Can God Please Everybody?

A school teacher asked his students a simple question. "Can God please everybody?"

One student stood up and said, "Since God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, He definitely can please everybody — unlike us." All the students except one enthusiastically agreed and added their own views to support this.

Only one naughty student stood up and said, "No, God definitely cannot please everybody."

The teacher asked, "How can you say this so confidently?"

The student said, "This is all coming from my own experience."

"Your own experience?"

"Yes, year after year, I am praying to God for something, and He is not fulfilling my desire. My parents also have many desires, as do my sisters and brothers. As their desires are not being fulfilled, how can you say that God can please everybody?"

The other students said, "God certainly can please everybody if He wants to. He has this capacity."

The bad boy replied, "If God has the capacity, let Him use it. Let Him please my sisters, my brothers and my parents. Let Him please me. Then I will say that not only does God have the capacity, but He also uses it. Now you are imagining that God has the capacity. I do not want to remain in the world of imagination. He should show me. God should make me happy, plus my parents, my brothers, my sisters, my acquaintances and all those that I know. Since they are not all happy, then I must say that God cannot please everybody."

The students had a wonderful fight. All of them, except this one boy, said that they had learnt from their parents that God can please everybody. The children wanted to beat the boy up.

The poor teacher said, "Please, please, do not fight! I am the one to be blamed. I am the problem-maker. I asked you, 'Can God please everybody?' This one boy says, 'God cannot.' You say, 'He can.' I am lost between your group and this young fellow.

"I am withdrawing my question. God alone knows whether He has the capacity to please everybody or whether He actually pleases everybody. We do not know. Our faith tells us that God has the capacity, which is absolutely true. But somebody can come along to challenge us, saying that we have to prove that God can please everybody. 'Has God pleased all of your desires? Has God pleased his desires?' This is the boy's argument. He says, 'No!'

"The best thing is to feel that it is all my fault. I brought up this question and now I withdraw it. It is up to you whether or not to believe that God can please everybody and do everything."

From:Sri Chinmoy,The mind-jungles and the heart-gardens of life, Agni Press, 2001
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/mjh