Using god as an insurance policy

While two fundamental necessities for animals are hunger and sexual instincts in a particular season, homo sapiens experience these in excess every minute of their lives. They also multiply through their lives.

Desires are not limited to our own selves, but are also projected to our progeny, in the knowledge that they will outlive us after our own lifespan of about 80 to 100 years.

We frame goals to fulfil our unending list of materialistic desires and possessions. The strong-willed among us sees the final goal only, not the arduous path. The purpose is selfish and seldom benefits society. Meanwhile, everyone also realises and fears that it will be difficult to attain their goals. This translates to not getting the material possessions we desire and dream about.

So now, we try to shift the responsibility to somebody whom we trust and who we think will take care of our goals. This somebody is the entity we call God. We search for the right God based on our religion and think that He is so powerful that he can look after an unrealizable goal. We talk to him repeatedly and even beg Him to ensure that we reach our goal. The more we are far from our mission, the more we try to shift the responsibility of doing the work to that self-created figure.

A middleman

In this process, we meet a person staying close to that figure or structure called a ‘priest’, chanting something the effect of which he may not even know. The fact that he stands close to that structure makes us feel he is near our God. This priest has to manipulate our fear and feelings to benefit himself, because he too has the same desires. He will convince us that he can deliver our message faster to that figure or structure which even he would not have known, seen or felt. Osho observed that all “priests are cheats”.

Now, we cannot concentrate on our work and shift all the responsibility again the second time to the priest. We convince ourselves that the figure and the priest will do the remaining work for us.

The fact that more and more temples ‘arise’ around Gods and are being built faster than schools proves the fact that our attention has shifted from work to results.
We even go the extent of desiring to control the elements with the help of that person for our selfish needs. “Oh God, let it not rain, I have to go to a movie”. It is indeed pitiable, if not laughable!

We ask children to request and beg God to give us everything. We corrupt a child’s mind by showing some figure, call Him God, when we have not even perceived or believed that eternal principle.

There is a group using God as an ‘insurance policy’. More so when we are aged and we reflect that our previous practices were not healthy, we lean towards that unseen person to look after our health and help us sail through without any medical expenses. After the prayers, we feel our duty towards that entity is over, and we may now reap success. The whole day, we may commit unethical acts, yet not feel the slightest guilt.

Krishna said “Do your duty and leave the results to God”. We leave the work to God for the results we want. Einstein rightly said that our fear takes the form of God. He said “let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts.” We avoid committing perceived bad things only out of the fear of being punished by a far off being called God. This fear is being used by five per cent of the people called priests and politicians to control or extort from 95 per cent of the people. They are the ones who build temples, sow and support blind belief so that they can trap more people. This is overcome by offering some money as fine or thanksgiving to that ‘God’. We feel that the money offered reaches Him and God will be happy to pardon our mistakes. We happily continue making bigger mistakes.