Divinity in goodness

The country and its people talk too much of God and too little of goodness.

According to recent news reports, ‘God’s own country’ Kerala, the state in which I was born, lived for long years and loved, has been dubbed ‘a godless country’ by an organisation. But who really knows God? Well, God only knows! Now, lest I be thought flippant and irreverent, let’s delve into the topic a little deeper.

Many years ago, I brought up the issue with my father, a pious and dedicated doctor. My questions to him went this way: Why is there so much suffering? Why are the good subjected to pain? Why do the prizes of life go so often to the wrongdoer and why does an all-knowing and loving God allow this? As a doctor who dealt with the dying on a frequent basis, I thought he, perhaps, had some of the answers.

But he did not. Father merely smiled and told me that in good time I would find my own answers. Meanwhile, I was never to look up and envy those above me, but look down and console myself. At this, I protested and asked whether people below me had to exist so that I could derive consolation. His response was an enigmatic smile.

Years passed and, as he had predicted, through trials and tribulations of my own, I learnt that complete, inarguable and satisfying answers to the baffling questions of life are hard to find. There is an unyielding mystery at the heart of existence. I must have passed on this sensitivity to my daughter. As a 12-year old, listening to her teacher tell her class that God is goodness, she asked her whether goodness was not God. The teacher merely replied that this amounted to much the same thing.

Not long ago, I asked a thoughtful and caring psychiatrist whether she believed in God and the role that this played while treating her patients. She replied, “You could say I am an agnostic in search of God. I see much that is heart wrenching and depressing, but there exists a great deal of goodness as well. I believe in helping my patients to perceive this and internalise it.”

The key to contentment and even happiness lies, it seems, in a belief in goodness. We, as a country, talk too much of God and too little of goodness. The mature person is not one who believes in an omnipotent and all-encompassing God, who has to be propitiated with numerous rituals. He or she is one who has learnt that there is good and bad in all people and in all things and that, in this world, there exists no one who is all-knowing.

We have been gifted, though, with the power of choosing between the good and the evil. And who does not need love and charity? Those who opt for goodness will experience a peace that passes understanding. Also, one would not be wrong in asserting that this is the closest that we can come to what is termed as ‘God’.