Just Asking!

भूत पिशाच निकट नहिं आवै।
महाबीर जब नाम सुनावै॥

Evil spirits (bhūta) do not come near those who chant the Mahāvira name of yours.

As a kid in a Hindu religious family, I heard these lines numerous times while growing up and still hear them often whenever I visit my hometown.

Whenever I tried to picture or imagine ‘God’ as a personality, I always thought of someone who is devoid of all the human shortcomings.Someone who is at the least sensible, understanding, peace-loving, intelligent and forgiving.Also, I assumed that all the god-believing people would also believe that God possesses all these values.

However, as I look around and observe our worshipping practices (which I believe are a reflection of how we imagine ‘God’), I end up with a lot of doubts which I would like to share through this piece of writing:
Doubt 1: If God is actually peace-loving, then why do all Hindu Gods have a weapon in their hand? Someone has Trishul, Someone has a bow-arrow, Sudarshan Chakra and what not.Obviously, God won’t need them for self-defense (He is GOD after all!!) and secondly, If it is to ‘punish’ (read kill) the ‘evil doers’, then does God believes that ‘evil doers’ should be punished through violent actions (again read ‘by killing them’)?Doubt 2: If God is sensible and not a super egoistic, self-obsessed creature, then he/she won’t expect us to keep praising him/her all the time.Still, all our prayers (chalisa, aarti etc and not just in Hinduism, even in other religions too) are directed at praising god (one example are the lines posted in the beginning). I mean if God is God and he knows that he is God, why would he want us to tell him/her all the time that we know how powerful he is, five-year-old what a miracle men/women he/she is, he/she can provide us with all we want etc etc etc.
Shouldn’t God punish people who waste their time in all this instead of utilising it for something better or productive?

Doubt 3: If God exists and is really powerful, how can we explain the painful five-year-old child who was raped by her neighbour? What could possibly explain heinous crimes taking place everywhere in the world? If we blame it on the evil forces then aren’t these evil forces more powerful than ‘God’ because God is not able to control them? Should we then not pray to the evil forces and ask them to stop the crimes instead of singing praises to God?

Just Asking.