Oprah, Elie Wiesel, problem of God Evil

Oprah's interview with Elie Weisel, published in oprah.com is reproduced below. An extract, in which Wiesel reiterates his acceptance of God, inspite of his traumatic experience:

Oprah: Where are you and God with each other these days? Elie Wiesel: We still have a few problems! But even in the camps, I never divorced God. After the war, I went on praying to God. I was angry. I protested. I'm still protesting—and occasionally, I'm still angry. But it's not because of the past, but the present. When I see victims of a tragedy—and especially children—I say to God, "Don't tell me that you have nothing to do with this. You are everywhere—you are God."

If we read our Puranic stories, we notice that God took avatars (literally - came down to earth) *after* atrocities by evil tyrants had happened. In the famous Gita Slokam "*yadaa yadaa hi dharmasya glaanir bhavati*" Krishna assures only that whenever Adharma prevails over Dharma, He comes down to restore the balance in favour of Dharma. There is no explanation as to why adharma was allowed to prevail, in the first instance.
The problem baffling all genuine seekers (not those who merely question to satisfy their intelligent ego), is the obtrusiveness of evil and the absence of a logical explanation for its power and its existence in an universe that owes its origin and existence to God, who is portrayed/postulated as omnipotent and benevolent. One such seeker was British author C.E.M. Joad who was a strong believer in Atheism until about age 40; in his earlier writings, he had denied that an omnipotent God could exist because of the dominance of evil and its power to vanquish good. During World War II, a change came over him and he felt the need for the existence of a power to resist evil since, by oneself, one was powerless. He expressed his views in his new book "God and Evil". The particular events which caused this change in him were the cruel killing of five million defenseless Jewish men, women and children in gas-chambers by Nazi Germany and the many horrors of World War II including the total destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki cities with atom-bombs that killed almost the entire civilian population of the two cities.
In the first part of this book, he argues elaborately that every logical explanation to reconcile the two positions was bound to fail and then proceeds to Part II of the book commencing with the statement: ".... the conclusions of the intellect deny that the orthodox God of the religious hypothesis - omnipotent and benevolent, could have been the creator of the world; and deny it precisely because of the fact of evil. But if the intellect denies what the heart demands, what then?”

He answers: “...perhaps the deadlock is a sign of, perhaps it is even a punishment for, intellectual arrogance...The considerations which have set my mind working again on the problems of religion are of an emotional order .....the emotions are those connected with inadequacy. The life that lacks religion lacks, so I have come to feel, fullness and roundness, and the desire to find that true which I have always believed to be false, to know something of that which I have thought to be unknowable grows as the years pass by. One is dismayed by the evil at large in the world and in oneself, depressed and humiliated by the inadequacy of one's efforts to cope with it, humiliated then by the inadequacy of one's own self. It is from precisely such a feeling of humiliation that, religious writers have often urged, the search for and need of God, take their rise. What is more, the seeker who is inspired by such a mood may not be wholly without hope of succeeding in his quest. For alienated by intellectual pride, they have assured us, God draws nearer to those who approach Him in humbleness of spirit."
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From Oprah Winfrey's web-site: http://www2.oprah.com/omagazine/200011/omag_200011_elie_b.jhtml

OPRAH'S CUT WITH ELIE WIESEL

He's one of the people I most respect: Elie Wiesel. After I first read his memoir *Night* seven years ago, I was not the same—you can't be the same after hearing how Elie, at age 15, survived the horror of the Holocaust death camps. Through his eyes, we witness the depths of both human cruelty and human grace—and we're left grappling with what remains of Elie, a teenage boy caught between the two. I gain courage from his courage. The story—and especially that number, six million—numbs us: A Jew hater named Adolf Hitler rises to power in Germany, the world goes to war in 1939, and when the showdown is over six years later, the tyrant has slaughtered six million Jews. Six million. Inconceivable. We see footage of the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the gallows.Yet words like Holocaust and Auschwitz are still abstractions—seemingly impossible until we see photos of someone who was there: a Face, Eyes, Hair, Prison numbers tattooed into an arm, a real person like Elie Wiesel who, 55 years ago, made it through the atrocity.
"How could you live through the Holocaust and not be bitter?" I ask Elie. At 72, he emanates quiet strength; with his strong handgrip, it's as if he's saying, "I assure you—I am alive." We sit across from each other at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, where hundreds come to see evidence of what happened to the Jewish people. Thousands already know Elie Wiesel's name—he is a prolific writer, a professor at Boston University and an activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986—but I want him to take me back to the time when living to tell the story was the last thing that mattered to him. I wanted to know: "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?"

"What is abnormal is that I am normal," he says. "That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life—that is what is abnormal." "Why didn't you go insane?" "To this day," he says, "that is a mystery to me." and a miracle. After he was liberated from Buchenwald in 1945, he and other orphans were sent to France. There, he lived in an orphanage, then later supported himself as a tutor and choir director—and he decided that he wanted to live again. He studied literature, philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne, and in 1952 he became a reporter for a newspaper in Tel Aviv. For ten years after his release, he vowed not to speak of his experience. "I wanted to be sure that the words I was going to use about this event were the proper words," he has said.
In our time together, Elie and I talk about how it is possible that he can still believe in the sovereignty of a force bigger than himself, why he has no explanation for his survival in the death camps, and what, five decades after Auschwitz, brings him what he calls real joy.

Oprah: There may be no better person than you to speak about living with gratitude. Despite all the tragedy you've witnessed, do you still have a place inside you for gratefulness?
Elie Wiesel: Absolutely. Right after the war, I went around telling people, "Thank you just for living, for being human." And to this day, the words that come most frequently from my lips are ‘thank you’. When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

O: Does having seen the worst of humanity make you more grateful for ordinary occurrences?
EW: For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.
O: Did you ever hate your oppressors?
EW: I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying [the Bible and the Cabala] to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself.
O: On your first night in the camp, you saw babies being thrown into the flames. Can you ever forgive those who killed the children?
EW: Who am I to forgive? Only the children themselves could forgive. If I forgive, I should do it in their name. Otherwise, it is arrogant.
O: By becoming a voice for those who are suffering, are you doing what the world did not do for Jews during the Holocaust?
EW: I've gone everywhere, trying to stop so many atrocities: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia. The least I can do is show the victims that they are not alone. When I went to Cambodia, journalists asked me, "What are you doing here? This is not a Jewish tragedy." I answered, "When I needed people to come, they didn't. That's why I am here."
O: Is it our indifference and arrogance that makes us Americans feel that we are the center of the universe—that a mother's pain after losing her child in Bosnia or Nigeria isn't as important as our own pain?
EW: I wouldn't generalize. There are people in America who are so sensitive. Whenever I meet young Americans abroad, they are there to help. A doctor in New York read a quote of mine that sparked her involvement. Somebody had asked me, "What is the most important commandment in the Bible?" and I said, "Thou shalt not stand idly by." So she packed up her office and went to Macedonia—I met her there... We cannot free all the prisoners in the world or save all the victims of AIDS, but we can at least show them that we are with them.
O: You and the others in the camp were forced to march by three people who were hanged. And somebody behind you whispered, "Where is God?"
EW: A voice in me said, "God is there."
O: Where are you and God with each other these days?
EW: We still have a few problems! But even in the camps, I never divorced God. After the war, I went on praying to God. I was angry. I protested. I'm still protesting—and occasionally, I'm still angry. But it's not because of the past, but the present. When I see victims of a tragedy—and especially children—I say to God, "Don't tell me that you have nothing to do with this. You are everywhere—you are God."
O: Did you come out of the horror of the Holocaust with your ability to love intact?
EW: After my liberation, I fell in love with every girl—consecutively. But I would never dare tell a girl that I loved her, because I was timid—and afraid of rejection. I missed so many opportunities because I was afraid to say what I felt. I needed to love more than I needed to be loved. I needed to know that I could love—that after all I had seen, there was love in my heart.
O: Do you remember the day you were released from the camp?
EW: April 11, 1945. The Americans were close by, and a few days before that, on April 5, the Germans had decided to evacuate all the Jews. Every day, they would evacuate thousands—and most were killed upon leaving. I was in a children's block with other adolescents, and we were left until the end. [But every day we marched to the gate anyway.] I was near the gate more than five times before I was released, and each time, the gate closed just before I came to it.
O: How do you explain that you survived the camps?
EW: I have no explanation.
O: You—someone who has studied the Talmud, the Cabala—have no explanation?
EW: Believe me, I have tried to know, but I do not. If it is God, I have problems with that. If he bothered to save me, why couldn't he have saved all the others? There were people worthier than I.
O: Don't you think your survival has something to do with who you've become and what you've said to the world about the Holocaust?
EW: No, no, no. The price is too high. Because I survived, I must do everything possible to help others.

A few relevant Quotes:

We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself.-A. W. Tozer

Whatever be our conception of the universe we must, it is obvious, start somehow; we must begin with something; and the something with which we begin, from the very fact that we do begin with it, must itself be without explanation, since, if something else were invoked to explain it, then the "something else" must needs be logically prior to that which it is invoked to explain. Thus the "something" being explained by a logically prior "something else" could not have been ultimate. -- C. E. M. Joad, in God and Evil

Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal -- a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever. ... Dwight Lyman Moody

If we consider the lives of people who believe in God, we so often find that they make good sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, employers, and employees -- they have many individual virtues; but they have no way of life other than that which has been imposed upon them by their environment. It is their sociological conditions, their social class, their neighbourhood, their national characteristics, rather than their spiritual faith, which determine their outlook and values: they are an overwhelming demonstration that it is the economic conditions and background of one's life which determine what one is and what one will think. This is an intolerable condition, and so long as it persists we shall not be able to make any impact on the world, because it will be abundantly clear that it is the world which is making its impact upon us.
... Douglas Rhymes, in "The Place of the Laity in the Parish"

When anger enters the mind, wisdom departs. -- Thomas à Kempis

Khalil Gibran

ON GOOD AND EVIL

From: ‘PROPHET’ by Khalil Gibran:

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily, when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,
and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves;
it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly
among perilous isles, yet sink not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root
that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root:
"Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance."
For to the fruit, giving is a need,
as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift,
see that you do not limp before the lame,
deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and
you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness:
and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea,
carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends
and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little,
"Wherefore are you slow and halting?"

For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?"
nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"

Khalil Gibran

INDIAN Rip Van Winkles

"A call to wake up" - for all of us.

India too, like USA in early19th Century, is rapidly changing, but the political parties are still clinging to their old ways and not keeping in-step with the rest of the Country. What will it take to wake up these Rip Van Winkles who are pretending to be asleep?

A critical appreciation of Washington Irving's 'Rip Van Vinkle':
From: http://www.delanceyplace.com : Jun 16, 2011 -
http://www.delanceyplace.com/view_archives.php?1708

The story of rip van winkle

In today's excerpt - Rip Van Winkle, who was author Washington Irving's vehicle for conveying the lightning pace of change in early post-Revolutionary America. During this period, Americans became the first people to expect and to prize change, and business and profit became more honored than in any other country in the Western world:

"During the second decade of the nineteenth century, writer Washington Irving developed an acute sense that his native land was no longer the same place it had been just a generation earlier. Irving had conservative and nostalgic sensibilities, and he sought to express some of his amazement at the transformation that had taken place in America by writing his story 'Rip Van Winkle.' Irving had his character Rip awaken from a sleep that had begun before the Revolution and had lasted twenty years. When Rip entered his old village, he immediately felt lost. The buildings, the faces, the names were all strange and incomprehensible. 'The very village was altered - it was larger and more populous,' and idleness, except among the aged, was no longer tolerated. 'The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility' - a terrifying situation for Rip, who had had 'an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour.' Even the language was strange - 'rights of citizens - elections - members of Congress - liberty and other words which were a perfect babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.' When people asked him 'on which side he voted' and 'whether he was Federal or a Democrat,' Rip could only stare 'in vacant stupidity.'

" 'Rip Van Winkle' became the most popular of Irving's many stories, for early nineteenth-century Americans could appreciate Rip's bewilderment. Although superficially the political leadership seemed much the same - on the sign at the village inn the face of George Washington had simply replaced that of George III - beneath the surface Rip, like most Americans, knew that 'everything's changed.' In a few short decades Americans had experienced a remarkable transformation in their society and culture, and, like Rip and his creator, many wondered what had happened and who they really were.

"Before the Revolution of 1776, America had been merely a collection of disparate British colonies composed of some two million subjects huddled along a narrow strip of the Atlantic coast - European outposts whose cultural focus was still London, the metropolitan center of the empire. Following the War of 1812 with Great Britain - often called the Second American Revolution - these insignificant provinces had become a single giant continental republic with nearly ten million citizens, many of whom had already spilled into the lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. The cultural focus of this huge expansive nation was no longer abroad but was instead directed inward at its own boundless possibilities.

"By 1815 Americans had experienced a transformation in the way they related to one another and in the way they perceived themselves and the world around them. And this transformation took place before industrialization, before urbanization, before railroads, and before any of the technological breakthroughs usually associated with modern social change. In the decades following the Revolution America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change but came to expect it and prize it.

"The population grew dramatically, doubling every twenty years or so, as it had for several generations, more than twice the rate of growth of any European country. And people were on the move as never before. Americans spread themselves over half a continent at astonishing speeds. Between 1790 and 1820 New York's population quadrupled; Kentucky's multiplied nearly eight times. In a single decade Ohio grew from a virtual wilderness (except, of course, for the presence of the native Indians, whom white Americans scarcely acknowledged) to become more populous than most of the century-old colonies had been at the time of the Revolution. In a single generation Americans occupied more territory than they had occupied during the entire 150 years of the colonial period, and in the process killed or displaced tens of thousands of Indians.

"Although most Americans in 1815 remained farmers living in rural areas, they had become, especially in the North, one of the most highly commercialized people in the world. They were busy buying and selling not only with the rest of the world but increasingly with one another, everyone, it seemed, trying to realize what Niles' Weekly Register declared 'the almost universal ambition to get forward.' Nowhere in the Western world was business and working for profit more praised and honored."

Author: Gordon Wood Title: Empire of LibertyPublisher: OxfordDate: Copyright 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc.Pages: 1-2Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of the United States) by Gordon S. Wood. Published by Oxford University Press, USA

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··· The 100 Dollar Bill
A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $100 bill in a room of 200 people, and asked, "Who would like this £100 bill?" -- Hands started going up.
He said, "I am going to give this $100 bill to one of you, but first let me do this." He proceeded to crumple the $100 up.
He then asked, "Who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air.
"Well".....he replied, "What if I do this?" and he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. Now who still wants it?" he asked. Hands still shot up!
"My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the bill, you still wanted it...because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $100 to you."
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt, by the decisions we make, and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you never lose your value!
Dirty, clean crumpled or finely creased you are still priceless to those who love you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE.
You are special; don't ever forget it.

Count your blessings. NOT your problems.
•Author Unknown

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Seeing the Value of a Value
A value, any value, universal or situational, is a value for me only when I see the value of the value as valuable to me. Me – the comfortable me – is the source of my values. I fail to follow a universal value only when I do not clearly see its value to me. I make expedient situational choices only when I think such choices will make me feel good.
-- Swami Dayananda

THE ROLE-MODEL IN SOCIETY

Why has our country earned the reputation of being one among the most corrupt Nations of the World? The Bhagavad Gita states that this happens when eminent, prominent persons in Society who are supposed to lead peoperly, themselves commence to adopt corrupt practices to enrich themselves. Sri Krishna has this answer in Slokam 21 Chapter III of the Bhagavad Gita:
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Bhagavad Gita Ch.3 Slokam 21
यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठस्तत्तदेवेतरो जनः।
स यत्प्रमाणं कुरुते लोकस्तदनुवर्तते।।
yadyadācarati śrēṣṭhastattadēvētarō janaḥ
sa yatpramāṇaṅ kurutē lōkastadanuvartatē
यद्यत् whatsoever, आचरति does, श्रेष्ठः the best, तत्तत् that, एव only, इतरः the other, जनः people, सः he (that great man), यत् what, प्रमाणम् standard (authority, demonstration), कुरुते does, लोकः the world (people), तत् that, अनुवर्तते follows.
Whatsoever a great man does, that the other men also do; whatever he sets up as the standard, that the world (mankind) follows.
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Man is a social animal and an imitating person too. He takes his ideas of right and wrong from those whom he regards as his moral superior. Whatever a great man does, the same is considered as an authority by his followers. They try to follow him. They endeavour to tread in his footsteps.
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For the protection of the world, all acts that are appropriate to one's station and stage in life must always be performed by an eminent man who is distinguished for his wisdom. Otherwise, the evil generated from the ruin of the large masses of the world (who neglect their duties by following his example), will bring him down, even if he were a follower of pure Jnana Yoga. – Sri Ramanuja
Whatever the superior person upholds as pramanam, authority, be it Vedic or secular - an ordinary person follows; i.e., he accepts that very thing as authoritative. (Hence, Krishna advises Arjuna who stands confused about his dharma in war, to follow his (Krishna’s) advice.) – Sri Sankara
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In the present context, the श्रेष्ठः śrēṣṭhas are the leaders in power, governing the country. When they fail in their duty to practice dharma, we need a Krishna to appear as promised by Him in "yadaa yadaa hi dharmasya glaanirbhavati" to make a course-correction and guide the country and lead the people back on to the right path. Let us pray that such an avatara-purusha comes to restore Bharatavarsha to its pristine glory. May the Lord's spirit empower him to act properly and effectively.