Is it proper to make promises to God and offer bribes to Him? What if we fail to keep our promise?

 

Smt. Bindiya Chaudhry asked: SHAT SHAT Pranam to dear Swamiji! Sometimes when we humans are in trouble or have a disease or extreme stress we tend to offer God bribe...for eg we say “Hey God, please cure me and I. will not eat non-veg for 40 days” or “Hey God, if you help me through this problem, I will give a donation of 1000rs in your temple” or “Hey God, please help me find my jewellery and I will distribute food to 11 poor people”, and so on. My question is that does this bribe hold any value, and is it OK to do so? Also, what if the particular problem gets solved and we do not perform what we promised? Will God get angry and punish us? If we are unable to fulfil any promise to God and ask for forgiveness, will he still be upset with us? The human mind experiences what is known as a fear and doubt in the mind that “If I don’t fulfil what I promised God will get angry and punish me either by ruining my health or work or anything else”. Is there any basis to this fear? Hey Almighty Lord Dattatreya Himself! The Almighty Swamiji! Please enlighten my ignorant human mind. Thank you.

Swami replied: The Gita says that all beginnings are full of defects just as a newly-lit fire gives off a lot of smoke (Sarvaarambhaahi...). God excuses those defects giving due consideration to the person who is in the initial stage of the spiritual journey. God even goes along with such defective ways for some time untill the person rises above that state. The person who wishes to control a strong bull running full speed has to first run along with it for some distance. The person rescuing people fallen in a mud pond invariably get some mud splashed on his body too. Hence, God accepts the bribe from you. But when you break your promise of doing something if God fulfills your desire, God does get angry. Breaking your promise to God is a big sin. Bribing God is a bigger sin. But let us say that God accepts your bribery considering it to be an inevitable initial defect. To add to it if you also break your word, it becomes the biggest sin.

Bribery	+	Breaking One’s Word	=	Complete Degradation
(Bigger Sin)	+	(Big Sin)	=	(Biggest Sin)

Keeping one’s word is a good quality. So, if you at least keep your word, that good quality reduces the bigger sin of bribery to just a big sin. What causes God to get angry is after having committed a bigger sin, you are committing another big sin. It means, instead of progressing, you are further degrading. If you at least keep your word, that good quality reduces the intensity of your sin to some extent. It at least indicates that you are making some progress, even though it is only a little progress.

Bribery	+	Keeping One’s Word	=	Little Progress
(Bigger Sin)	+	(Good Quality)	=	(Big Sin)

 

So, compared to bribing God and breaking one’s word, bribing God and keeping one’s word is better. Even rowdies and gundas can follow the bare minimum ethics of keeping their word, while doing the sins that they do. Then why can normal human beings not follow the same?

There are two types of devotion. The first is ‘prostitution-devotion’ or Veshyaa bhakti in which the devotee asks for practical boons from God in exchange for his theoretical devotion. The devotee says that he will recite the Hanuman Chaalisa 108 times if God grants him profit in his business. The recitation of prayers is a mental or theoretical activity whereas gaining profit in the business is a practical gain. A prostitute also similarly snatches away money from the customer by speaking sweet words and singing sweet songs that praise him. She has no love for the customer; she only pretends to love him by the sweet words and songs. This is the worst type of devotion. Such a devotee is only cheating God through intelligent tricks! The second type of devotion is ‘business-devotion’ or Vyshya bhakti in which the devotee does some material sacrifice but it is only for getting a higher material benefit. Even a businessman gives you items in exchange for an equal quantity of money. But the devotee says that if God grants him a profit of a lakh of rupees, he will offer 10% of it to God! So, in this business-devotion too, there is a lot of cheating. But it is a lot better than prostitution-devotion, which would be like praising a shopkeeper through a song or poem and asking him to give an item from his shop in exchange for the praise!

Entering into business-devotion and breaking one’s word in it, is worse than prostitution-devotion. At least, no word is broken in prostitution-devotion. Actually, we will succeed in these lower types of devotion if we keep our goal as ‘issue devotion’. Issue devotion is the highest type of devotion. It is the kind of love or devotion that we have for our issues. We practically serve our children and sacrifice our wealth for them without aspiring for anything in return from them. Service is work. Wealth and property is the fruit of our work, which we invariably pass on to them. We sacrifice both work and the fruit of our work to our children without expecting anything in return. We must do the same for God. Even if one is a sinner, one should at least retain some sincerity while doing the sin. Such a sinner is better than the sinner who not only commits a sin but is also insincere and cheats while doing the sin!