Sabarimala burns, metaphorically of course, as nation and court
decides. While we fight over it, we need to talk about the deeper issue
of how we treat God and his business, and how we should.
God is everyone's favourite strawman, and Superman too—both at the same time. The faithful and the faithless hold him in high stead. Those who don't believe in him don't dismiss but criticize him equally for not being super enough. He's the guy we either shoot at or pray to when we can't explain the world (or anything else) to ourselves. He's everything and all in one for everyone at all times, regardless of whether he claims to be so. We think he automatically becomes public property and slack is the least he gets from us.
Surprisingly, it's an extremely good cover up that works. We can embrace our imperfection while thrashing his. What makes this idea possible is the fact that he is faceless and quiet the whole time. His absence and silence gives us the idea that he needs his business here on Earth taken care of whether we believe in him or not. And that we do with great glee—whether it's thrashing how out of times & oppressive he is or how he is misunderstood by those who claim so. We do it like its religious duty. His business is our business—everybody's business. On the other hand, everybody else's business is nobody's business.
This has a downside and an upside. While we all exercise our free rein over how God ought to work in society and the world, essentials of belief loses its identity. It becomes rationalised and stands corrected by those who don't believe in it (whom can just as well just ignore it). The social structures and the natural charm of the customs they inspire have imprints all round i.e. typical festival food and snacks, new clothes, reasons to gather as a community etc. Even for the agnostic, these mean more than sole worship of a deity. They take on meanings of community and people.
This free rein also keeps away eccentricity when religion starts to take away humanity from itself with outdated rules and values, or even just keeping the good, reasonable ones uncorrupted away from zealous stupidity. All religious believers are also humans, and religions should never preach any principle or teach an action that's possibly inhuman. It must never hold its adherents ransom from fear of not following rules that deny them free happy, explorative, healthy human existence in society.
When we claim the right to manage God's business, we need to make sure that we aren't on either extreme. If we are, we're no better than what we're fighting against. Ideally, we should stick our noses out of anyone and everyone's belief, while we draw the lines of how we address any major societal damage their overall belief system is, or is capable of, causing. There are, of course, cases when such simple activism doesn't go anywhere and the problem needs to be solved for the world to indeed be a better place when radical steps are necessary, and lines must be crossed. When we seek to throw the baby out with the bathwater i.e. the whole belief, its decades of history and evolution, and the community and society it has built since, with its ills, ours is never the best idea. That's robbing society of itself. The intermingling of the two is undeniable, and they feed off each other in more good ways than we can list.
God, first, belongs to the very community that's centred around him. It is them who need his affairs to even manage them. When we meddle, we essentially poke our noses in their affairs. As long as they are insulated to the world, we should be criticizing them at a distance to where this autonomy remains. We have a reasonable right to interject when their influence goes outside and is negative. Examples: a religious individual who has a secular profession (say a teacher) must not impress those views at her secular job (say on her class). She, for example, is free to do that inside her own religious or family setting.
We could debate the general effect that they will have by various parameters and respond how we feel is best for humanity (if there is a danger). Some are clearly inhuman, some clearly aren't, and others lie on various points on that spectrum. As with any kind of multi-view issue, we will never agree and the rational risk of claiming our way by any kind of force or arm twisting isn't going to create a way forward.
We have a mostly legitimate crux where we want to interfere, destroy, replace ord manage God's affairs for reasons that are good, and must find a way to make the outcome positive. We need to find a way in which we can debate the moralities on why something that's good for God is bad for man and vice verse. We need to understand what we protect when we lay ourselves on the line to protect his affairs and our religion, or seek to destroy them and religion. Having a go at each other isn't the way out. If we must, we must do our homework well and not seek (and are not due) immediate gratification for our own thinking and understanding.
We can't take God's business and make it our business lightly.
God is everyone's favourite strawman, and Superman too—both at the same time. The faithful and the faithless hold him in high stead. Those who don't believe in him don't dismiss but criticize him equally for not being super enough. He's the guy we either shoot at or pray to when we can't explain the world (or anything else) to ourselves. He's everything and all in one for everyone at all times, regardless of whether he claims to be so. We think he automatically becomes public property and slack is the least he gets from us.
Surprisingly, it's an extremely good cover up that works. We can embrace our imperfection while thrashing his. What makes this idea possible is the fact that he is faceless and quiet the whole time. His absence and silence gives us the idea that he needs his business here on Earth taken care of whether we believe in him or not. And that we do with great glee—whether it's thrashing how out of times & oppressive he is or how he is misunderstood by those who claim so. We do it like its religious duty. His business is our business—everybody's business. On the other hand, everybody else's business is nobody's business.
This has a downside and an upside. While we all exercise our free rein over how God ought to work in society and the world, essentials of belief loses its identity. It becomes rationalised and stands corrected by those who don't believe in it (whom can just as well just ignore it). The social structures and the natural charm of the customs they inspire have imprints all round i.e. typical festival food and snacks, new clothes, reasons to gather as a community etc. Even for the agnostic, these mean more than sole worship of a deity. They take on meanings of community and people.
This free rein also keeps away eccentricity when religion starts to take away humanity from itself with outdated rules and values, or even just keeping the good, reasonable ones uncorrupted away from zealous stupidity. All religious believers are also humans, and religions should never preach any principle or teach an action that's possibly inhuman. It must never hold its adherents ransom from fear of not following rules that deny them free happy, explorative, healthy human existence in society.
When we claim the right to manage God's business, we need to make sure that we aren't on either extreme. If we are, we're no better than what we're fighting against. Ideally, we should stick our noses out of anyone and everyone's belief, while we draw the lines of how we address any major societal damage their overall belief system is, or is capable of, causing. There are, of course, cases when such simple activism doesn't go anywhere and the problem needs to be solved for the world to indeed be a better place when radical steps are necessary, and lines must be crossed. When we seek to throw the baby out with the bathwater i.e. the whole belief, its decades of history and evolution, and the community and society it has built since, with its ills, ours is never the best idea. That's robbing society of itself. The intermingling of the two is undeniable, and they feed off each other in more good ways than we can list.
God, first, belongs to the very community that's centred around him. It is them who need his affairs to even manage them. When we meddle, we essentially poke our noses in their affairs. As long as they are insulated to the world, we should be criticizing them at a distance to where this autonomy remains. We have a reasonable right to interject when their influence goes outside and is negative. Examples: a religious individual who has a secular profession (say a teacher) must not impress those views at her secular job (say on her class). She, for example, is free to do that inside her own religious or family setting.
We could debate the general effect that they will have by various parameters and respond how we feel is best for humanity (if there is a danger). Some are clearly inhuman, some clearly aren't, and others lie on various points on that spectrum. As with any kind of multi-view issue, we will never agree and the rational risk of claiming our way by any kind of force or arm twisting isn't going to create a way forward.
We have a mostly legitimate crux where we want to interfere, destroy, replace ord manage God's affairs for reasons that are good, and must find a way to make the outcome positive. We need to find a way in which we can debate the moralities on why something that's good for God is bad for man and vice verse. We need to understand what we protect when we lay ourselves on the line to protect his affairs and our religion, or seek to destroy them and religion. Having a go at each other isn't the way out. If we must, we must do our homework well and not seek (and are not due) immediate gratification for our own thinking and understanding.
We can't take God's business and make it our business lightly.
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