Questions Children Ask

Please note that the views expressed in this section are my personal views that I formed by researching what other scholars had to say about the questions that my children were asking and not necessarily the "Zoroastrian" explanation of things. They are at best what I found to be reasonable explanations for the mystery that is God and His workings. The reader is free to form his/her opinion.

Q1) Why is there suffering in this world?

There are several ways to approach this question.

From the Zoroastrian religion's standpoint, this can be answered as:

God (Ahura Mazda) is currently in a battle with the forces of evil (Ahriman).

Each of us on Earth has been granted a Free Will to partake in this battle and side with either good or evil. This Free Will though, implies that you are allowed to make choices contrary to the Will of God. When you make choices that side with evil, suffering follows.

However, this also may raise the question - why is Ahura Mazda in battle with Ahriman if he is all powerful? Why does He not defeat Ahriman and stop suffering in this world?

This may be because we do not understand completely what God's Divine plan is for all of us. This is where faith comes into play. Life is a test of faith. We have to believe in Him and know whatever He does is for our own good. It may be that God is using suffering as a means to discipline us, very similar to what a loving parent would do by punishing their child to teach them certain lessons for the long run. If a parent disciplines a child does it mean they don't love their child? No! Suffering is sometimes a means to a greater good. What may seem like "suffering" to the child now, may in hind sight seem like a good lesson to him/her later in life when maturity and wisdom dawn on him/her. Perhaps by causing suffering to a person now, God is preventing much more suffering for the same person later. Because there is suffering doesn't mean God cannot stop it. He has merely chosen not to in His divine wisdom - at least for the time being. Remember - God knows everything till eternity. In this respect, He is more powerful than Ahriman who does NOT have an eternal perspective....since Ahriman can't see that God will defeat him, eventually. With that kind of eternal perspective, perhaps God is using evil to accomplish His final goal.

Also, to "stop evil" would mean to "stop ALL evil". You can’t stop some and allow some. Stopping all evil would entail stopping the free will of people to choose for themselves – including their ability to think evil, their ability to do evil. For God, it seems important that we make the choice to be with Him or not thru our own free will. Perhaps in His infinite wisdom, He knows that ultimately thru this cycle of suffering, all people will eventually shun evil and follow His path. That is how evil will be conquered. If you have experienced suffering first hand - and found a solution to that suffering, that lesson will stay with you forever. Zoroastrianism actually says that the soul "learns" its lessons and "remembers" them.

The question is also asked - why do "good" people have to suffer?

What is "good"? Can there truly be a human being on the face of the Earth who hasn't indulged in any one of the seven sins? Just because a person appears "good" to you doesn't mean he hasn't "slipped" in his dealings with God elsewhere. Many people often go thru life glorifying some people, only to find out later in life that the person in question had a different life altogether in the background unknowest to them.

The second chain of thought says God doesn't want you to know why there is suffering. He just wants you to stop it. If you knew why a person was suffering, it would lessen the pain you feel on seeing that person suffering. As an example, consider the case of a pregnant woman delivering a child in the hospital. Her relatives are outside waiting happily while the woman is screaming in the delivery room. The relatives understand her pain and know it will soon be over - with good consequences! On the other hand, consider the case of a child who has suffered a car accident and is screaming in agony. The onlookers run helter and skelter trying to get medical aid for the child because they don't know what the outcome is going to be. It brings out the best in humans to confront that suffering. We put aside our feelings of caste, creed, sex to help the other person in suffering by not knowing their cause of suffering. Perhaps that is what God's intention is - to mobilize human beings to confront evil when they see suffering for good or innocent people! The cases may be many. But the ultimate end result is that when you see suffering it causes you to shun evil ! When you see an innocent person die due to drunken driving, it leaves a much bigger impact on your mind to stop the evil of alcoholism than it would if you just saw an advertisement asking you to do the same. When you see a good man suffering in his life because of corruption, it evokes strong feelings in you to combat that evil. Be it pride, lust, anger, greed - it is suffering that will help combat these evils in the long run. Experiencing the suffering from these evils first hand seems to have the most impact on the soul of an individual, which no amount of preaching can accomplish.

Finally, although Zoroastrianism doesn't subscribe to the view of rebirth, many believe it to be true. If you believe that we go thru several rebirths in the lifetime of a soul, then the cycle of "Karma" also plays a role in a soul's suffering in this lifetime. What is Karma? It is defined as the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. Thus, it is possible you may be atoning for your sins of a previous lifetime thru the suffering in this one.

Q2) Why can't we see God?

This perhaps ties in with the free Will that God has accorded us. If He were visible to us, perhaps we would depend too much on Him to tell us what to do always. It would be like a child always looking to the parent for advise and not thinking things for himself/herself. When does a child become a man or a woman and learn to stand on his/her own feet and take his/her own decisions? Most often, it is when he/she starts to "cut the cord" with the parents (mostly during teenage/college years). In other words, when the parents are not around (invisible?) to guide the child and pamper him/her by making every decision for the child. That's when true "wisdom" of the ways of the world begins to dawn on the child. That's when the innocent child blossoms into a man or woman and takes on the world on his/her terms. When left on their own, some children take good decisions in their life and succeed. Some take bad decisions and learn from them. But the point is, to be able to exercise that free Will, it seems it is important that there not be an overlaying authority that one can turn to immediately.

The child that is now on its own in the outside world knows that his/her parents are still always there for him/her....watching out in case he/she needs help. All he/she has to do when they need guidance or help is to turn to the parents and they know they will be taken care of. Even though the parents are "not around", they are "always there". Our relationship with God seems to be very similar. In His divine wisdom, He seems to think it best to let us be on our own to navigate the evil in this world - while He will continue to help us without revealing Himself to us, for now. Eventually, we will all be reunited with Him and a period of frashokereti (a Zoroastrian concept of mankind's reunification with God) will commence, and all evil would have been vanquished.

Q3) Why do we have to die?

God in his infinite wisdom seems to have ordained death for everyone. Not even Zarathustra was spared from death, even though he requested Ahura Mazda for immortality. You can read the translation of the Bahman Yasht to understand the discourse between Zarathustra and Ahura Mazda on this topic if you are interested. While some people are afraid of death, it is nothing to be afraid of if you have been a good person in this life, according to most religions of this earth. Death is a transition of the soul from one state of being to another....just as your soul transitioned from one state to another when you were born. Do you remember anything of your past state? Do you remember anything about the transition of your soul into this world? No. Your transition to another state will also be seamless - although what happens to you in that state will be dependent upon your actions in the previous state(s).

But why do we have to transition from one state to another? The answer is - death is necessary to bring about a change in the greater plan that God has for mankind and for the progress of the soul itself. There has to be a continuous progress made in the mindset of people and in the way we live our lives. For new progressive ideas to take root, old ideas must be phased out. Human nature is such that the ideas you formed during your childhood and youth are difficult to abandon later in life. Advancement of the human race would not be possible if the same people with the same ideas and same way of working were allowed to continue forever. As an example, if you were a person who grew up in the era of slavery in America, it would be very difficult for you to accustom yourself to the concepts of equality of mankind that are in vogue today. There was great reluctance and resistance to change even several years after slavery had been made illegal by law. However, the next generation that grew up in different circumstances found it easier to accept the new reality - so much so that slavery is now universally accepted as an evil of the past. God wants us to progress as humans irrespective of religion, caste, sex and creed. For this change to happen in ideology, it is necessary to keep erasing the past and allowing the present to take root. However, at the same time - the past has to be used as a compass to help us prevent the same mistakes in the future. The greater and faster exchange of ideas also seems to be an element of change, as the internet has proven. As a human race, we are moving towards the greater plan of God. Granted there will be periods in this movement, where we fall back into "old ways" of hatred, revenge, greed, etc. as a society again. But God continues to make sure those eras are corrected by individuals (called Saoshyants in Zoroastrianism) who will take birth amongst us from time to time and correct our paths so we can carry on down the path to our final destiny.

That is perhaps also the reason why your past is erased from your memory when you transition from one state to another of your soul's existence. You are not allowed to "carry forward" the ideas of one state to the next. You start with a clean slate in the next state. However, it is said in Zoroastrianism that the lessons that the soul has learnt stay with it thru its journey. That would explain why some people are more mature, charitable and at peace with themselves than others.

Q4) Why do we have to pray in a language (Avesta) we can't understand? Why aren't our prayers in English so everyone can understand them? Doesn't God know all languages - so why can't we communicate with him in English?

Many of the high priests of the religion insist that we should continue to pray in Avesta. The reasoning provided is that it was the choice of language chosen by God to communicate with the prophet. A translation into another language is never 100% accurate. Thus with every translation, more and more of the message provided would be lost. They insist that it is important that the original message be preserved in its entirety. Moreover, nowadays there are plenty of media that offer very good translations of the actual Avestan texts of the prayers. Hence, every devotee should take it upon himself to read the translation and understand the prayer if they are really interested. There is no excuse for not knowing what a particular prayer or its words mean anymore. You can find the translations of most prayers (or links pointing to the same) on this website too. It just requires a little bit more diligence on the part of the individual to read its translation. Some priests also say that our Avestan prayers produce certain "vibrations" that are conducive to raising the spiritual awareness as well as cleansing the aura of the reciter. Avesta is a language that deals with "mathras" (vibrations) - meaning the way the words are grouped together and pronounced is a very important part of the prayer - which could not be achieved in a translation of the prayer in another language.

There is perhaps another reason behind this as well - which is upto the reader to believe or discard. Recently, scientists converted the entire hebrew bible into computer code and when they started scanning the code they started to discover patterns emerging that revealed answers about future events! This is called the Bible Code. One can read more about it here or watch several videos of it in YouTube as well. The point being, perhaps there is a secret message encoded in these ancient literatures (like the Avesta and Hebrew Bible) that will reveal itself to us at the right time. That is another reason why they need to be preserved by the devotees of the religion.

Q5) Zoroastrianism talks about both "destiny" and "free will". Many other major religions talk about the same. Both these concepts appear contradictory to each other, though. If everything is "written" and will happen according to the will of God, how are we expected to believe our decisions (free will) will make any difference?

This is a difficult question. To understand the answer I have come up with, perhaps one should keep in mind that God is Omniscient (all knowing). With the knowledge of the working of the entire universe(s) at His disposal, God has the ability to foresee or predict the decisions that each and every entity in the Universe(s) will make, thus providing Him a glimpse into the future (what we term "destiny").

Lets illustrate this with 2 examples:

a) The weatherman today predicted that Place A would be hit by a cyclone 5 days from today. In other words, he has prophesized a "destiny" for Place A. The weather outside right now for Place A is bright and without a cloud in the sky. Yet 5 days later, just as the weatherman predicted, the place is hit with a big cyclone. How did the weatherman foresee the destiny of Place A? Based on historical weather patterns from the past, based on satellite images, based on computer and mathematical models at his disposal that accurately predict how weather conditions will develop based on parameters fed to it, and based on other instruments not available to us, the weatherman is able to "foresee the future". If a mortal human being has such an ability to look into the future, do you think God in his infinite capacity wouldn't have the ability to calculate how a paradigm in our world would play out? Remember, God knows more about you than you do. He knows how your soul thinks, feels and what experiences it has gone thru in its journey so far. Not only that, he knows everything about everyone and everything around you that's affecting you, just as accurately. Hence, when we make a decision which we consider us exercising our "free will", God perhaps seems to have known what decision would be made by that entity already, based on the data. The entity does exercise his/her choice - but that choice is based on so many other factors from the past. I ate oatmeal for breakfast today. I thought I exercised my "free will". No one could have known what breakfast I would pick! Is that really true? I could have made boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, eaten a doughnut or a muffin or perhaps had milk and fruit! However, I have a propensity for nutritious food. I like to have a healthy lifestyle. I prefer to eat something "porridgy" over solid (and dry). And I like "warm" things over "cold" things. Just knowing this about me would help you narrow down what I would pick to a very large extent. God knowing a lot more about us and things around us has no difficulty extending this sort of modelling to predict the destiny of an individual, a society, human beings or our entire planet -- 1 second from now or thousands of years later!

b) Consider another example. I put 5 things in front of my child. I put an iPhone, a car, a vacation ticket, dining at an expensive restaurant and a puppy in front of her. I then call 10 people and ask them to predict what the young teenager would choose. I write my answer on a piece of paper beforehand. Only 2 of the 10 people in the audience beside myself guess correctly. My child picks the puppy. Obviously I know my child well. I know her love for animals. I know that love trumps everything else. Others not in the know-how cannot be blamed for not choosing the right answer. The other 2 people who chose correctly in the crowd were her mother and her sister - both who knew her just as well. There were other choices more tempting for a child but knowing how a person thinks, their likes and dislikes and what their heart desires made it easy for us to "predict". The child did exercise her "free will". Nobody coerced her to pick the puppy. And yet we could prophesize the "destiny".

Thus to me, it appears "destiny" is just a culmination of the accurate calculation of the sum of all "free wills" that will henceforth be exercised. And which better "master" could you choose to make that accurate calculation than the creator of the hardware and software of all things that constitute our Universe. He AND ONLY HE knows exactly how His hardware and software behave under all conditions. Thus everything is not happening according to the Will of God, I think. The Will is indeed ours. He just knows what we will Will - when why and how!

Q6) Why do we have to pray? Why can't we just be good?

Q7) Why are some people more beautiful or handsome than others? Why didn't God create everyone equally? This looks like discrimination.

Q8) Why do we need religion? What has religion provided us?