I
verily doubt the verisimilitude of all our ingrained beliefs, especially those
that have been handed down to us generation after generation from time
immemorial. Obviously there must be truths that are both universal and timeless
for our universe to exist. However, with or without such truths, it’s still
folly to accept as true today truths that were last examined eons ago. If by
chance you are one of those Christians who is mortified by the thought of
critically evaluating the transcendental existence, let me remind you that
folly is condemned in the bible almost as much as sin itself. Further, in Hosea
God explicitly points out that his people perish because of lack of knowledge.
So you can choose whether you want to hold unquestioningly to your faith at the
expense of being ignorant and risking folly or if you would be audacious enough
to explore the heavens with a keen eye, are you ready to rediscover your
beliefs anew?
As a matter of fact, many a notable wise men and
philosophers throughout the ages have echoed this very belief. That God in
creating man in his own image and bequeathing him with mental faculties had no
intentions for man to wallow in ignorance and foolishness. Manly P. Hall said,
“If the infinite [God] had not desired man to be wise,
he would not have bestowed upon him the faculty of knowing.” And Einstein, “I don’t believe that the
very God who gave us the power of thought and intellect intended for them to go
unused.” Yet despite all the persuasive arguments asking us to open our
minds and understand the spiritual, in lieu of moving on in blind faith
tantamount to that requisite in kids for them to enjoy Santa’s gifts or the
Fairy’s tooth, we choose to dogmatically dodge with a simple: God is not meant
to be understood.
My feeling is that a modicum of understanding of God’s
plans, intent, and dynamics, if such exist, would certainly go a long way in
aiding and consolidating my faith wherever it may be shaky. I very well know
that he silenced Job’s reproaches by reminding him that it was he who had given
Job everything, and as such it was his prerogative to take it all away if he so
wished. But then again viewing it from this perspective, the most fundamental
equation in our relationship with God fails to add up. I’m referring of course
to the assurance that God loves us. If I in all my imperfections feel guilty
thinking of depriving my child of a gift already given to them, how come God
does not refrain from doing it? Or is there some concept of love that I’m
terribly misunderstanding? Could I be mistaken more than once? Because the
story of creation also conjures up questions in my mind that make me doubt if I
know what love is. Perhaps some theological literati amongst you could explain
to me why a loving father gives birth to children he knows only too well are
headed for temptation, hardship and, for some, eternal damnation. Please don’t
debase God to any of our mortal and carnal weaknesses nor should you
apotheosise us mortals while you are drawing parallels. I mention this fact
because a friend of mind tried explaining it to me by pointing out the far
greater rewards awaiting us at the end of our problems. From my point of view
the fundamental truth is that God had and has power to make sure man does not
undergo the punishment for sin. And before you flare up with the ‘God is just’
sermon and how man had to be punished, justice served, for God to retain this
nature, remember that God in his omniscience foreknew the fall of man, right? Could
he in his omnipotence also not have prevented the fall? Or, again I ask, did
his love for us necessarily have to involve our suffering? Why even banish
Lucifer to earth where his precious yet fragile little children resided? It
really boggles me, it’s analogous to a court judge letting loose a convicted
criminal upon his family to recruit into their gang those they will so he can
later punish the whole gang. A gang that now includes his own children! Any
sense anybody please? This are just some the questions that I have at the
outset of my quest for eternal life, having shunned the Sunday school. A verse
in the book of Revelation almost persuades me to be apathetic towards the
after-life but I know that a spiritual odyssey is rife with intellectual enlightening
as well. Hence, I set forth with a comforting thought: if my name be not in the
book of life, at least I will learn some beautiful secrets and gain insight
into the kingdom of God, and that to me is almost good enough.
Denying everything you know and setting out to find
the truth from scratch with no basic assumptions (which could be faulty hence
wrong conclusions) was Réne Descartes outset. Luckily for you and me, we
don’t have to scrap every ‘truthful’ nugget in our memory. I sincerely believe that
there are certain truths that have been under scrutiny so many times from so
many perspectives that we can hope to find no new thing if we dedicated our
lives into re-evaluating them. As such, our basic knowledge is that God exists
in whichever name you know him and whatever form. The Big-Bang Theory is
beautiful, meticulously formulated, and as a scientist I’m tempted to believe
in it. The infinite liberties it would give me in this life cannot be gotten
from any religion whatsoever, after all is it not each of our deities who
restrict our desires by imposing morality and a strict code of behavior upon us
in exchange for heaven, karma, nirvana, jannah or what have you? But the
Big-Bang Theory is deficient in many ways, its greatest weakness being the accidental
happening of the universe. With science’s very own emphasis on equilibrium, I
fail to see a system void of energy spontaneously generating some. This would
mean that the Big Bang Theory is limited by the bang itself; no one can
scientifically explain the source of the energy or why such energy would be
condensed about a single point in space-time.
The
sole thought in my mind is that which has helped me remain so liberal despite
my spiritual convictions. This is the knowledge that God orders the steps of
men so that they will end up wherever they were destined to. I believe that the
Almighty who created all that is, will guide me to the purpose for which I was
created.
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