If God loves us, why do faithful people suffer while those who reject Him succeed? If prayer doesn’t guarantee safety or health, what is the purpose of praying? I genuinely struggle with this.

 Everyone suffers, and many pious people have better lives than impious people.There are certainly atheists who are wealthy, successful and apparently quite content with their lives, and there is no need to pretend otherwise. But what exactly do we mean by success? A billionaire may be extraordinarily successful in material terms, but he is no more immune to old age, disease, death, family problems, anxiety or the fear of losing what he has than anyone else. In fact, the more we have, the more we may have to worry about losing. The poor man may worry about losing the little he has; the billionaire may worry about losing the enormous amount he has. The circumstances are very different, but the underlying anxiety of attachment can be much the same.

And then there are those who obtain wealth and power through very sinful activities. They may have the money, the girls and everything else that many people desire, but a criminal life comes with its own anxieties: betrayal, arrest, someone informing on you, a rival taking over, or simply the fear of losing everything you have gained. A pious, law-abiding person may have far less materially and yet enjoy something that money cannot buy, peace of mind.

It can be confusing if we accept Abrahamic concepts of life and the soul. In religious thought, the idea that we are created at birth and live only one life is relatively new. In the older tradition of Sanatan Dharma the soul is described as eternally existing, never being created or destroyed, and the soul transmigrates from one body to another according to desires and activities. This then allows for reincarnation and karma to play out over repeated lifetimes until one is free from the cycle of birth and death.

This explains the amount of happiness and distress a person experiences in life. It’s not random, it’s the result of previous activities and those results are given over many lives. Since in each life we perform new activities, those are factored in to what is already existing. Some reactions lie dormant for some time, some have germinated, and some have fructified.

While we reap what we sow, some plants take longer than others to bear fruit. So it is with karma. Not everything happens in one life. In fact, reactions seldom happen in the same life, because this life is already set by our previous lives so that has to play out first. What is flexible is our response to the situations we meet with.

As for praying for safely and health, if the result was guaranteed then no one would ever die or get sick. That’s not how this world is designed. That’s how the spiritual world is designed, and the difficulties in this world are to encourage us to go to that world where there are no difficulties. But we cannot go to the spiritual world unless we give up material desires and develop devotion for the Lord. Without fulfilling those conditions we won’t fit in there.

Assuming prayers can change aspects in our life implies that there are two forces at work. One is the actions of the material world, and the other is the Lord Himself. This is accurate. Material nature acts under the direction of the Lord and is impartial. It doesn’t discriminate between nice guy and nasty guy. It simply gives reactions to actions, so nice actions result in nice reactions and nasty actions result in nasty reactions, all woven into karma spread over many lives.

Good legal systems try for this impartiality. “Justice is blind” means that each case is decided impartially on its merits. So that is material nature, giving results impartially.

But there is always an executive authority who can grant a pardon after the courts have given their verdict and all appeals are exhausted.

A clemency petition to the relevant authority, doesn’t guarantee overturning a sentence, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. If we have something the relevant authority wants then our position becomes stronger.

God only wants one thing from us, our love and devotion. Please note that He doesn’t need it, but He wants it because it’s what’s best for us. The paradox is that when it’s very developed the devotee doesn’t want to trouble the Lord with his own personal desires.

As all surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly. Bhagavad Gita 4.11

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