Where is GOD?

Today human being in the world is preoccupied with the rat race of power, prestige and possession. As a result the societies and the states are loosing the sense of values, morality and God. In fact, God has become a rare phenomenon in life, reduced to a concept in the modern and technological world. God is a concept, thought of only at times of need, danger, ill health, favors, jobs and ceremonies. Otherwise God is kept in the back seat as if he is a stranger to life. 

And to add fuel to the fire and to make things worse, the technology, scientism, new age thinkers, materialism, consumerism, individualism have crept into the societies crumpling down the edifices of human values, social relations and the dignity of the families. This is seen very much when the youth and the students isolate themselves while indulging in latest technologies and social networks. No wonder why the relationships have become very suspicious and inauthentic even to the extent of one’s identity is being masked with the fake identities and some are threatened to reveal their real identity presuming the danger. (Of course I don’t deny the positive side of the technology like dissemination of information and imparting education, I only say; the values are at stake.)We can see this drastic change in the societies as people are going away from Mandirs to Malls, Families to Restaurants, Class Rooms to Cafes, Priest to Celebrities, Masjid to Markets and Temples to trade centers, etc. Therefore, the words of Kant are very true “the shallowness of the present age and of the decay of profound science; the doubt, security, indifference and criticism are the thoughts of this age. To this age of criticism everything is subjected, the sacredness of religion, authority of legislation become the subjects of suspicion.”

Today the elite in the societies are plundering the poor and becoming stinking rich and while the poor people are left as if flushing away the excreta. I personally witnessed this most detestable, indecent situation in Mumbai, the financial center of India, in the month of October, 2012 when we, as a group visited the city as part of our Mumbai Darsan. To my surprise, the sky scrapers, posh hotels like Taj, esteemed restaurants, Glittering theaters, spacious Malls and luxurious mansions etc. are the common residence of the rich. The poor people are compartmentalized to the railway tracks, railway stations, under the fly-overs, road dividers, temples, slums and to the streets. This is how the humanity and it’s dignity in the city are artificialized as life in its spectacular manner seems very easy and cozy for the rich.For the poor each moment is a threat, danger, insecure and in a way like the survival of the fittest where they are just surviving and not living the life. At this juncture morality, justice, uprightness, values and human dignity are nothing but a big question mark. Thus we see how God (Religion and values) is eclipsed from the Google world as if they have become irrelevant, insipid and dull to the modern people.

Here I would like to bring to attention that, we only believe that God is powerful, majestic, mighty and splendid. Unfortunately we don’t think that God is also poor like the people in the slums, He is helpless like the people who lost their dear ones, He is oppressed like the people who are oppressed. Likewise God is most humble, vulnerable, and fragile like the help less baby wrapped in papers and thrown in the bins, like the babies who are aborted before they come into the world, God is cheated by the powerful, the rich and mighty. God is like the helpless farmer whose lands are taken away by the landlords. Thus there is a deep meaning to say that God is the poorest of the poor and most humble and sublime like the poor widows and innocent who people lost lives in the religious clashes like in Godra, Khandamal and Mumabi (Taj Hotel) tragedies. God is like a servant waiting for the master and so He is looking at us for our return.

Therefore, God is not like Plato telling eternal ideas exist and he made the innate ideas as the center. The Medieval Philosophy stressed that the adequation of the intellect to the things as truth while, giving excess priority to the reason.The Cartesian/Modern philosophy thought, what I think is the world by making I as the center to the world. Kant tried to tell us the ground of reason as the foundation of all. For Heidegger, the unveiling of Being and listening to being is important. So his approach is a very pagan understanding of person like the pre-Socratic.

All these philosophical quarries tried their best to explain what exactly the truth is. The western philosophy was more of egological, where ‘I think: I am and I think it is.’ The world is what I make of it. Hence, it is very centric (centripetal and centrifugal).

We know that Jesus telling us in the Gospel I am the way, the truth and the life. For, he is God, and God is an ever receding existent in the world.

The life in the cities is lived enclosing from the other and indulging in comfort zones and cocoons of individualism and consumerism. Thus the life in this new age is changed as if we are indifferent and abnormal to God. To put it simply we have reached even to the extent of living as if there is no God or as if God doesn’t exist. But if we turn the pages of history we see Victor Frankel who suffered pain and endured patience says that every one in the world is blessed with an element of divinity and spiritual element. It is only because of the ignorance of our minds that we some how loose the sight of this spiritual element hidden deep within our hearts like the carnal of the fruit. At this critical situation, where we have lost the sense of God in the world and even unable to recognize the fellow human person, here we have Abraham J. Heschelwho says in his work, God in search of man, that there are three starting points to think about God. First, the way of sensing the presence of God in the World and in the things, the second, sensing the presence of God in the Bible and the third, sensing the presence of God in sacred deeds. These three ways in fact are intimated in three Biblical passages:

Lift up your eyes on high and see, who created these. Isaiah 40: 26

I am the Lord thy God. Exodus 20: 2

We shall do and we shall hear. Exodus 24: 7

These are nothing but religious worship, learning and action. These three are one that we all must go three ways to reach one dimension and destination. So, in this line we can say that God of nature is God of History and the way to know him is to do His Will.

In today’s context I think God can be seen in the words of Jeremiah 22: Love of neighbor, stranger, foreigner, widower, and the poor. So, in line with Jeremiah, Levinas calls us forth saying that Ethics/Justice is the spiritual optic in which there is no glance of subject object relation. Instead, in righteousness, in uprightness where there is face-to-face encounter/relationship. Thus God’s presence is felt in the social relations.

To understand God and to prove the existence of God seems stupid. Stupid because what are we? Who are we to prove His existence? This is like fish in the sea trying to find where the water is. We know that theodicy is nothing but defending God’s existence against the problem of evil. It is to justify God’s ways to man. Leibniz coined the term Theodicia from Greek word theos, God dike/dixaia, Justice. He was interested in defending God against the problems of evil, religious indifference, cynicism, agnosticism, atheism, skepticism, human suffering and doubt. Therefore, it is only an attempt to make God’s omnipotence and benevolence compatible with the existence of evil.

There is also Natural Theology which is the way to know God through reason and not from scriptures. So this is only a human effort, through reason striving for the knowledge of God, while denying revelation and dogmas. It is only human speaking about God, theolegein. 

There have been many dangers, threats to our belief in God and God in the world. Some of the threats/critics are ….Suspicion, Atheism, Agnosticism, Indifference, Scientism, Evolution, Secularization, Theory of Projection and Sublimation, Marxism and etc. Some of them can be….

Ludwig Feuerbach: God as a Projection of Human Nature.

Emile Durkheim: Religion is a social construction.

Sigmund Freud: God is only Sublimation.

Marxism: Religion is opium of the people.

Friedrich Nietzsche: God, the Calumny of Life, the Death of God.

Max Weber: The priority is given to Rationalization and Secularization. Money rules the world.

And Today the Technology and Science have been deducing the nature of things with experiments. We are becoming more technical and less dependent on God and Providence.

The questions that we can ask are, Is God really absent from a technological and modern civilization because human no more seems to heed to God’s help?Is man trying to objectify the technology/media or Man is being objectified by media? Despite of all these negative forces we have many religions which intend to lead people to God. Religions are very sacred in their nature and purpose with specific creed, cult and custom. The etymology of the term Religion is very interesting. For, it has five senses with different meanings in Latin. The meanings of religion are—to rebind, to re-tie, to re-link, to re-join, to gather together etc. Religion is like the ligament in our knee which is an essential part to unite, to keep fit, to keep flexible the knee bones, so that we can walk, work and jump. In the similar sense it is the religion that unites us to God and keeps us more and more close to God provided we are attached to Him alone. Therefore, Religion is not we seeking for God,but the greater seeking the lower.So,it is His initiative that He is in search of human and not human is in search of God. We can see how Jesus took the initiative to wash the feet of his apostles and taught them to love each other. God telling in the Old Testament (It is I who chose you. I knew you before you were born.)

So, religion is not our choice as we think, not we electing and affirming God; this is true in Judaism and Christianity where God is seen as He is in search of man, (Parable of the Prodigal son and father, Good Shepherd) and then man’s response to God in return.

Levinas puts this point very nicely saying that Religion is the sense of God’s search for little man and the human response to this divine search of him. Thus, for Levinas Religion begins with Revelation. Christian Trinitarian God is a Life in the society between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. This divine society of which Father is the sun, Jesus is the light and the spirit is sun rays which proceeds to the man and the world, revelation to man through world and history. The son redeems the world and the spirit sanctifies the world.

So it is God who takes the initiative in creation, sustaining and in salvation. With this the initiative is not stopped. He continues to seek the human kind in all our life asking us to turn to Him. He is after us although we are busy like Eve and Adam satisfying ourselves and indulging with the apple of egoism, power, prestige, possession. Yet God takes initiative to ask,Where are you? Gen 3: 9. He asks us, as he asked Cain Where is your brother? Gen 4:9. As he told Moses, He is telling us all, I’ve seen the miseries of my people Exodus 3:7.You will hunt me like a lion Job: 10:16.

For the Christians Father and spirit are who take initiative, (Gen 1& 2, Math 1: 18-20) and Son Jesus is incarnated in Human history. He suffered, died and was buried; But Father rose him up from the dead. Therefore, Religion for the Jews and for the Christians is not a Human “Projection,” not “Sublimation,” not “Social Construction” either. Here we see the element of the “OTHER” taking initiative than, the human self. The element of projection, sublimation and social construction and etc., are in no way valid with their arguments.

Here Christian God is the Covenantal God. Because it is initiated by God himself while giving faith to his fellowship as His gratuitous gift. His initiative is greater than the human response. He is ever faithful to human in spite of the human unfaithfulness. It is His salvific plan that human shall be saved from the bondage of sin and death. Therefore his salvific plan is covenant that differs from the Contract. The contract is more of symmetrical where both the parties are equal and agree upon reciprocity, legality and mutuality. Here the agreement is made only between equals like in psychology saying ‘you scratch my back and I scratch your back.’ Contrastingly the Covenant is characterized by non-reciprocity, asymmetry, and initiative from the greater, an imperative and no-allergy. In this covenantal project we see 1 John 4: 10,In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has first loved us. Jesus in obedience to the Father tells us that Jn 6: 65 No one can come to me unless the Father draw him.

In this relentless search God is more interested in finding us that we are in finding Him. He is the Good Shepherd who leaves the 99 upon the mountains and goes in search of the one that is lost. He is like the woman who rejoices when she finds the coin. He is the Father who is waiting to welcome us and to celebrate our homecoming.

Conclusion: This asymmetrical, covenantal and non-reciprocity notion of God’s salvific plan entails a new horizon of the truth and reality. Jesus showed a new horizon by offering another cheek. This is non-reaction notion of responding to open the new horizons of which the other is ignorant of. This way of opening a new horizon is not so easy to live and practice because it is not normal but it is very noble. It is noble because it is not a slave response but an extraordinary way of seeing the truth from the other dimension. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and John Paul II have lived such life and showed the light in their life to the millions.

This is Covenental Love where the Desire is highlighted in fullness and contentment. This is the Ec-centric and redemptive plan of God. In this the wealth yearns for fullness. Unlike the covenantal love, the Greek Erotic Love is where, only Need/want are highlighted, basing on Ego-centric marked out by centripetal and centrifugal. All the critics are wrong and invalid because our God is not a human revelation nor human projection but our God is, His revelation to us in the covenantal plan, it is His initiative (Ec-centric) which is very much stressed by Levinas unlike Buber who only stressed the mutual and intimacy. But the covenantal relationship is more than the intimacy. Intimacy can be only between two equals that leads only to the tomb. But the ec-centric/covenantal, asymmetrical relationship is between more than two, God, you/I and the other/world. This leads to womb, a symbolic expression of new life over death.

The egological/western philosophy would say, the world is what I make of it. This thought is centered by ‘I.’ The characteristic factors of this thought can be competition. Such people are only of 2.50%. Of course this is necessary.

The Covenantal Philosophy would say, you speak to me, therefore, I am. Such people are only of 0.50%. The characteristics are of co-travellers and noble. It is of ec-centric and asymmetrical relation. The anonymous type is of 97% people follow this. However in conclusion what we can draw home is where we can be placed. We must give importance to the self as well, if not who will think about us. Today our task is not to see whether god is with us or not but whether we are with GOD or not.May the prayer St Francis of Assisi be our prayer “I cry for the love that loved us and is not loved.”

Thank you.