Skip to main content

Dear God

Dear God,

I lost faith in you long ago.  You did nothing to reinstate my faith.  You don’t care either way, I guess.  When millions of innocent people have been killed brutally in your name (which may be spelt differently by different people) and you never seemed to bother a bit, why should the loss of faith by someone as insignificant as me bother you?

Nevertheless, I’m curious.  Do you really care about anything at all?  I can put aside the earthquakes and tsunamis and other natural calamities in the name of natural laws which you might not like to fiddle with.  I prefer to see you as a law-abiding entity.  Then will arise a question: are you the creator of the cosmos or are you just a part of it?

If you are the creator, couldn’t you have done a little better work?  Couldn’t you create creatures capable of a little less evil and a little more goodness?  Why was evil necessary at all?  Or is goodness impossible without evil?  Are you also a blend of both?

What about the other guys up there?  In my country there are some 33,000 crore versions of you, it seems. Do you all fight with one another for supremacy?  For more acreage of the heavens?  Do you have elections to choose a leader or do you fight wars like our ancestors did to decide the occupier of the throne?  Do some of you indulge in manipulations and swindling like your creature here on earth do?  Do you find us, your creatures, amusing or silly or just not worth bothering about?

Do you hold some occasional conclaves like we do in the United Nations Organisation or OECD or OPEC to pull out the thorns planted in the flesh by one another?  Do Krishna and Jesus and Allah have a drink together?  I mean, at least a cup of coffee?  Or do you fight among yourselves allocating soma to the Indian gods and wine to Jesus and his variations and halal liquid to Allah?  Do you organise ghar vapsis for bringing back gods who might have deserted the fold for some reason or another at some time or another?  

I have a lot more questions.  But I’ll ask them once you answer these.  Hope to start an enlightening dialogue with you.

Yours sincerely,
Tom (Dick or Harry)

PS. Written in response to the latest ‘indispire’ theme [Unsent Letters] at Indiblogger.




Comments

  1. With the recent happenings around this world these questions are so obvious to come into our minds. But I have decided that none of these should make my faith dwindle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I admire you, Namrata. You are able to retain your faith in spite of all ....

      Delete
  2. LOL this was good one. A letter for the ONE and only God of all gods.Enjoyed reading it with a smile!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If there indeed are as many gods as India believes in, then there has to be a Narendra Modi or Hitler among them, Nina. My letter is addressed to HIM.

      Delete
  3. Your faith as an Atheist is stronger than the faith of a believer.
    Your questions are far more spiritual than all the rituals of all religions done together.
    As for the good v/s evil, I feel they cannot do without each other..
    For HE has given us free will to accept any of them as our brother..
    But if we want to get rid of Evil, still..
    Than better we stop distinguishing between everything and nill..

    Just scribbled some rhymes.. hope they are nt too bad :P.. btw nice letter.. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Roohi. I'm delighted probably because in spite of all the intellectual and rational objectivity I uphold I still have a very subjective and "evil" ego that likes to be boosted. :)

      I liked your highlighting HE for god. Long ago, as a student to priesthood in a Christian philosophy seminary, I raised the question whether god was necessarily masculine and was told that I was running the risk of being a heretic. Such is religion.

      Delete
  4. Having been a believer myself, I asked so many questions. Finally I have realised that the version of God we are taught about is so skewed. I have decided to have more realistic beliefs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. God haunted me for too many years, Jaibala. I couldn't escape, I thought. Finally I managed to.

      Delete
  5. I really wish that he answers to your letter real soon ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I keep changing my views on it, while I have to confess I find it comforting to believe he does exist .. :)

      Delete
    2. Can you send me a response imagining yourself as God, Sangeeta? Seriously, I would love that.

      Delete
  6. As a kid I believed in god and in his magical powers.. but as I grew up, reality struck me hard.. when see the world and sufferings and things that are happening in the name of religion and god, I strongly believe he is not there.. There is a supreme power.. it could be sunlight or anything that is helping us survive.. I am not saying Rama, Krishna were not there.. I believe they were just kings not gods.. There are saints, messengers but I believe they are just good people believing in good.. There is no god.. If he is, he wouldn't just create us , watch us fight and kill and have fun.. right???? I liked your idea of god being a part of the cosmos not the creator.. May be he is as helpless as we are

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shruti, many years ago I wrote a poem on the theme of god being a part of the cosmos. It's one of my favourite poems (our of my own, I mean). Let me paste it below. It was published in an anthology of poems at that time.

      God's Love Song

      I willed my being into an extension
      And the cosmos was born in a Bang:
      Every birth is a terror and a joy,
      Every creation an extension of a core.
      I live, move, and have my being
      In all that is, and that shall be,
      Much as in the core that sits here.

      Hypothesis is what the creation was
      When I let myself go in a bang:
      An overflow of love infinite.
      Experiment is what the creation is
      When I add patterns in the mosaic:
      A sporting game of love unremitting.
      Abel was I, much as Cain was.

      I am the turbulence of the rolling waters,
      The rage of blasting bombs and fleeting bullets,
      The hunger in the eyes of widows and babies,
      The roar of the clouds, and the grace of the rainbow.
      And the nailed wail on the crucifix.
      Evolution is what the creation is, of
      The hell and the heaven that I am.

      Delete
  7. I guess your post has been submitted to IndiVine instead of IndiSpire.
    Do write to Team IB & they will shift it to the list of all posts for the same topic.

    Incidentally, my post has a similar premise! Even I have shared about letters to God with questions like- if He's the creator why does He destroy?
    Someday, hope all our letters will get replies...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was my mistake. I realised it after posting.

      The answers may be destined to be mysteries.

      Delete
  8. "Couldn’t you create creatures capable of a little less evil and a little more goodness? Why was evil necessary at all? Or is goodness impossible without evil?" these are my questions too. Why bad things happen to good people. And bad people get away with whatever they do? I have seen it multiple times. But I was taught that we need to be good and good will come to us. When I realized that this is not true in most of the cases my faith is shaken. Wish Almighty read your message as in the movie Bruce Almighty :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are many experiences in my life too which show that wickedness is much more powerful and hence successful than goodness. The other day, after reading this post, a friend of mine rang me up to argue that truth will win in the end. I said, "We have that motto (satyameva jayate) inscribed on our national insignia for decades. Has truth really prevailed?... Even if it does, in the end, it would have taken much painful toll on the honest persons..." I read a lot of philosophers in order to get a satisfactory answer to this problem. Finally I accepted the view that 'God' is also evolving with the cosmos. After all, God is a human creation!

      Delete
  9. If you are the creator, couldn’t you have done a little better work? Couldn’t you create creatures capable of a little less evil and a little more goodness? Why was evil necessary at all? Or is goodness impossible without evil? Are you also a blend of both? impressive and true questions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. God's agents on the earth (priests, preachers, reformists) are usually more evil than the simply layman!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...