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| 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 are, the harder they are to love. Their petty demands, their
ingratitude, their endless complaints – I lose patience.”
Father Zosima’s advice is to face her
struggle. “Loving God in dreams is easier than loving people in reality. … Real
love is hard work… silent effort, with no reward, not even gratitude. That is
where true love begins.”
That woman realised that her longing for
God is not false, but incomplete.
My acquaintances, on the other hand,
make God just an excuse. The church for them is a place to where they escape
from home or society. Other people are
their scapegoats on whom they pour out all the poison in their hearts. I have
seen many non-religious people who are far better than the religious ones.
PS. I‘ve been suffering from a rather acute flue preventing me from getting up from bed. That’s why I didn’t write in the past
few days.
" Religion is an Illusion - not Untrue - but a Striving for/after the fulfilment of the long-standing unfulfilled desires of the devotees."
ReplyDeleteThat's true, no doubt. But there's a lot more to it, I think. It can be an escapist measure of various types - concsious or otherwise, an intoxication, self-deception, a mask....
DeleteThat paraphrase is from Freud. For him, r"eligion is also the Return of the Repressed. "
ReplyDeleteThis certainly makes a lot of sense. The figure of God as a projection of the need for a loving father. Or God as an avenger of evil. And so on.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteI love that quote from the priest... and sorry to hear you have been down with a lurgy. Sending all good wishes for full recovery. YAM xx
It's flue, Yam. My typing was bad this morning because of some grogginess caused by medicines and so flue became flute :) I'm recovering rapidly. I'm a good survivor, if not a fighter.
Delete...lurgy is the Scots word for all infections of such nature! Glad to read of speedy improvement! Yxx
DeleteI hope you're feeling better now.
ReplyDeleteMuch better, thank you.
DeleteEverything religious has any meaning only if everything related to it is applied in our daily lives.
ReplyDeleteHope you have fully recovered. Take care.
(My latest post: Real-world lessons from younger folks)
Thanks for the wishes.
DeleteYes, religion is quite complex, as Jose Maliekal points out above. Sometimes - or very often - it has nothing to do with what we would expect of God and spirituality.