"Man's quarrel with God - I want to know WHY!": in that, all of modern man is like the Old Testament Patriarch Job, who was stricken down as the result of a divine wager between God and Satan. His wife told him, "Curse God and die"; his friend told him his misfortunes were due one sin or another. Job sat on his dungheap and sued God to the universal courts of Justice: "I want to know why". The Lord answered from the whirlwind, "Where wast thou on the day of Creation"... and so the endless story of man and God and dialogue continues from generation to generation. Job, who has been holding forth on matters he knows naught about, repents in dust and ashes. His faith is vindicated, and God restores all his former blessings to him. Job's faith in God is vindicated, even though he courageously quarrels with God.
A likely story? Maybe. It is story that contains many archetypes of the human thought about the Divine in the West. Suffering and evil are the mystery of the human condition, and say nothing about God. God is above and beyond man, perfection, immutable, eternal, silent majesty, irreproachable. Out of the perfection of the First Cause, the Pure Being that contains no impurity, man receives an answer. God, infinite Good, made the world. Sin entered the world throught the action of man. Man experiences the consequences of sin. God is just, man is a miserable creature meriting his just punishments.
God. Divine dispenser of boon, prayer, miracle, materialization. God, Eternal justice and mercy. Theology and Philosophy of God turn God into ultimate being, ultimate perfection, ultimate purity. Eliminating all the varied content of human existence, the philosophers and theologians arrive at something called Highest Good, pure being. This is a paradox for created beings (Man) who are not the supreme fulness of pure being. God, pure being, is immutable, without change forever, omnipotent, infinite, eternal, One. Any divine incarnation would be unapproachable, irreproachable and utterly other to everyday human existence. This is the God of the Philosophers.
These five important points, along with the God of Job, and the God of the philosphers form a not-unreasoble foundation for controversy about how God SHOULD behave when a divine incarnation enters history.... like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Rama, Zoroastrer, and, perhaps, prophetic leaders like Moses, Isaiah, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa.
Central to this controversy is the perennial question of Good and Evil. Do they exist? Is the law of Karma binding for one ane all? Are one or another of Godmen, Avatars, Divine Incarnations outside the universal laws of cause and effect, their acts beyond being categorised as good or evil? What, when, Jesus took a rope and fashioned a whip out of it and drove the moneychangers out of the temple? Was ths act good? Was Jesus bound by the laws of karma for each moneylender's table and cash he tipped over? What of Krishna and Sisipula? When Sisipula had reached the limits of insults to Krishna the Sudarsan Chakra appeared and took off his head? Was this an evil act? Are Godmen and women, Avatars and Divine incarnations free from the dichotomy of judgement by humans? Are they bound, are they free? By what criteria shall you assess them?
