Why God Doesn’t Fulfill All Our Wishes

You must have noticed that despite praying very hard with complete faith and devotion, most of the time, God does not fulfill all your wishes. I started this blog in September, 2009 with this prayer, “Oh God, please get my blog more hits than the most popular ones!” Three years down the lane I think I am wiser and understand the reasons behind God’s reluctance. Let me share my newly acquired wisdom with you.

We usually pray for health, wealth, and happiness for our families and close friends. Just imagine what would happen if God started listening to everyone’s prayers.

1. A common prayer to God is to obliterate pain and sufferings from this world. What most people don’t understand is that if they stopped experiencing pain, they would not be able to protect themselves from injuries, including the deadly cuts, burns, and blows. They will keep damaging their body parts without taking care to heal themselves, and in their ignorance, die untimely. This seems to be one of the reasons why God does not want to do away with pain.

2. Our planet has been teeming with diseases. I am sure there isn’t a single person, who has not suffered from some ailment. This reminds me of an old joke:

A disheveled drunkard asks a priest, “Father, what causes arthritis?” Not to lose an opportunity to sermonize, the priest tells him, “It's caused by loose living, being with cheap, immoral women, too much drinking, and contempt for your fellow beings."
The drunk becomes serious. The priest, thinking that he had been too harsh, tries to tone down, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you. How long have you had arthritis?"
"I don't have arthritis, Father; just read in a paper that the Pope does."

Imagine what would happen if God removed all the diseases from this world. The doctors and all the medical professionals would become jobless, the pharmaceutical companies would go bankrupt, and the hospitals would turn into relics. These are just a few examples from a slew of possible repercussions. But then, the medical community would start praying with all their hearts and souls and ask God to send back illnesses and diseases.

3. You might believe that the pain-free and disease-free people would be happy and satisfied. No sir, they would pray to God for rich indulgent lives with no hard work. They would want easy money to buy stuff. They would want big houses and lots of servants to do their chores. Many people might even want to delegate the last chores related to the toilet to others. And they would also wish that while they lie comfortably on their beds of roses, the attendants would lift their legs and arms to give their muscles the much-needed exercise.

The only problem with granting such wishes is that the servants would also start praying for all these comforts, and then God would have difficulty in finding servants. He will have to create a subhuman species that would be devoid of the faculty of thinking, would not desire comforts and good life, and would keep working in subhuman conditions without expecting any gratitude.

4. The have-it-all humans will then desire pleasure. Not of the highbrow kind, for it would require using brains, but the simple carnal pleasures, such as delicious food, mindless TV serials, masala movies etc. Now, God can certainly fulfill such wishes, but what if the viewers started praying to Him to materialize their fantasies involving the gorgeous lead actors. God would be in a dilemma to grant such wishes, for it would be unfair, rather cruel, on the film stars.

5. I am not certain if God is democratic, autocratic, or theocratic. It depends on how He would solve the religious problems of this world. If God is democratic and gives priority to numbers, He would listen to the Christian majority's prayers and convert everyone into a Christian. If He is moved by the fervency and frequency of prayers, He would be partial towards the fundamental Muslims and their jihadi activities, consequently, turning the whole world population into Muslim, of course, after granting "Death to America!" But there are so many sects in both the Christian and the Muslim religions that God would be further puzzled by their prayers.

Probably there are many more such things that have frustrated God to such an extent that He has stopped listening to our prayers. Or maybe, He is really busy, as the Onion has depicted in an image, titled, "No one murdered because of this image."

After mulling over all these issues, I request all of you to stop confusing the overstretched and overworked God with your petty prayers. Instead, you should pray for His soundness and well being, so that He starts using his powers in a good way, and begins to carry out his day-to-day responsibilities, such as making this blog more popular, efficiently.

(Pictures copied from reuters.com, catholiclane.com, and gurumia.com)