RELIGIONS OF THE
WORLD ( Page 1) |
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| “As a deer
longs for a stream of cool water, so I long for you, O God.”
Psalm 42:1 |
| In Paleoanthropology Scientists reconstruct the physiological
or anatomical features of early humans by studying part of a skull
or a few pieces of bones. From available fossils we can tell what
they looked like. But the fossils will not tell us what they thought.
So we do not exactly know when our ancestors began to think of God.
Hence we look for other clues as records of human thought. Customs
and traditions leave telltale clues. And we make our conclusions based
on these clues. |
| In the World Book Encyclopaedia we read that the earliest
evidence of religious activity dates from about 60 000 B.C. In other
words, since the very early days of existence as humans, we knew about,
thought about and learned about God. This does not mean that our ancestors
saw or heard or felt God through their physical senses. Even as a
child recognizes its mother or father, the human soul, created in
the image and likeness of God recognized and felt the presence of
God, the soul heard the voice of God and knew God. This knowledge
was accompanied by some ideas of the immortality of the spirit. This
must have been what prompted elaborate burial rituals and practices. |
| This was the genesis of religious practices, common
to all primitive cultures. One must assume that even as God created
the first couple as humans, He gave them this firm belief that they
are different from the other animals and that they are special to
Him. As He gave them the rights and privileges of the princes of the
kingdom, He wrote in their hearts the laws or rules that must guide
their life. Religion began with the acceptance of free will, with
the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. Thus it would be
right if we assume that religion is as old as humanity itself. Here
we take the term religion in the broad sense of all practices, customs,
rituals and ceremonies associated with the belief in God or in certain
deities or in the immortality of the soul. |
| God meant different things to different people. This
was so in those early millennia of prehistoric and protohistoric times
in different parts of the world; it has been so throughout history
and it is so even today. From the earliest times there were monotheistic
cultures where people worshipped one God as creator and ruler. There
were also polytheistic and animistic cultures where people worshipped
or paid homage and offered sacrifices to a number of deities and considered
the various elements of nature like wind, sun, certain animals, even
grain and sand as personal deities. But most people strongly believed
in one supreme God, whatever name or attributes they gave Him / Her
/ It. |
| Why did I refer to God as He / She / It? With my Christian
background I often refer to God as He or the father. Once during a
scripture session an active member of my group challenged my language.
“ Are you sure that God is a he”, she asked, “why
not a she, a mother?” I conceded her point and said that millions
of people in India still call upon God as a mother and that the earliest
concept of God was probably as a mother, source of all life. In India
at least, from time immemorial to the present, God was and still is
a ‘She’ for a sizable section of the people. The Jewish
people are often referred to as monotheistic and patriarchal, meaning
that they worship one God considered as a male personal God. But when
you read the old testament it is clear that they were polytheistic
in nature and from Moses onwards all prophets had a hard time to bring
the people back to the monotheistic culture. Even in Jeremiah’s
time the Jewish people, against all strictures of prophets and the
laws, worshipped and made offerings to a mother Goddess referred to
In Jeremiah as the Queen of Heaven. (Jer: chapters 7 and 44). |
| On another occasion a Muslim friend asked me, “Why
do you refer to God as father? He is not your father. He is your king.”
On another occasion a philosophically minded friend also questioned
my language. According to him God is not male or female, father or
mother, king or queen but a spiritual being to whom human attributes
cannot be applied. Here again I conceded to his view of the impersonal
God and said that common man and woman cannot be expected to have
such sublime ideas. Then I added, “He is all this – father,
mother, king, judge, creator and destroyer and much more.” As
He is infinite and almighty, there is nothing that He cannot be. He
is everything to everybody. In certain books of the Bible as well
as in the Bhakthi literature of India, God is the ‘lover”
of the soul that is yearning for a reunion with the lover. I also
referred him to a verse from the Vedas that could be translated something
like this. “People call me by different names and to all these
I respond.” These words may also help those who wonder whether
to call Him / Her God, Jehovah, Allah, Iswar, Siva, Devi, or Durga
or any one of the many other names. There could be as many names as
there are languages, not considering the synonyms – God in English,
Allah in Arabic, Devi in Malayalam, Durga in Bengali and so on and
so forth. |
| How can one make a representation of the philosophers’
concept of an impersonal God? I think that the ancient Indians who
thought up this concept had found an answer to that as well. All over
India you see people worshipping a black stone, not representing any
living being, male or female but just a cylindrical black stone with
a rounded top. I personally have a hunch that the ancient sages had
conceived this as a representation of the impersonal God, neither
male nor female, neither human, bird or animal, having no organs like
head, trunk or limbs. If this is not a representation of the Impersonal
God what is? But somehow today this representation is called Lingam
(phallus), or more specifically the Siva Lingam, the creative force.
But I still believe that originally this must have been the representation
of the impersonal God. |
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