Is my God not great? 

 

Every society's version of God is very personal and important to it. However, some religions of the world are so bigoted that they believe only their version of God is the right version.

There are no people in the world who have not got a God of their own. We do not have full atheist societies. Every society's version of God is very personal and important to it. However, some religions of the world are so bigoted that they believe only their version of God is the right version. If this is just a belief, one need not raise objections.

But when they do not stop at that level, the trouble begins. History is full of examples of the tragedies  which followed such an assumption.

Jews and Greeks had a practice of killing their own people who tried to deviate from the accepted view of God. Socrates was killed by his own people. Jesus called himself God and sent his men to all directions to kill "other Gods". He was killed by those who are not in harmony with his own version of God. Islamic fundamentalists killed many people for not accepting the Islamic version of Arabian God, Allah. These exterminating religions' claim that their victims deserved extermination because they were "infidels" and were against the only true God!

This makes an interesting study. Both Christianity and Islam have a bloody history. In Europe, Christianity followed the sword-power of the Roman Empire. It has become the religion of the Empire, which after all referred to as the "Holy Roman Empire"! Then it is little surprising that the religious dignitaries of Europe were taken from the ruling families.

For generations the Church and the State were co-operating bodies and opposition to the Church was met with most painful death by burning. Because it was seen by the rulers as threatening the "established means for stable governments"! In the same way Christianity was the religion of European colonialism. By the time the colonization of the world began, Christianity had gained total acceptance all over the Europe. Colonizing countries used Christianity as a colonizing aid against many nations. To them, the Biblical God is the only Universal God and everyone has to accept Him. Under the favorable rulers, the Church became very powerful. When it became powerful, it used brutal force so as to convert the "heathens". This method was used in America, Africa and Australia, where countless indigenous people were brutally massacred.

But, the Jews considered Christianity as just a splinter group started by the followers of one of their minor religious teachers. They have never accepted Christianity as the universal religion and its God as the universal God. They refused to believe "Jesus is the only son of God" doctrine. The Hebrew version of God was and still is the preserver of only the Hebrew people. The three Semitic religions’ concept of God is that of an intolerant, jealous-God who believes in violence. Their jealous-Gods don't let them sit quietly while other Gods are being worshipped by many people throughout the world. But as long as they remain committed not to impose their version on others, it is not necessary for us to blame them for choosing such a partial God.

But that is not the case with Christianity and Islam. Even today, they take their religions to other people asking them to discard their own Gods and religions and accept Christianity, Islam. As they are divinely ordained to stop the worship of "false-Gods" at any cost and by any means and enroll everybody in the member-register of their own respective gods, they make themselves very busy in the false-god-hunting job.

This involves the claim that non-Christians and non-Muslims are an inferior people whose needs are always secondary to those of Jesus and Muhammad. The question that one has to ask is, what right has anybody, even he is believed to be a god by his followers, got of telling any people that their own God who has preserved them all these years is a false-God? To say that the God of a particular people is untrue is to declare that those people are themselves not quite people. If a particular God hurts other people for His own comforts or even holds them down so that His disciples could kill them for His own gain, then one has to say that he is NOT AT ALL a God. He and his scriptures are nothing but mere creations of habitual God-hunters to quote divine orders in support of their own motive.

 (C) G. Anil Kumar 2001