Why God Doesn’t Fulfill All Our Wishes

Wednesday, September 26, 2012


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)

37 comments:

  1. Oh I suffer from severe allergies from last 2 years,it's as bad as it can,but I am happy,that inspite of that I travel and people never get to know about my being ill :).Nice writeup.We always wish for the best,but not everyone can be the best.For hits on my blog even I m struggling,its been 9 months into bloggin.This is my blog have a look:http://www.ankionthemove.com/

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    1. So true Ankita! Everyone cannot be the best :-)

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  2. Thank God that god does not fulfill all desires!

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    1. Thank God otherwise there would have been more disasters in this world than we have currently!

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  3. First of all, I thank God for everything that he has bestowed upon me in his supreme kindness: A beautiful life, a beautiful family, a beautiful blog called'One Grain Amongst the Storm', and the Internet which allows me to read 'The Grist Mill'! Further, I thank God for apportioning fifty human's worth of wit and humour to you, thanks to which, poor Indians have a Prime Minister who is beggar on the streets of wisdom.

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  4. Hey, I forgot the rest of the speech! It is one of the hazards of writing a comment with your thumb and a phone, the poor mind, which is zillion times faster, forgets half the thought and the sentence before it is typed. So, here goes the rest....

    .... And last, but not the least, I wish to thank God for sending those maladies down our way, inclusive of arthritis to Pope....

    Shucks! I actually forgot what it was!

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  5. God is overrated and we have been twisted enough to turn him into a business.

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    1. His name is used efficiently in the business of power, politics, and crime as well!

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  6. God looks after all his people.
    Isn't your wish list too long?

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  7. Even God cannot keep up with the unending wish lists of us humans.I am reminded of this song-
    Aasman pe hai khuda aur jamin pe hum,
    Aaj kal wo is taraf,dekhta hai kam.

    He is probably disgusted with us all.

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  8. First of all, I have to commend you on the meticulous research you do to write each post. What an exhaustive list of possible wishes by humans! And secondly I want to praise you for your concern for the Almighty which prompts you to ask others to desist from deluging him with their requests. And last but not the least, wish your blog many more anniversaries and a million hits every year :)

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    1. Thanks for the wishes :-)) You captured the essence. Yeah, people bother Him so much that He doesn't even listen to genuine persons like us :-|

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  9. I hope God is listening and your blog gets highest number of hits...perfect timing though OMG releases today.

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  10. Great analysis ! After reading this I must say that it is good that god does not full-fill all our wishes.

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    1. Thanks Kumar Suhas! I am happy that the article helped you reach that conclusion :-|

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  11. Optimistic post! I was wondering why you had just mentioned about Onion's image instead of putting it up directly and giving due credits.

    Well, now I know. :D

    (Though, you'll have to scratch out "was" before "murdered", as per the title.)

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    1. I hope you didn't burn any embassy after seeing that image! :D
      'Was' edited out... thanks!

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  12. You are one of my most favorite blogger Giribala.Best se bhi jyada best , bhagwan ki kasam.

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  13. Wish you and your blog loads of successes, Giri! And, I have no faith that there is a God. So, some of us can break our heads all we want in praying and wishing. And, the huge industry called religion will continue to chug and fool naive people. I just prefer to keep doing my thing till the day my time will be up.

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    1. That's true, Rachna! I am a nonbeliever too and follow the same philosophy :-)

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  14. I think He (She?) has you on His blog roll! And he wants to keep a certain exclusivity and hence the limited audience. Just kidding!

    Thanks for renewing my faith in God. I knew there was a reason behind Ekta Kapoor's existence!

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    1. You may be right about exclusivity, but I get scores of spam comments everyday :-/

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  15. I liked this best "A common prayer to God is to obliterate pain and sufferings" :)

    Had been trying to reach god on weekend, but he said he is stuck in traffic too long, and after that he will be in sea, which requires roaming to be enabled, so no luck there

    --
    Mahesh

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    1. Thanks Mahesh!! Lol! He seems to be embroiled in man-made problems!

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  16. Yes,even I think God's so fed up with our unreasonable & often conflicting demands that He has quit.So am going to really pray hard that He comes back & restores sanity to this 'Kalyug' (and of course blesses your blog :P )

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    1. It is lovely article indeed.. But I think there is more to them than meets the eye. When god was planning for us. They thought that life would be monotonic if there is only good. So, they planned like that there should be bad things to make life more challenging and interesting. what is positive without negative?? God always fulfill the wishes who really deserves it. If you wish for bad ones to be happened then you then you should busy doing that bad things. If you wish to become successful then you should busy to become like that. In purans Bad man like Ravan also sacrifices his normal for fulfilling wish wishes. Thats the only secret....

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