Losing Faith
My birthchart, with Sagittarius on the ascendant and Jupiter in Capricorn in the first house, to me is clear evidence that two years before the outbreak of the war I was born into a deeply religious background. By the end of it my parents had become atheists who did not believe in anything any more. From where I stand now, it is not hard to understand how this must have come about. To illustrate the point of how and why people in times of war, more than at any other occasion, lose their faith in God, I shall take you back to the preparations for the funeral of the victims of the attack on the air raid shelter in our street, mentioned earlier.
I cannot recall the exact number of people who died in this incident, but there were more than thirty of them. Many of the parts that had belonged to them could not be identified and also because there was a severe shortage of manpower available, it was decided they should be buried in a mass grave. My father was one of the few able-bodied men in our street who had survived the war and he also had that rare privilege of being at home. Every man who was still capable of lifting a shovel toiled until they had dug a big enough hole. I imagine these men must also have had the gruesome task of retrieving the mortal remains of the victims. As far as we children were concerned, the adults must have been so busy with their own grief that no-one explained anything to us about the disappearance of those who had left this world before us and where they could possible have gone.
During the time it took digging the grave, my sister and I each day had to bring my father his lunch. The only thing I remember very keenly about those days is that they were bright and sunny with clear blue skies and the birds singing their little hearts out. Nature’s brilliance and beauty somehow made the whole scene even more painful and sad. Even the most devout Christians must stand before events like this one and eventually begin to ask themselves: ‘If there is a God in Heaven, why does He allow most of our children’s playmates and their mothers to go to such an early grave and in such a cruel and meaningless way? If He really were a fair and loving God, as promised by the Scriptures, where is His justice and His love?’
The experience was made even more painful and harder to bear by the fact that no-one – least of all we children – could begin to grasp the reasons behind the things that were happening all around us, even in our small town and street at the backend of nowhere. Events of this nature are too monstrous for the comprehension of human adult, never mind their children. That must have been the reason why no-one ever attempted to explain to us what was happening around us and why our world was falling to pieces. How can you put into words that which is unfathomable and you do not understand yourself? How do you explain to your offspring the lunacy of all warmongering, when ordinary folks – like you and me – throughout our world just want to get on with living in peace and providing their children with a better future in a world that is free from strife?
There must be many like me, who to this day are struggling to come to terms with the memories of the events of those days and similar ones, in order to heal the old wounds and let go of the impressions they left behind. Yet, I imagine that when human beings get caught up in this kind of traumatic experiences, be it as children or adults, when they have run their course and are over, their individual souls are long past the threshold of understanding. In truth, all wars are the result of the common Karma of all who get involved in them. Suffering together is their predestined fate for their present lifetime, so that the events and the pain and deprivations that had to be endured can teach them and our world some vital lessons.
As I know by now, it has been for good and wise reasons that humankind for such a long time was not allowed to know that even the wars of our world have always served a higher teaching purpose. In accordance with God’s great plan of life, we and our world were only meant to find out that this is the case when the time for doing so was right. The only comfort we had in the days before this was that all things and happenings in our world are of a constantly changing and passing nature. Throughout the ages, God had represented for our race the only constant that forever had been and would be.
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This article is a chapter from ‘War And Peace Between Nations.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘War And Peace Between Nations’
