24 Oct God, Why?
The concept of God is peculiar to the human species. Neither the ants foraging in the sand, nor the peacock preening its feathers, nor even the shark lording over the uncharted depths of the sea, seem to betray the slightest yearning for understanding of and access to divinity. They are content to just be what they are, to find safety and sustenance, to live their lives without questioning their world.
Man though, lives surrounded by his kind, among family and neighbours, colleagues and strangers.
Rationalists like to say that the concept of God stemmed from early man’s fear of the elements. But there is so little in religion about how man must deal with the elements, and so much about how man must deal with his fellow men. Man must have, in his early days, living among the denizens of forest and mountain, had occasion to compare his insecurity with the contrasting acceptance of all other living beings.
A dog can only be a dog… it is a simple enough role. To eat when food presents itself, to forage when it does not, to sleep and excrete and copulate at will… But the human brain has always left us at the mercy of its myriad choices. Greatness or pettiness, contentment or greed, truth or falsehood, virtue or sin; no other living being has to grapple with so many choices. And we face these choices all the time, whether window shopping or contemplating relationships, and find when we look around, that everyone else is doing pretty much the same thing. It’s like ordering coffee at one of the snobbish places… By the time you have answered their myriad questions about the specifications of your cuppa, you almost don’t want it anymore.
The human mind has terrifying bandwidth. It is saint and scoundrel all at once.
That is probably why we honk our horn at the car in front. Our mind tells us, this is your next objective, and suddenly, we want that place. And then, the next car ahead. And so on. The mind craves movement. It cannot live like the dog’s mind can.
In his early days, man must have spotted that difference. The great opportunity of being human. And watching his fellow men hunt and kill, conspire and confabulate, man must also have realised that though the mind is a formidable master, it is a capricious servant. Every day, it offers up to us, the ideal of greatness as well as the lasciviousness of mercenary thinking. Who can deal with it? Thus, the surly aloofness at thought level from our similarly hampered kindred, and the craving for unsullied goodness. What we fail to create within ourselves, let us worship as a quasi-unattainable. If the thought of God came to us rationally, and not by His grace, it came as the fear of man at a crossroads between saint and sinner, often with the signposts missing.
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