Kids Questions

Our creator is a spiritual Being, not a physical Being. Did you know that spiritual things are very different from physical things and do not have a location, or a shape?! It sounds very strange, but let me explain…

For example "Love" is also a spiritual thing. If someone asked you "What does the love you have for your parents look like?", or "Where is that love?" you would have a very hard time showing them because love is a spiritual thing, and like all spiritual things it is not restricted to any location or shape, even though it's very real! If someone opened your heart they would not find "love" inside would they? even though you do love your parents! So we can see that some things exist that we can't see directly.

Another example of a spiritual thing is "Knowledge". If someone asked you "What does knowledge look like?" or "Where is knowledge?", you would not be able to show him because knowledge is a spiritual thing, so it doesn't have a shape or a location, even though its real, and if someone opened your head they would not find "Knowledge" inside would they? even though you do have knowledge!

So the answer to "Where is God?" is that like all spiritual things He is not restricted to any particular location — how strange is that!!!

Just look around you at the wonderful world you are living in, and also look within yourself and consider the amazing powers that you have been generously given, and you can soon see what God is like. God is a Spirit so we can't see Him directly, but what we can see is all of the wonderful things that His Will has created!

For example when you look at the clouds that cast their shade, and pour down their gentle life giving rain, you can see that God is merciful and kind.

And when you look at the perfect detail and order in nature you can see God's great intelligence and wisdom.

And when you look at the ocean, you can see God's majesty and grandness.

And when you look at the stars, you can see God's loftiness and glory.

And when you were a baby looking up at your parents, you could see God's loving kindness.

In fact every single thing that God has created, shows us something about God. For example a butterfly shows us His gentleness and grace — and a hurricane shows us his power!

We who are very tiny creatures have been gifted by God with many wonderful powers, like the power of sight and hearing, and even greater powers too, like the power of understanding and knowledge, the ability to forgive, and the ability to have feelings such as joy and sadness. Our Creator certainly has all of those powers too in a far greater measure — otherwise we tiny creatures could never have received them could we?

God is extremely loving, and generous, and merciful — but also stern and wrathful. He is extremely gentle and kind — but also fearfully powerful. He is awe-inspiring, and unapproachably glorious.

We can't see God directly though, because He is a Spirit, and spiritual things don't have a fixed shape or a location and are invisible to us. We cannot see God Himself but what we can see is all of the things that His Will has created for us in this physical world for our growth and training. The most wonderful thing that God has created for us to see is the Prophets of God, also known as the "Manifestations of God" (because they manifest/show God to us) — In this Day the Manifestations of God are the Blessed Báb, and Bahá'u'lláh.

We can't see spiritual things like God, or Love, or Knowledge directly, so how do we learn about them? We know them because we can see their signs and effects in this physical world! This is how we know them.

This is actually how scientists learn about things that they can't see directly — by observing their signs and effects. For example nobody has ever seen a force called "gravity", but we are certain that "gravity force" must exist because we see its signs and effects — which is that objects are pulled towards other objects.

In the same way, we also know about other invisible things by their signs and effects.

For example we see the signs and effects of love, which is that people are willing to be patient and happily sacrifice their time and energy, even their lives for each other — so love must be real,

and we see the signs and effects of knowledge, which is that wonderful inventions and technology appears in this world — so knowledge must be real too even though we can't see it,

similarly we see countless signs and effects of God in the world — like the beautiful scenery of nature, and the amazingly organised and perfect details in the world from the tiny invisible atom all the way up to the gigantic galaxies. In fact every created thing in the world is a sign of God's greatness and power — including yourself too! (you didn't create yourself, did you?)

Because we can't see God Himself, and because God wishes us to know and love Him, and to be able to receive His guidance — He always sends into the world a wonderful and inspiring person to be a source of guidance and inspiration for mankind. This wonderful person is one of the greatest signs of God to mankind.

Buddha, Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, Krishna, Muhammad, the Báb, Bahá'u'lláh — Depending on which part of the world you were born in you would know about at least one of these people. They are the Manifestations of God, who are the Founders of the religions throughout history, and whenever mankind faithfully obeys them, society makes enormous progress in social order and technological progress and becomes kinder and closer to God, and whenever mankind begins to ignore them, society starts to decline and go backwards towards fanaticism, or superstition, or materialism and moral decline. This is an undisputable historical fact. You will find that every great civilisation was founded on the influence and teachings of the Manifestations of God.

So if you really want to know about God and want to see Him, the most effective way is to learn about and listen to God's greatest signs on earth — the Manifestations of God.

Yes absolutely! God loves you and is kinder to you than you even are to your own self! He loved you, that's why He created you! God said:

"O Son of Man! I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life."

God loved you even before you were born, and when you were a tiny baby he organised sweet milk for you to drink, and eyes to watch over you, and hearts to love you.

"…ere thou didst issue from thy mother's womb, I destined for thee two founts of gleaming milk, eyes to watch over thee, and hearts to love thee."

In fact God cares about you so much that everything He created in this world was specifically for your training/learning and development. The trees, rain, sunshine, stars, clouds — everything! God said:

"Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things."

He organised all these things for you without you even asking Him for them. These are all examples to show how much God cares about you and loves you.

There are numerous reasons why suffering happens to people:

Sufferings that come to us from God

Some sufferings actually comes to us from God! These sufferings are always for our perfection and training. The more often you put gold into the fire, the purer and more perfect it becomes! If you consider history you will find that the greatest people have always suffered the most, and this suffering is not a punishment, it's a gift. For example your father might punish you to stop a bad behaviour from developing, or he might put you through hardship so that you are trained and properly develop and reach your potential. These sufferings are because he loves you and he wants you to grow correctly, not because he is unkind or hates you!

Sufferings that are caused by ourselves

There are also other sufferings which are caused by our own bad choices, for example if a person eats too much they will ruin their digestion and become ill! Or if a person ignores the advice of a doctor he will get sick, or if a person ignores the advices and commandments of God he will suffer in his life as a result. These are unnecessary sufferings which are our own fault. This suffering however causes us to reconsider our decisions for next time and hopefully not repeat the bad choice again!

Sufferings that are caused by others

There are also sufferings which are caused by the bad choices of other people. When these kinds of sufferings happen to us it's an unfair injustice to us, and God has promised that he will never overlook an injustice, and will right the wrongs, and in either this world or the life to come He will compensate the poor victim of the suffering and punish the person who caused the suffering. God promises this:

"O OPPRESSORS ON EARTH! Withdraw your hands from tyranny, for I have pledged Myself not to forgive any man's injustice. This is My covenant which I have irrevocably decreed in the preserved tablet and sealed with My seal of glory."

Do you know why these injustices and sufferings caused by people's bad actions exist? Do you know why it's even possible? It's because God has gifted human beings with free will, so that we could enjoy life as humans with choices (otherwise if God didn't give us free-will then we wouldn't be humans! we would instead be like stones, or plants that have no free will and can't make any good or bad choices!).

Because we have free will, it means we can choose to do the right thing, or choose to do the wrong thing and cause suffering to ourselves and others. If we use our free-will to do bad things this is not God's fault, it is the person's fault who chooses to do the wrong thing. If someone does do the wrong thing with their free will, God is aware of this, and will compensate the victim, and punish the perpetrator, either in this world, or the next. This is His promise to us.

Have you ever noticed how some creatures such as the beautiful parrots and colourful birds, really love the sun? and in the morning as soon as the sun rises they sing melodies and play in the sunshine, enjoying the suns beauty and warmth? Whilst at the same time there are some other creatures, like bats and spiders who really don't love the sun at all! They can't see its beauty and are ungrateful of the sun, in fact they even avoid the sun and turn away from it.

Do you know why this is? Why do some creatures love the sun, and others don't? It's because of the creatures themselves that determines whether they love the sun, or don't love the sun. The creatures that have become blessed and bright love the sun, and the creatures that have become dark and gloomy don't love the sun.

It's the same with people. The more beautiful and bright and blessed your heart is, the more you love God, and the less bright your heart becomes the less you love God.

How do we make our heart beautiful and bright so that we can know and love God more? It takes effort! For example if you obey the commandments of God, and are grateful for what you have, and you sacrifice your time and energy for others, and you do service for others, and you pray to God daily, your heart will become more beautiful each day and full of light, and you will know and love God. You would become like the blessed creatures like the colourful birds who love the sun.

But if you instead don't obey the commandments of God, for example if you backbite and gossip about others, or if you are dishonest or selfish, or if you watch bad films, or listen to rude music, or if you rarely pray to God or thank Him, these will make your heart lose its brightness and beauty over time, it will gradually become darker and further away from God, and over time will make it harder for you to know or love God, like the poor bats and dark animals that can't see how beautiful the sun is anymore.

There obviously has to be a first thing that existed, right? Today we have billions of things, we have clouds, birds, planets, stars, etc, but there had to be a first thing which caused all the other things to appear over time.

By "God" we mean the first thing that existed. Is there anything before the first thing that existed? Of course not! That would be a silly question.

Imagine being the very first thing that existed! No people, no trees, no flowers, no planets, no stars, no laws of science — NOTHING EXCEPT YOU! Did you know that the first thing that existed had absolutely nothing around it, and nothing before it that it could rely on or get help from in order to exist? This is one reason why we say that the first thing is extremely powerful and self-subsisting. Self-subsisting means that something is so powerful that it can survive completely by itself! Which is exactly what the first thing had to do! So we say that God is "self-subsisting".

This incredibly powerful first thing, that was self-subsisting and had no creator of its own — is what we call God.

So, if someone ever asks you "Who Created God"? The answer is — Nobody! Because by God we mean the first thing and there's nothing before the first thing! The first thing is what causes all other things to exist.

To answer this question, it helps to know the difference between a "tool" and a "builder". Let's use the example of a book being created.

When a book is created, although it looks like the book is being written by a pencil, the pencil is not the actual "builder" of the book, it's only the "tool" that was used. The actual creator of the book is the mind of the human, and the mind is invisible. In other words although outwardly it looks like pencils and hands make book, they aren't the things that actually wrote the book, they were only the tools used, the actual thing that created the book was the invisible mind of a human that chose to make the hand and the pencil move in that way to form letters and then words and then sentences and a book.

Because people can't see God's spirit directly (He's a Spirit!) and they can only see what God creates, sometimes they think that the tools He created (like nature) are the actual thing that created us! But this is not the case.

Nature is only the "tool" that God built to make His will happen in the physical world, it's not the actual "builder". The actual builder is far more powerful and is invisible, the same way that the actual builder of a book is the powerful and invisible mind — not the mindless pencil.

It's impossible for a pencil to write a book on its own, because it doesn't have a mind or intelligence so can't write books that contain knowledge. Similarly, it's also impossible for nature to create living animals and humans on its own, because nature doesn't have a mind or free will or intelligence to be able to put those powers into humans. It's just the tool.

"Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator…. Nature is God's Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world."

I hope that makes a bit more sense now, but if you would like some more explanation that nature is only the tool, and on its own cannot build humans, the same way that pencils on their own can't write books on their own, you can read this chapter from the book "Some Answered Questions" by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who was the son of Bahá'u'lláh (the founder of the Bahá'í Faith) and a very wise person. He explains this in detail here.