Reconcile with Oneself!
This is an earnest attempt to help fellow humans who are confused by the apparent contradictions in religion, science and the questions about the nature of God. There is one reason why you should read on! I dont charge you for my suggestion and I have no hidden agenda to pursue. Further more I dont consider myself to be a guru in the making, you are free to put in your comments and I am more than willing to change my views if you say something Convincing!
The idea here is to help the seeker of a religion to free himself from those anxieties and emotions which can confuse him and throw him into inaction or put him along the wrong path.
Stage 1- Guilt imposed by standards
I would often try to see if I really met the standards of my religion. Most humans make mistakes. The greater mistake is in not giving importance to this question. One cannot be a true believer in a religion if One fails to examine this concept. It is a different matter that after such an examination, one concludes that these standards are non essential to life or plainly erroneous. But unless this question is visited, the seeker can be said to live in blissful ignorance. I needed to free myself from such a guilt feeling. People would normally react to this situation in different ways, according to the people they meet and according to their very own ideas of religion. Some might go to a saint or to a minister and confess and pledge before God,and promise that they would indeed become a better person. To make themselves free from guilt some people would reconvert or undergo some kind of religious ceremony. All these token efforts are fine, but these serve mainly as an emotional tool, but unless properly adressed, these make the individuals repeat mistakes, or it just happens that one emotional issue becomes another.Old dies but a new one comes up in its place. So how did I deal with my situation of guilt? I decided that ,what is done in the past cannot be revisited but it can be improved to the greatest possible extent in the future. With such an attitude, I am certain that almighty would certainly look upon any individual even if it were me with favor. The story of Jean Valjean from the book Les Miserables (Author Victor Hugo) is one of the best inspiration which one can get in this matter. I will never forget this book. It does not show the main character becoming a born again christian or undergo some kind of purificatory rituals and even if he did , it is hardly relevant to the message of the book. What a memorable character. He changed himself from a rascal to an angel and what a transformation. There would be no one who is not convinced that what matters is the effort one takes to change the present and to change one's deeds and actions.Though you or I may have done nothing antisocial or against the law, I think anybody who has even the slightest sense of guilt in life should read this book and digest the deeds of this wonderful character. This man comitted great crimes, but he lead such a divine life afterwards,so much so that every reader would be put to shame and they are sure to say- "I was never this bad but I was certainly never this Good!". This is how we should deal with guilt, by doing so much good to offset the bad we have done. For those who have never read this book , I strongly recommend you this work and I promise you ,that you will know exactly how to free yourself from any feeling of guilt, which you may have had in this life.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/135
Stage 2 - Confusion on the nature of God and questions on how God deals with atheism and heresy
Let us assume that there are two individuals - atheist A and religious man B.
Let us say A has done 30 units of good deads. 20 units of bad deeds.
Let us say B has done 27 units of good deeds. 25 units of bad deeds.
Any modern rational person would say that A would be dearer to God than B.
But a religion bred person has a problem here. B has been baptized and to the best of his ability done good. But A is an atheist and worse he was never baptized, never visited a church even. I am delibrately using christian terminology here because this issue is encountered to the greatest extent by christians and muslims. If they dont, they should right away sit down and contemplate on this problem. In an ingenious way a bookish christian might explain away this problem by suggesting that "by following christ the goods deeds of B increases by 100000 units and there is no reason why he should not be favored more than A".
Let us throw aside the blind quotations and think without any bias- there is no doubt a fair and equal god would look at the good intentions of an individual with the greatest degree of importance. This simple illustration should make us feel strongly motivated to be a good person before giving importance to anything else. Ideas about God hold significance only later. It will not make one dearer to God just because another individual understood God's nature better. You want to be friends with a good person and who is helpful to one and all, not just because he was your neighbour and knew you and your family very well. This idea will not convince many immediately, but those who have involved themselves in social welfare and seen and experienced unmotivated love will second my views. If you dont agree with this , you should still contemplate ,because you dont certainly have an answer. The resolution of this problem is one of the keys in freeing your mind. I am sure that people will like to say that "hey this does not mean we should not worship God!" I would say "true", but even if we should worship God, it is not true to say that a person indulging only in service to man and not to God, does not win his equal favor. That is the focus here. If all religious institutions put stress on service and making a better human out of the people they serve, as the only real goal, people will automatically win favor of God, and God will bring them into the way, he feels most suitable to that individual. It is business to sell God. You may want to read the ideas of vivekananda as a further exploration of this concept.
http://www.towardstillness.com/articles_service.htm
Stage 3- How to free oneself from anxiety and depression arising out of misery and sorrow
Any rational believer will know that a fair God will equally favor two people of equally good nature, irrespective of their religion. So if someone is suffering, it means there is something to learn and some effect of past action which is affecting that individual.Even if one does not want to relate suffering to concept of sin or karma, it is clear that some kind of cause was behind the effect. One can suffer and continue to do so, or one can be hopeful of cure and say I will die with honor by fighting to my last breath.The extreme form of such hope is to sit in a corner and pray night and day to God.But one should understand for oneself, where one is getting into the state of inaction and this is important for the individual to identify. It is a matter of choice - inaction or action? So help yourself and be a good individual and be prepared to be a martyr and dont die a coward. Fight till your last breath against every misery and sorrow. If there is any chance to win, it can be got only by fighting with the problems and not by inaction .Choice is yours. You can also pray apart from making effort. But dont expect miracles to happen when you make no effort. Be prepared to be a martyr, like the spartans getting ready for the war.Nothing more to say here!
Stage 4 - How to deal with contradictions between religious works and science
There is no need to feel confused. The Purpose of religion is served once you have become a good individual. If you feel that your religion has made you into a good individual, why feel miserable? Why worry if religious teachings about matter and world, seem to contradict with science. Do you know so much that you can say with certainity that God's words have been correctly deciphered by you? If you feel convinced by science be convinced about it , or else if you feel convinced by statements in your religious book then that is okay too. Bottomline, if you have become a better individual your religion has already proved its worth. If Not Go back to preceding stages starting from Stage 1.
Regardless of whether you believe in the principles of science or in the principles of religion , it does not matter, once you know you have become a better individual because of your religion. Your religion is true once you have become a better individual.Keep your mind open and dont be ashamed to question what is in any book even if it were your holiest book, and if it does not fit in with your rational outlook, try to reformulate your ideas thoroughly and carefully. Dont dismiss views and ideas, but question them. Your religion does not become wrong by questioning and reformulation. Please also dont start a new religion without a complete confidence inspired by rationality and practical experience of every single truth. Be prepared to admit that observations are relative to time and place and these ideas may turn truly false, when another individual digests it. This also means that, you should not get into a fanatic preaching mode, even if your religion is as old as the hills and as popular and well known as the sea or even if it completely convinces your mind.Similarly dont give up on a religion just because some teachings dont match with science or modern standards of humanity.When I say dont give up on religion, I dont mean you should stick to every fairy tale in the book, and I dont mean you should not give science its due place . I believe you should allow humility peppered with sceptism, to penetrate the shield of even hard held religious ideas. By failing to do so, you may actually be doing injustice to the very founders of the religion and even if you dont consider that to be the case, by failing to do so, you dont allow humans to be more enlightened . God wants people to move forward and become more enlightened and use their rational powers more often. If you throw away a religious book completely, inspite of the good that it has done for you and millions of others, then you confuse less learned people and throw them into a state of anarchy and sorrow ,which does them no good at all.Any acceptance or rejection of an idea must be gradual, marked by sceptism at every step and every individual must be encouraged to do this exercise at his own pace and in his own way. Give more importance to the principles ,than to the word and letters.
No matter what action you take in this matter,you are stuck with the relative paradigm , and you are in no way harmed by using a good measure of reverent sceptism. If you still dont know how to deal with this question, you are a man of inaction and ignorance and you have still not crossed stage 3.
I am happy if there is atleast one person in this world who takes life more positively after reading this Blog! It is easy to live with both religion, science and lead a life free from misery and lead life with confidence, once you know exactly how to deal with these critical questions.Cheers!
