It does not matter whether I believe in god or not. It does not make a difference to him. Like it doesn’t matter to air whether I believe in it or not. We don’t go around saying “I have great faith in air and I’m a very airigious person,” or wear symbols of air around our necks, or go down on our knees and worship air on certain days of the week—it is all around us anyway, for us to breathe and stay alive. It does not discriminate. It is available to everyone who needs it, irrespective of whether we praise it or ignore it.
So is god.
I am a father of two sons. I give them the best things that I can in life—good advice, education, love, affection, caring, as well as material things which until now have not turned them into spoilt brats. All I expect them to do in return is to make full use of my gifts and grow to be good human beings. I do not expect them to go down on their knees and sing praises to me. And if I, a mere mortal father, do not expect praises, how much less must the universal father hanker after our puny eulogies and postures of servility. Seeing us work hard at making full use of his gifts might give him a real high, though.
I use the masculine for god simply out of habit—because “it” would sound like I’m talking about a teacup, and because going through a gender battle to call him “her” is simply not worth the trouble. But how male chauvinistic we have been to call god “he” to start with! We all know that a woman is the creator and source of life as we know it—when we talk about ourselves, we say we owe it all to our mothers—but when it comes to god, it is the divine father who has made us and given us all we have. If in the end of it all god really does exist as a definite entity, it must be in a self-sufficient form, both male and female. The one source. The beginning of all things, even of maleness and femaleness.
God—the most misused, abused word in humankind’s vocabulary throughout history. In whose name we have fought the most barbaric and savage wars in distant history, in whose name we kill and burn each other and each other’s babies even today. In the name of god, we turn into devils.
I wish we’d realise how insignificant we are, how we inhabit one of the tiniest planets in one of the most obscure solar systems in an unfashionable galaxy at the back of beyond; maybe then we’d realise that god, if at all he does exist as the entity we make him out to be, must have better things to do than follow our pathetic efforts at building little structures which supposedly house him. And that hell, if at all it does exist as the place we make it out to be, must be full of those of us who make the loudest noises in god’s name. If a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian cannot see god in each other, then we are all hopelessly, irrevocably blind. And will remain blind forever.