Skip to main content

The God Business


In a relatively old Malayalam movie, Kizhakkan Pathrose, the protagonist is a criminal.  One day he goes to a Catholic priest who is involved in many charitable works and says, “I have committed a lot of crimes and caused much pain to many people.  I want to atone for it all by making a donation for noble causes.”  The priest accepts the cheque without saying a word.

“This is not atonement,” I blurted out while watching the movie a few minutes back on a TV channel.

“Why not?” asked Maggie, my wife, the only other person present in the room.

Courtesy: Internet
“Real atonement is only when the person gives up his criminal ways.  The rest is commerce.  This fellow is trying to buy atonement with money and the priest is his accomplice.”

Maggie was about to say something but suppressed it.  I did not succeed in making her speak.  I think she wanted to say that I was a silly idealist.

“Put God to work for you and maximise your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system,” directed the High Priest of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale.  This is what the protagonist in the movie did.  This is what most religious believers do.  They trade with God: I pay you money and you sell me forgiveness!

In the Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines the clergyman (priest, religious guru, etc) as “a man who understands the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.”

 As long as people understand God as a seller of forgiveness and religion as that God’s temporal agent, religion will remain a futile entity, though a commercially successful one.  


An atheist like George Santayana understood God and religion far, far better than any pious devotee when he said, “My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.”  True piety towards the universe is a highly refined level of consciousness which understands the meaning of kindness and courage, power and magnanimity, honesty and tenderness... People who have achieved that level of consciousness do not  need God or His/Her earthly agents and their hollow rituals.  The corollary to this maxim is that people who have not achieved that level of consciousness will not be rewarded by the rituals except for the psychological comfort and apparent permission to keep perpetrating the evils they have been doing.

Comments

  1. I always believe Human created Religion and not the other way round..But still why people are so obsessed with religion I fail to understand....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Religion is an infantile need, friend. I said it in a different way in my last post. Most people today have a protracted childhood and religion fulfils that need with the INFINITE love of God.

      Delete
  2. the toon goes apt! :) religion speaks its language .. blame the manipulators who claim highest positions on behalf of Almighty and translate religion for vested interests!
    Faith in religion is restored through the sayings writing in several books ... deemed to be understood as God's Own Words.. but interpretation of the writings depend on the reader.
    Wish forgiveness could really be bought :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear Jack, I used to call myself an agnostic. Now I'm a convinced ATHEIST, after having seen at close quarters how religion works. I refuse to accept any scriptures or their interpretations as meaningful. They are pure rubbish only meant to be manipulated by Machiavellian/Kautilian brains. I have seen it for years - in my early workplace too.

      Delete
  3. The toon like jack has mentioned is the synoposis of religion today. The write up of course is what defines the concept more deep. Religion should not be a way of forgiveness but of always showing the right path....

    Richa

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People are simply using religion, Richa, just like they use the transport system or the mobile phone. While the transport and the mobile have some real benefits, religion offers none really! Except for the people who wield it as a weapon...

      Delete
  4. The unproductive society system of our nation :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, religion helps to consume without producing by exploiting people's 'sewa' mentality.

      Delete
  5. True, religion is basically just another corrupt system in this world that is full of other corrupt systems.
    But it is also a beacon of hope for humanity, a shining light to look up to and gain strength from, in times of dire distress.
    So, two sided coin I think sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But one side of the coin is too heavily loaded Brendan.

      Delete
  6. God - a seller of forgiveness! :)
    As long as humans are emotionally weak religion will rule.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People refuse to raise the level of their consciousness - that's the problem, not emotional weakness.

      Delete
  7. Capitalism joins hands with religion-Christianity is now run like a business.
    I agree, repentance should come on the inside. Otherwise, all poor people would go to hell, and that's not how god intended it to be.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's not just Christianity that's playing capitalist game now, Chaitanya. Every religion is involved in the game actively. In case you find any which is not, do tell me.

      Delete
  8. Welcome to the club! But, unfortunately for you and me, there is no club for atheists!

    I will add one thing. "True piety towards the universe is a highly refined level of consciousness which understands the meaning of kindness and courage, power and magnanimity, honesty and tenderness... " There is a slight difference in the way I would understand this. True piety can never reach a DESTINATION, which always remains undefined. You find TRUE PIETY only in the path one has chosen - that path is paved over with all that you said, "... kindness and courage, power and magnanimity, honesty and tenderness... " It is a voyage of incrementals.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kindness...etc are only some examples, Raghuram. There is no hierarchy really unless you take my level of consciousness as incremental.

      There is a saying in my mother tongue which means that the fool learns by experiences while the wise man learns through observation. I'm a fool. Too many experiences with religious people.

      Delete
    2. You have had too many experiences; now it is time for you to sit down, take in the scenery and enjoy - observe!

      What I meant to say was that in your actiuvities you just notice the next step, do not look farther ahead. That is the incremental I referred to. Movement is important, movement towards all that you mentioned. The ellipsis at the end indicates that what is said is a sub-set and not the whole set.

      RE

      Delete
  9. People will continue to sin as long as they believe that God will redeem them of all the pain they have caused on Earth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly. So it's better to eliminate God from human consciousness. It's better to teach men (and women, no doubt) that it is our duty to be 'good' whether there is a god or not.

      Delete
  10. Any idea or philosophy once institutionalized gets corrupted.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Since my childhood, I skipped God for one reason: The tiring rituals stretching my patience. Later a kind of meditation revealed me from the tedium. It gave me scientific reason for believing only in one's work. I was happy. Gradually, I could unravel many questions that lay buried in my mind since childhood. Religion could not answer them. Religion is incapable of answering any question of life. It only threatens and controls people. It is a monarch. It is imperial. It cannot celebrate any sort of logical freedom. It keeps people blind. It cannot lead anyone to attain superior wisdom except prescribing some do's and don'ts.

    What I say... If a person wants to atone for his mistakes or crimes, he or she has to own up to the mistake first and vow not to keep it or do it in future at any moment of time and in any situation. There the person is forgiven. After that even the victim of his crime cannot have right to pelt stone at him or her. If the victim takes revenge or torments the person even after giving up the crime, then the victim himself or herself is none other than another criminal who only waited for a legal chance to do crimes.

    Religion is such a criminal. It waits for persons to do crimes and then demands him or her to 'atone' for the crime by pleasing it in a favourable way, say gobbling money or wealth of the so called criminal! Now say, isn't religion another criminal?

    I don't condemn religion. I condemn it only for the standards fixed for it by men, I mean, the real criminals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As long as religion remains a commercial enterprise (charging money for various services, rituals, etc), it will fail to produce any real spiritual benefit. Make stringent laws against use of money in religion, and you will see 99% of the priests, swamis, gurus and the like leaving the profession.

      Delete
  12. Religion is not God... one may believe in religion, may not believe in God and the vice versa. What I feel is some thing different... humanity is above all religion and God. Do you duty first and yes, practice first then preach... Thats the motto...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let