Omar Khayyam's quatrain 69 from the Rubaiyat reads:
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
In other words, Khayyam envisions a capricious creator who, after tiring of playing games with his human inventions, places them back into a darkened closet (death?). Do you agree with Khayyam's view of God? Why or why not?
5 comments:
There have been times when I definitely agreed with Khayyam's view because the world is not an orderly place. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme when natural disasters occur or when people are ruthless to one another. However, I also wonder if perhaps we are all part of something bigger. . .but in our blindness to that fact, we fight against good.
I agree with Khayyam’s view of such a manipulating creator, assuming that a Creator of any kind really does exist. In a world full of so much innocent human suffering (for references see the Conflict in Darfur, the refugees from the recent earthquake in China and the people starving in Myanmar because their government won’t allow for foreign aid after the tidal wave there), it is hard to believe in the supposed benevolence of any sort of God. For example, the belief that the bad things that happen to the world are actually trials testing our faith in the Christian God simply don’t account for the sheer amount of violence, suffering and death throughout the Christian and non-Christian world alike.
However, the part of Khayyam’s vision that I disagree with is the random nature in which the creator moves the pawns across his chessboard. Something that I have learned in my nineteen plus years on this earth is the overwhelming power of karma. Everything happens for a reason, and if you harm another in any way, you will eventually receive you comeuppance. Accordingly, I do not believe that the creator always randomly chooses a few pawns to pick on; clearly some of those involved are deserving of the injustices presented to them.
I agree with the nature of his view, having a divine creator manipulating things, however, i do not agree with the word choice of "disorderly"(In regards to the world's condition). If such a creator does exist, and he does sit up on his chair of benevolence, locked in an epic battle of Chess -- Wouldn't that lead it to be believed that it isn't so disorderly as it may seem? For someone (Khayyam) who chooses to consistently question the nature of the universe (Creator or no creator), he uses an example to show a sense of randomness while on the contrary, it's as structured as any game gets. Coincidence--Very, very probable, i just feel it's worth mentioning. I like to believe that, how ever chaotic things may seem, that in the light of things, we are all apart of a grand plan. Bad things happen every day, i am well aware of that, and i am well aware of how insufficiently "bad" describes it, and i very strongly want to believe that it is not all in vain. :)
I don't completely agree. Like how Khayyam thinks the creator is some capricious thing and you never know when he/she is going to put you back into a "darkened closet" I agree with. However I don't agree that he/she is just playing games with us throughout our entire life. I think with your own free will you choose your own life course. For example, Amy Winehouse. She's had her own choice to get into drugs and alcohol and she's also had the choice to get out of her situation. I don't think that he/she as a creator is playing games like that. And it seems like it would take up a lot of time you know? I mean who wants to go through every single person and just play games with them??
I believe that God is an all-powerful being. With that in mind, I'd like to think that He/She would have been able to conceive a more constructive way of passing the time. If the possibilities were literally endless (seeing as He/She created them) why settle on merely constructing complex human beings to toy with?
I can see where the idea may be supported in that "why would God allow such terrible things to happen on earth if not to toy with us?" In response to such a quarry, i feel that everything happens for a reason and it is not always God's duty to reveal the reason to us. We need to discover it for ourselves. When a travesty occurs, it is our right to mourn and our privilege to find the good.
I suppose it may be nothing more than a silly notion or blind faith that helps me uphold the idea of God, but without faith in the unproven, what of gravity?
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