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.




Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 7, 2015 at 4:32 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 7, 2015 at 6:29 PM

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

      Delete
  2. Nima DasMarch 7, 2015 at 6:35 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 7, 2015 at 6:49 PM

      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. Roohi BhatnagarMarch 8, 2015 at 3:38 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 8, 2015 at 9:07 AM

      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. AnonymousMarch 8, 2015 at 10:11 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 8, 2015 at 10:14 AM

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

      Delete
  5. SangrywordsMarch 8, 2015 at 10:43 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 8, 2015 at 11:28 AM

      :)
      But HE doesn't exist, does HE?

      Delete
    2. SangrywordsMarch 8, 2015 at 4:47 PM

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

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 8, 2015 at 5:41 PM

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

      Delete
  6. UnknownMarch 8, 2015 at 12:15 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 8, 2015 at 12:38 PM

      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. Anita SabatMarch 9, 2015 at 11:20 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 9, 2015 at 11:27 AM

      It was my mistake. I realised it after posting.

      The answers may be destined to be mysteries.

      Delete
  8. AnonymousMarch 10, 2015 at 10:01 AM

    "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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 11, 2015 at 9:46 AM

      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. Yogi SaraswatMarch 10, 2015 at 10:32 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 11, 2015 at 9:48 AM

      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

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
16 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more

Octavian the Guru

Octavian was one of my students in college. Being a student of English literature, he had reasons to establish a personal rapport with me. It took me months to realise that the rapport was fake. He was playing a role for the sake of Rev Machiavelli . Octavian was about 20 years old and I was nearly double his age. Yet he could deceive me too easily. The plain truth is that anyone can deceive me as easily even today. I haven’t learnt certain basic lessons of life. Sheer inability. Some people are like that. Levin would say that my egomania and the concomitant hubris prevented my learning of the essential lessons of life. That would have been true in those days when Octavian took me for a farcical ride. By the time that ride was over, I had learnt at least one thing: that my ego was pulped. More than 20 years have passed after that and I haven’t still learnt to manage affairs in the world of people. That’s why I admit my sheer inability to learn some fundamental lessons of life. Th
8 comments
Read more