My Religion
My Religion:
Let me begin with a dictionary of religion.
Religion:
1) Institution to express belief in a divine power.
2) A strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.
Well, to let you know a bit about myself, I am a Roman Catholic by birth. But I am beginning to feel that Catholics are becoming less catholic (at least the Catholicism we are following).
I very strongly believe in the existence of a third force. (People call this third force as God). The reason is simply because I know I am ignorant. I guess, it does not serve anyone’s purpose if we claim that there is no God. To live this life without any ultimate accountability to anyone doesn’t seem to make sense. The ignorance in which we are shrouded has enough reason why I choose to believe in God. I simply can’t imagine a time in which science will advance enough to explain any natural phenomena precisely. And even if they did, what to make out of it? What is the reason for all that stuff? Why should we live? What is the nature of time? I surmised that we could get out of all this intellectual mess, if we assume that there is another ultimate reality.
I believe that all religions (at least most of them) are all very similar. They are like, to use a cliché, ponds, lakes, rivers, seas, oceans etc. The fact that we have many religions may probably due to the wide range of cultures that pervade the earth. Each culture has found the optimal way to exercise control over the morality of its people through a unique religion.
I personally do not adhere to any religion per se. I believe an individual’s religion is a very personal thing. And I believe we should not make any overwhelming effort to conform to any existing religion. As a person experiences his life, he is bound to evolve his own concept of God. Many of today’s problems arise because certain individuals are very attached to a particular school of thought. But the fact that they adhere to an existing school of thought itself jeopardizes their individuality in its purest sense. In fact, whenever I hear about someone speak about being faithful to the religion of his parents, I get ridiculously suspicious of that persons ability to innovate. I believe we got to be more curious than that. I expect myself to explore exactly what kind of God I am ready to believe.
My religion is as follows.
Mine is a quite religion. I don’t believe in going to church (or for that matter any place of worship). If at all I go to a church, I do when it is empty. If you saw me in a really crowded church session, I was there for another purpose.
· I don’t believe in idol worship. I believe the practice of limiting the power and scope of God to an inanimate object is ridiculous. The absence of idol worship is perhaps one of the good things about Islam and Christianity. (Although the latter is getting more and more steeped in idolatry to my disgust).
· My Prayer:
Our Father in heaven,
Holy be Your Name.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done on earth,
as it is in Heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
Forgive us our sins as we forgive
those who sin against us.
Do not bring us to test but deliver us from evil Amen.
The only prayer I wish to say is that of ‘Our Father’. Before anyone smells any inconsistency, let me say that this is perhaps the most elegant way to pray. At least, It was very elegant to me. Most of the other prayers, which fill up any prayer book, are full of unnecessary deviations. This one is simple and more important than that it is complete to me. It doesn’t have any jargon, which you are forced to mug up. (I really can’t believe some people mug up their prayers).
If you see the prayer above the main thing that strikes your mind is that it makes no assumption about anything. It doesn’t care about the name of the God (it does assume the sex of the God though). As people know, the less assumptions a programmer makes of the underlying machine, the more portable that software becomes. In a similar way, the above prayer is the most ‘platform-independent’ prayer, I have ever seen.