This is the third and final article in a series of three introducing the ‘Religion’ section.
Read the first article in this series here.
If one were to summarize the teachings of some of the world’s major religions, it’ll be along the lines of “Live your life by the book, and be rewarded after death.”
“But given the plethora of such books available in the market, which one should I follow in order to reap the maximum benefits after dying?”
“Mine.”
And so in our benevolent concern for people who do not share our faith, we either kill them or make their life miserable just because we see such deeds as our own pathway to heaven so THEY can have a wonderful afterlife. Such altruism (holds back tears)! Well, one such charitable way in which we attempt to set things right for others is via Proselytism.
Proselytism is the practice of converting or attempting to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another. It has been in prevalence for centuries now and is the cornerstone of many world’s religions even to this day. It is both an intra-religious and an inter-religious practice, so conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism within Christianity and from Hinduism to Islam are both examples of Proselytism.
There are typically two ways of practicing this art:
- The voluntary way:
ConvincingScaring people with the narrative “You must convert to my faith in order to go to heaven after death, otherwise you’ll be condemned to hell for eternity.”- Luring people with monetary benefits or a promise of a better social standing.
- The involuntary way: “Convert or die.”
Whatever be the means, the sole motivation behind people practicing proselytism is to adhere to that tenet of their respective religious scriptures which makes it incumbent upon them to spread the teachings of their faith, specifically because of the belief that all other faiths are plain wrong. But is it really worth the effort? Does God truly have a religion?
The Idea of God
Have we ever wondered as to what our religion has reduced the idea of God to? From the impression that we’ve all been given by our respective religious heads, God comes across as a thin-skinned entity suffering from an extremely low self-esteem. Why else would it seek our constant approval and require us to sing praises for it? Moreover, why would it feel threatened by people who don’t believe in it/know it by a different name and ask its disciples to ridicule and/or kill them? With such a fragile ego, doesn’t God itself seem to be in need of a shrink and if so, how is it able to perform its duties properly that include keeping track of what I ate for breakfast or whether I made that donation during my weekly visit to the temple or if I converted or not?
Given that God is a concept, a belief if you will, put forth by us mere mortals, so are religious practices like proselytism, the veracity of which are difficult to gauge. In order to really know the truth, one has to die first, experience the whole afterlife shebang for themselves and then come back to life to narrate the whole adventure. Considering that we’re talking about real life here and not some scene from a low-budget fantasy movie, it would be nearly impossible to truly corroborate any of these claims.
On the other hand, a similar line of reasoning can be used against my own arguments, that since I haven’t seen what happens after death, how can I dispute the teachings of various religions regarding afterlife? Point taken! Therefore, rather than disputing the concept of heaven and hell and the means prescribed by different religions to achieve one and avoid the other, I’ll pose a few questions here, the aim of which will not be to ridicule any belief system, but rather to seek answers from anyone willing to help me better understand such notions.
Let’s begin.
Why do religions romanticize afterlife?
Our entire existence on this earth can broadly be categorized into three stages: our birth, our death and then everything in between. Let’s look at these stages separately:
Birth
The process of procreation is standard among all human beings, irrespective of their religious affiliations. A Hindu doesn’t reproduce any different from a Christian, nor does a Muslim from an atheist. If one were to argue that different religions cannot really have their respective theories about childbirth given the ample evidence available in its favor for everyone to see, they won’t be wrong. In essence, how a new life comes into this world is agreed upon by all religions simply because there’s not much to dispute here.
Life Itself
This is the stage of our life when we start preparing for our afterlife: how we should behave, what we should eat, who/how we should hate, insult and/or kill are some of the topics that we are schooled on in order to reach that magical land after dying.
Before continuing any further, let’s consider the following scenario: If I ask you to sign over all of your life savings, movable and immovable assets to me without any paperwork, and only give you my word that I’ll double everything you give me before handing it back to your children AFTER your death, will you do it? Moreover, if you’ve never really seen me returning anything to any of the families I made similar promises to, won’t you be at least a wee bit skeptical of my claims?
But when it comes to the promises of a luxurious afterlife made to us by our religious heads in exchange for our money and bigotry towards non-believers, we never seem to question those claims. Think about it: if God indeed wields so much power in our afterlife as is claimed in our ancient scriptures, shouldn’t its ways of communicating with us via awards and punishments be more pronounced when we’re alive too? For instance, is there any documented proof that converting from one faith to another will lead to a change in ones fortunes, where people don’t suffer from lifestyle diseases like heart disease and cancer, where every child born is a healthy cis-gendered heterosexual without any cognitive or physical deformities, young don’t die in road accidents, women are automatically protected against all assaults and violence and people don’t starve? If all these maladies affect us irrespective of the faith we follow, and if God was indeed obsessed with showing us the ‘right’ path, shouldn’t it offer us some visible incentives during our lifetime rather than mere promises of paradise after death? When the supreme power cannot guarantee us continued happiness when we’re alive, what is the guarantee the same power will reward us in our afterlife?
Personally speaking, my mother has not been doing too well on the health front for quite some time now. Can any faith guarantee her an ailment-free, long, healthy and a happy life if she denounces her current faith and takes up the ‘correct’ religion?
Death
People die of natural or unnatural causes. Are disciples of any faith guaranteed to die in peace only in their old age, without much suffering and from some natural cause? Does the affect of smoking on the human body depend on its genetic makeup or on the faith followed by the individual? What does all this imply: how we die is outside the purview of the faith we follow.
To summarize everything, the faith we follow does not have any say in how we reproduce, how much we suffer during our lifetime and how we die, the stages that are visible to everyone. It’s only the part that no one has seen or can substantiate and where most religions differ i.e. our afterlife, is where God calls the shots. A strange coincidence or a clever business model?
Why don’t we change physically?
Male circumcision is a religious practice among adherents of certain faiths like Judaism and Islam. Given that God is such a sorcerer, why aren’t the followers of such faiths or the future generations of those who convert later in life born with circumcised penises? Did God make a mistake while designing the human body and then left it on man to make amends?
More importantly, if circumcision confers admission to a faith, then is every child born a Hindu, a Christian, an atheist or an agnostic and remains one until he is circumcised?
Can I sin and convert in the end?
Religions are simple institutions. Look at how easy it is to go to heaven according to them: “Convert to our faith and apologize for your sins and voilà, you’re off to heaven!” Now, one might argue that it’s not as simple as it sounds, so let’s start by talking about the process of atonement for ones sins: assume that consuming chicken is forbidden in our faith and yet we ate some. How do we seek forgiveness for this earth shattering transgression of ours? By simply saying sorry! Now, irrespective of the number of times we relished those chicken legs, all it’ll take is one apology from our side to seek God’s forgiveness. Question is, why spend our entire lives living in constant fear of committing a sin and repeatedly seeking lord’s forgiveness when we can philander away, eat all those forbidden foods, drink away to the point of absurdity and skip that weekly visit to the place of worship for the first 60 or so years of our lives and then tender an apology once and for all to atone for all our sins, much like the serial philanderer/non-monogamist turned self-forgiven self-proclaimed figure of piety and morality Kim Davis? We might even devote the remainder of our lives memorizing religious texts and hypocritically lecturing others on how to lead their lives in accordance with the higher power. Who knew that an entire life’s worth of inflicting pain and misery on others would all be forgiven by a single apology and quoting religious scriptures towards the end of our lives!
Conclusion
Our religious scriptures were written at a time when it was still common for events like thunderstorms to be construed as God’s way of expressing anger for our supposed misdeeds. What if these thunderstorms occurred right after a woman was shown some respect by a man, a sign that he conveniently interpreted as God’s way of giving him absolute power over her life? What if eating the meat of a specific animal became a sin only after it was served at a family dinner that was later washed out by torrential rains? Did we associate events like inclement weather coinciding with our actions as a warning from the divinity, which we later penned down in a book as edicts and took it upon ourselves to enforce them on everyone else, even those whose potlucks were washed out after consuming meat from an animal that was different from the one we ate at our family union? Is this how Proselytism came about and if so, why does it continue even to this day? Well, it couldn’t be out of compassion for others that we practice it given that millions of people living among us go to bed hungry every night and we deliberately choose to ignore them. The answer to this question, as always, is rooted in our thousands of years old religious scriptures that we are ever so obligated to interpret literally even in the 21st century. Religion begets violence, and even though we might choose the option of agreeing to bizarre notions from our own faith versus running the risk of offending someone from a different faith, converting people to our own faith in order to avoid the latter will not make the world any safer for us. On the contrary, if historical and current events are anything to go by, this practice has had quite an opposite effect and we must rethink our ways before it engulfs us in its flames too!
