Religion and
understanding
Before I rant with my
faulted sense of understanding … this is in postlude to extensive readings of
Karen Armstrong’s books and that I accept my ignorance when it comes to divine
wisdom.
Being non-atheists, we believe in
a remarkable project manager, who has conceived this project from beginning to
end, has delegated tasks to his team and then has set into motion this amazing
universe and still manages every component – no matter how big or small. So
when I am asked how I explain theory of evolution if I believe in genesis, or
when I am asked the mechanism of prayer, or when I am asked about the prophets
and how they coincide with scientific history – well I don’t know and maybe I am
not supposed to know.
Recently, I was a part of a big
campaign team with obvious leaders and power-brokers. The golden rule was to ‘listen,
execute and not ask questions – just trust’. Is that not what ‘God’ asks of us?
Is that not the recipe for peace and obedience (considering obedience would be
the key to salvation). But then why is that I sit here and I regret the time
when I did not ask questions, when I did trust, when I did abide by the
command?
My personal dilemmas are beside
the point – what brings me here is to discuss the development of theology with
human society. The concept of divinity progressed as the human civilisation
progresses. It emerged from the very dependant idols with simplistic and
singular attributes like that of water, rain, sun, fertility and so forth. A
god that did just one thing and if he was angry with us, he didn’t do it
anymore. A god that we could feel and - in typical Bollywood style climax - shatter
him on the floor in disappointment, anger or frustration (to its effect, things
will actually improve after this disrespect). But then, God decided to ‘mix it
up’. He wanted His creations to believe in Him, complete with his invisibility
and hitherto universal presence and knowledge and control. For a hopeless
romantic of religion like myself, this would have been a perfect move. Only if
this had happened suddenly and was a command rather than a ‘gradual development
of understanding’. Now that I read the theological history, I read about
priests and sages and kings who needed an Almighty Lord to give hope or to
instil anger in the publics. As the days progressed towards modern religions,
more and more scholars altered the accounts and scripts to accommodate the
changing social and economic dynamics. When Israel’s king and scholars returned
from the Babylonian exile, they bought with them a God who didn’t reside on
Mount Sinai but was a company to His believers. That was a God who demanded
respect and ritual for His scripts, a God who demands sanctity of body and
mind.
Being a typical youth of
conspiracy driven global economics and politics, I wonder if divinity is a
requirement of Man and not of God? I wonder if the titles, sects, Holy wars,
fasting, praying, temples, mosques and churches was not what our Creator
demanded from us but what was a fragment of power snatched from him by his own
creation – the mankind. I wonder if the from the day of Adam till the
perplexities of my ignorance, the only theological intention was to stimulate
the inherent goodness of man to his fellows? What if theory of evolution and
genesis are both correct and the spirit of Adam was sent to the flesh only when
it had evolved enough to receive it.
All being said and done, the
project manager did send us a manual without a glossary.
