /the plate tectonics, /innocent, what if God/were innocent?" (Amithanayagam).

Listening to this made me shiver because, if the ocean, the plate tectonics and God are all innocent, then who's there to blame? I'm tired of listening to people saying, "God knows what he's doing", or, "everything happens for a reason". The first answer I find not aggravating comes from Epictetus' The Handbook. In the thirty-first section he mentions: "For in this way you will never blame the gods or accuse them of neglecting you. And this piety is impossible unless you detach the good and the bad from what is not up to us and attach it exclusively to what is up to us, because if you think that any of what is to up to us is good or bad, then when you fail to get what you want and fall into what you do not want, you will be bound to blame and hate those who cause this (Section 31)."

According to this, the best way to overcome pain and suffering, is by understanding there are things we can't control. We have to detach completely to what is not up to us, because that way, if something happens, we are not affected by it.

A logical answer, but at the same time, I don't agree with it. Detaching from the things that are not up to us includes understanding relatives will eventually die. Since we can't control death, and if we followed Epictetus' teachings, we would have to detach from those people, creating a more distant relationship.

What's the purpose of living if we have nothing to lose? We have to decide if happiness is worth the risk of losing it. If you decide to take the risk, I'm afraid there is no answer to why bad things will happen to you.