Everyone wants to serve God, but as an advisor. This is true even, and especially, for atheists; their normally non-existent god pops into existence whenever they feel like advising him, and vanishes into non-existence after gratefully accepting their counsel. However, as Arjuna discovered at the start of the second chapter of the Gita (02.06), giving advice to God only frustrates and confuses us: frustrates us because we can’t change the inevitable will of providence, and confuses us because our mind keeps coming up with new and self-contradictory advices.

When things go wrong, they are meant to remind us that we are not the controllers. However, we neglect the reminders and, to hold on to our cherished role as controllers, we take on the additional role of advisors to God. The irony is that only when we stop advising God and start hearing from him do we let him do what we actually want him to do: help us.

Hearing the Gita from Krishna enabled Arjuna to redefine his own role in relation with Krishna. Before hearing the Gita, he thought of himself as the controller and Krishna as the cooperator. After hearing the Gita, he understood Krishna to be the controller and himself to be the cooperator. His corrected understanding paved the way for Krishna to guide him to a glorious victory.

When things apparently go wrong, we need to submissively and prayerfully hear from Krishna through his representatives and through the inner voice. Then we gradually realize that Krishna already has the most perfect plan. The only thing wrong in it is that we have taken on the self-appointed role as Krishna’s advisor. When we take up the right role of Krishna’s assistant, he uses us to do glorious things that far excel our best advises.