Creating Hells

Father Zossimov, a character of Dostoevsky in The Karamazov Brothers, defines hell as “the suffering of being unable to love.”  Zossimov is a monk who thinks that everyone is everyone’s responsibility.  That responsibility is love.  When my fellow being commits an error, it is my error too.  Such is the responsibility of love.

These days I come across a lot of people who cite religious texts and scriptures to stake their claim to truth.  Most of these people who are ready to lay down their very lives for the sake of their gods and religions are incapable of simple human love.  In fact, a good many of them are driven by hatred.  Consequently they create hells for others.

The Bible or the Quran or the Gita is the ultimate source of truth for them.  People can choose to believe anything.  They have every right to believe that “Adam ate the apple. / Eve ate Adam. / The serpent ate Eve. / This is the dark intestine.” [Ted Hughes, ‘Theology’]  The problem is when they insist on everyone to accept that dark intestine as the ultimate truth. 

One of today's WhatsApp messages: that 'very great' is a punch in my underbelly

I am a member of many WhatsApp groups more by necessity than choice.  Usually I desist from writing anything in such groups.  Once in a while, however, I respond to something especially if my personal comment is invited.  The latest such exercise got me some chastisement from the ‘religious’ people in that group who thought I was an evil influence with my ‘truths’ which are usually not in tune with religious ‘truths’.  Even if I provide historical or rational evidences for my claims, ‘religious’ people won’t accept.  I have never understood why ‘religious’ people choose to be blatantly blind.

Since I know that such people won’t open their eyes, I refuse to enter into debates with them.  There is no possibility of any common ground between them and me.  Instead of arguing with them, I put up my views in my blog.  They may or may not read.  That’s their choice.  Most of them don’t, I know.  They read only the Bible or the Quran or the Gita.  Let them.  Leave me alone, that’s all what I want.

Father Zossimov makes an interesting observation about such religious people. He says that such people are saved only by the death of their god.  “Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honour those whom they have slain,” says the monk.  The crucified Jesus is the most ubiquitous image in Christianity.  And Jesus was slain by the religious leaders of his time.

Religions kill the spirit of the prophet, twist his teachings to suit the needs of the founders of the religions, and then set up the prophet as their god.  It is a god who dances to the tunes played by the believers.  Such believers want others also to dance to those tunes.

The world would be a far better place if such religions didn’t exist.