Skip to main content

My Romantic God

 



When I was a kid I was taught that God was a mystery. God’s mysteriousness was the ultimate answer to all questions which had otherwise no sensible answers. Why did God create the graceful deer and at the same time the murderous tiger? Answer: God’s ways are inscrutable, boy.

I grew up and found it impossible to accept that answer. Like William Blake, I was buffeted time and again by the question whether the same god created both the tiger and the lamb. “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame (the tiger’s) fearful symmetry?” “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

The poet sees God in the lamb too. “He (God) is called by thy name,” the poet tells the lamb. “He is meek and he is mild.”

Who is the real god now? The fearful symmetry of the tiger or the gentle meekness of the lamb: which is the real face of god?

Are the terrorists who keep killing ordinary people in the name of certain gods the real men of god? Is the boy who chopped off the head of his teacher for the sake of a god the really religious person? Are those who erect gigantic temples the real representatives of god? Is the God of the Tiger the only real God?

Mystery, my mother answers. She is no more. I can hear her but. When I gave up her answers long ago as a young man, she collapsed. Her blood pressure had shot up. Her veins couldn’t absorb my mounting rebellion against god. Her God was the meek and mild god of the lamb. Her god was the lamb who sacrificed itself on a cross with a pathetic cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For me that god who died on the cross was the wretched antithesis of the Old Testament’s capricious autocrat.

Neither the god of the tiger nor that of the lamb makes sense to me as long as both exist. The capricious autocrat of the Old Testament would make some sense because this world of ours seems to be his creation going by all the cruelty, gloom and utter nonsense that characterise it. None but a sadist could have created this. Lambs are meant to be eaten by tigers.

But I hate that god. I can stand and admire the meekness of the lamb and the gracefulness of the gazelle. Even the tiger’s fearful symmetry is admirable. But I prefer the former. My favourite lines in the Bible belong to Solomon.

Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!

Your eyes are doves behind your veil….

Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely.

Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil….

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle,

that graze among the lilies…

I would love a romantic goddess, not the dour old man who goes by whims and fancies, gives commandments like governments giving UAPA and stuff at one moment and then issues sops at the next or mounts a cross and laments helplessly like a universal martyr. I can admire the mystery of the rose and the worm that is eating into its virgin beauty. I can admire the mystery of the lily of a day that is “fairer far in May”. But God, I’d rather have him face-to-face and heart-to-heart like Solomon’s gazelle “springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills…” with joy in the eyes and love in the heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Deliciously AliveNovember 5, 2020 at 11:40 AM

    Your writing is very thought provoking and very brave, Tomichan.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 5, 2020 at 11:52 AM

      Thanks for saying that. Sometimes such endorsements become necessary.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
47 comments
Read more

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...
19 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Loving God and Hating People

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...
11 comments
Read more