The God that Failed

 

Jacob, one of the biblical patriarchs, is forced to flee home in order to escape the wrath of his brother Esau whom he cheated rather meanly with ample assistance from his mother. Jacob finds shelter at his uncle Laban’s house where he falls in love with Rachel, Laban’s daughter. Laban promises to give his daughter in marriage to Jacob in return for 7 years’ of labour. Love can make you do anything, even embrace a 7-year slavery. At the end of the seven years, Laban cheats Jacob. The bride was led to Jacob’s dark tent in the night as was the custom. The marriage was consummated in the fire of a passion that had burnt for seven years. It is only in the light of the morning that Jacob realises the deception perpetrated by his uncle: he was given the ugly Leah instead of the beautiful Rachel.

Laban makes Jacob work for him for another seven years in order to marry his real love, Rachel. Referring to this grim episode from the holy book, Arthur Koestler wrote: “I wonder whether he (Jacob) ever recovered from the shock of having slept with an illusion. I wonder whether afterwards he believed that he had ever believed in it.”

Koestler was making a comparison of his love affair with Communism. In Communism he had embraced a gigantic illusion.

I was reminded of Koestler’s comparison after attending an online meeting on Saturday [Independence Day] evening. I had spent ten years of my youth with a religious congregation to which my spirit could never have belonged. Yet I went on to embrace that illusion for ten years. Like Koestler and his Jacob, I wondered afterwards again and again whether I believed that I had ever believed in what the congregation stood for.

That is why I refused to attend the preliminary meetings called by the congregation. It was supposed to be for the release of a book that they had compiled with chapters written on the theme of mother by various contributors including yours humbly. I ignored both the calls for preliminary meetings. Finally I was cajoled into joining the final, actual meeting in which the book was released.

The programme started with a prayer. An introductory talk. Then prayer. Another prayer. Yet another. I began to wonder whether I was invited to a typical prayer service of the congregation which I was familiar with in my days of Jacobian illusion. I felt nauseated and expressed my dislike soon after the function as a note in the WhatsApp group formed for the only purpose of this book release. I quit the group instantly too.

Allow me to fall back on Koestler a while yet. The same essay mentioned above. It is the first essay in an anthology titled The God That Failed. The failed God in the book is Communism. Koestler begins his essay by asserting that faith cannot be acquired by reasoning. Faith is similar to falling in love. It is a commitment that arises as a natural response to a psychological need. No one can force it upon anyone.

I can’t accept religious faith which I have come to see as nothing more than an illusion, however comforting that illusion may be. Koestler would say that I am a misfit from a psychological point of view. Anyone who revolts against systems accepted by the majority is a misfit. I am a misfit, I accept. I can’t help it. I can only request my self-appointed friends and well-wishers to leave me alone in this regard.

I have to live my life. I have no choice. I cannot capitulate myself to what my heart can only perceive as illusions.

Koestler’s failed God is Communism. Mine is what most people around me believe is the real God: a grand old man sitting up in a place called Heaven with a vengeance that is gathering momentum day by day and moving like a juggernaut toward the final Armageddon. He makes me smile in pity.