Faith in the Almighty

Why is sublime faith in the Almighty of utmost importance? I hereby quote a few sentences which I came across in my reading. The paradox of time -- the more we advance technologically the more we retreat in our humaneness. None can adequately explain the motives behind the heinous crimes man is capable of.

The devil may not exist in the religious sense, but there must be deep inside each one of us a shred of this diabolical malice that, if let loose, can make hell on earth a reality.

God can make it rough for us sometimes. When He makes it rough through the agency of human minds, we tend to call it evil or the Devil. Here are some horrendous examples which confirm the truth of the above mentioned allegations. The youngest offspring of a family kills his parents and four brothers and sisters. The youngest son of doctor B kills six members of his own family -- his parents and four brothers and sisters, according to a local newspaper report. Nobody can possibly explain the motive/reason behind such horrendous deeds. The only survivor of the family was a sister, who was coincidentally out of town when the killing took place. She could not believe that her younger brother could do such a horrible deed.

The heinous deeds committed in Jakarta in May 1998 by rioters were also beyond human understanding and imagination. Shops were looted and set on fire, women were raped and tortured, driving the victims to suicide or leaving them to live with an unerasable trauma for the rest of their lives.

Thinking about these inhuman deeds we can console ourselves with the thought that in advanced (civilized) countries, such horrible phenomena happens in their societies. The fact that all the perpetrators of criminal deeds were persons from decent families shows us that there is a demon even among the best of us, and it is our absolute faith in the Almighty that prevents us from straying from the right path.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta