My God.

I don’t think I have ever before summarized my intense but brief views on the controversial question of ‘religion’. Perhaps I need to put it all down into words. What it is and what does it mean for a person to attribute himself with a particular religion? Is attribution to some kind of deity, a higher power as necessary a job as we have made it to be? May be that is it. The fact that we have made the acknowledgement of a Higher God a ‘job’, a duty, a contractual agreement. Shouldn't religion be rather more fluid? Shouldn't it flow to us and flow through us, like the wind or the song of a rare bird that emanates from the corners of a far flung desert. Shouldn't it be ever present around and within us, not because it is needed but because it is a part of our own essence. Shouldn't it rather be borne into our souls? Shouldn't our proclivity towards it be more spontaneous as our body’s reflexes acting as a shield against an impending doom.

Why is it then felt as more of a requirement today? Why has it been used as a tool for ‘lobbying’ or called ‘a calling’ of a higher authority.

Why should it be used to derive sympathy or love? Why should it become the cause for suffering and destitution for us? Why should it exist to preserve a ‘purpose’ for us? Why should it give us a cause for war or conflict? Why should it provide us with vengeance or retribution? Why should it be ‘used’ at all? Why can’t it just exist. About and within us. Inside and around us. Simply exist with no confusing twists and turns. With no perplexing reasoning and complex logic. Like a hymn or a chant. True, pure, simple.

What is good or bad should be as simple as our soul whispering to our minds and our minds appealing to our body. It should be what one pagan God has to say to another Christian or Muslim God. And perhaps it is that simple. Perhaps we have failed to see it so. So who is to decide whose religion is more divine than the other and whose God is more sacred than the other. For what if all our Gods spoke one language and what if we have failed to listen to their true calling?

A friend of mine once said; ‘religion isn't imperfect, it’s our interpretation of it that is flawed’. Though, the truth of this statement is still justified even today, I would be committing a grave sin in itself if I said it answered all my queries. There are other queries that come to the fore.

In the words of a pagan to a believer; ‘You don’t question what you believe in, you cannot. I must’. How shall I question the truthfulness of this statement? Does it not raise a mind boggling aspect?

To me, religion sometimes constrains our needs, our need to know everything. It puts limitations on a curious mind.

What comes after God? If there are consequences prescribed for our every action weather good and bad, than what is the consequence of creating us, the world or the universe? What are they leading to? Surely, the afterlife, a world after a world is not a ‘consequence’ we are inclined towards? If there is a creator to all and our creator is our one true ‘God’, than whom shall we ascribe His creator?

Surely, such blasphemy cannot be committed as long as a person is associated with one or the other kind of religion. Surely, it is a lie to commit to ‘think’ or ‘inquire’ beyond the restrictive capabilities God gave us. We say that there are certain things we cannot understand because God has deemed it for us. We cannot find the concealed ‘truth’ in this world and beyond because such things are only known to our creator and He alone is keeper of such secrets. Thus, our senses, the ability of a man to reason or inquire is belittled and devalued. There are only certain things we can know through our limited means and no more. Does religion than not create a line between what is known and what can be known? Does it not raise hurdles of ‘propriety’, ‘sacredness’ and ‘perfection’ for us? For to consider something perfect is to restrict man from questioning upon its masked imperfections.

If perfection is an illusion and the opposite of everything is predestined to exist than why is it that we cannot question everything under the throes of ‘religion’. The proof of life, the miracle of birth should be witnessed to be believed for we can only exist for so long under the assurances of ‘faith’.

Does a bird not feel free when it can wander where ever it wants? Isn't that the truest form of emancipation? How shall we be free than when there are certain lines we cannot cross? Certain boundaries beyond which ‘that’ knowledge cannot be known? It is not mine to ask or keep? That kind of wisdom cannot be comprehended by me?

Thus, to be free I must question. And question everything, I must.