About a decade ago, a close friend who had cancer, said to the rector of her church “I thought God would have cured me by now.” A few years later she died. On the day preceding her expected demise, I had promised her that she would be going to a much better place, since she did not want to die.
Digressing – I have talked to a number of senior citizens who made it clear that they feared death. How could any old person live with such a terrible feeling?
I have also talked to many people who blame God for their tribulations and other disasters. Why? Because the Creator of all must be responsible for all that goes wrong (such as man-made wars); or which is morally wrong (such as evil intent in humans); or some personal misadventure. I am uncertain whether God is also blamed for natural disasters or cosmic catastrophes; I suspect many do.
Why set up a straw man and then throw stones at him? University courses may do that; but, in the real world, one’s expectations should surely be drawn from the observed, the known. Thus, is God really an interventionist Creator? Or, have some of us imagined God in the image of an all-powerful father? A father who can be blamed for not delivering that ice-cream we thought we had earned by behaving well?
Why not accept the strong probability of autonomous processes in our transit through life on Earth, from our distant historical origin to where we are now. There are millions of such processes in life, in Nature, including the miracle of the birth of fully-formed babies; the empathetic behaviour by humans such as contributing to civil society; the symbiosis between insects and plants, and plants and humans; the exceedingly complex inter-connection between almost everything in the Universe; and the evolutionary process which enables improvement through successful change.
Why not look for the simplest, but adequate, explanations? If a Creator exists (and we have no proof of that), all that is required is an arm’s-length Creator who set up a simple machinery, gave it the breath of life, of growth, of variation – and let autonomous processes to proceed thereafter. No one can then be blamed for anything not to our liking. Why expect the Creator to do more? So that we have someone to blame?
We do need to grow up, and face the dark; that is, accept what is unavoidable – and adapt and evolve!
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 