Wicked, good or indifferent world?

The world created by God cannot but be good and beautiful. The very first book of the Bible, Genesis says: “God saw everything that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen 1.31). So how can the world become bad? It is human being who misuses the world and makes it to appear to be bad.

The world is not God because there are imperfections in it, in spite of its beauty and grandeur. It is a wonderful system having its own inbuilt laws which we go on discovering and have not succeeded in exhausting. If I were to go against it I only have to regret e.g., if I forget the law of gravity and fall from a multi-storeyed building I am bound to break my neck unless something else intervenes to counteract the law of gravity.

So wisdom consists in respecting these laws and harnessing them for our human growth and progress. It is to be at the same time, as our sages have said, to be in rta (rhythm) with the whole universe, the whole of reality.

What really destroys this world and makes it ugly is human greed and uncontrolled exploitation by entrepreneurs who care little for ecology or the future of humanity. All of us should be aware of the simple things of our life where we can avoid selfishness and self-seeking e.g not buying unnecessary things and heaping them, wasting food when many in the world are starving, ising water judiciously and not wasting it. There is a meaning in what Mahatma Gandhi had specified in his own wisdom: to minimise one’s needs and buy swadeshi goods so that our own industries and those close to our own place are benefitted.

God has given us the intelligence to use it for the good of all, to progress, to beautify brute matter and give it a newer meaning, make it human. This is what any creative artist does, turning out beautiful pictures, paintings, sculptures, architectural marvels etc. So why should we blame the creator for what we find in nature? God has left many things for the human being to work and improve but instead he only mismanages and spoils it and that is indeed to make the world bad what was good in itself.

Besides this, in our social life too we should learn to be honest in our dealings with others. This would create a just and beautiful human society. The book of Sirach recommends “Of the following things do not be ashamed, and do not let partiality lead you to sin...of keeping accounts with a partner or with travelling companions, and of dividing the inheritance of friends; of accuracy with scales and weights, and of acquiring much or little...” (Sirach 42.1+3-4). So you see who makes the world good or bad.