Faith and Fear

December 24, 2012

It was a Monday morning at work and my manager and I were chatting over a cup of coffee in the pantry of our usually busy store. My manager Mr. Steve Jones was good hearted man in his early thirties and I, (also a hearted man, good or bad, I don’t know) struck on a conversation about India and the religions in India. Our conversation was just hitting the right directions when Steve suddenly asked me.

“Anil, you go to church every Sunday, isn’t it (pronounced “ain e”)?”

“Yes, of course. I go to St Peters in Roath or to St David’s in the City Centre” I promptly replied to him.

“Why do you go to church mate?”. I was literally taken aback when he asked me this question.

“Well, Steve. I believe in Christ and hence I go and pray to him every Sunday. It is also a rule that believers or Christians have to attend the holy mass every Sunday”.

“What will happen if you don’t?”

“Well. It is a sin and you have to later confess to God that you have sinned.” I replied to him to the best of my knowledge.

“So you mean to say that there is a provision given by God to make up if you miss Sundays mass”

“Yes”.

“What if you don’t go to church and also don’t go for confession”? Steve was questioning me as if he had prepared a questionnaire.

“Steve, God would punish people who don’t go to Church”

“What? Anil, Look I don’t go to church. I am doing well, God hasn’t punished me. You are so naïve Anil, you believed in what some people taught you when you were a kid and it’s amazing that you still follow it religiously”.

I did not have much to say as I felt he was right at that moment. Some of my grey cells really had some serious thinking to do. Here I was, religiously following the Sunday ritual without even knowing the reason behind it. Have I been going to Church simply because I am scared of burning in the fire of hell? Am I scared of the society and what people say if I don’t follow any religion especially in a country like India? Am I going to the church for the right reasons?  Steve had shaken my faith with just a few questions.

I went back to my apartment, prepared some lunch and sat on my couch watching Friends, my favorite pastime activity, even to this day. This series gives a lot of peace to me at times of despair and I somehow relate to this series and feel strong enough to face whatever life throws at me. Monica, Rachael, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross are always with me and I feel good about it .I am sure many people around the world have poured their sorrows and shared their happiness with these 6 characters from the hit series of the late 90’s.

As I was watching Friends, a weird thought came into my mind. “Why do I watch Friends”. The answer as I said earlier was obvious “I loved them and so I watch it again and again”. A series of thoughts went up, down and around my brain. Steve’s questions came rushing back to haunt me again. When he asked me why I went to church every Sunday my answer to him was that it was a rule that every catholic attend the Sunday mass or else he would burn in hell. Whereas I realized that if I loved God, I would never have answered like that and would have ended up saying “Well, Steve, I love god and so I go”. Simple.

I was ashamed and began to ask myself “Do I really love god or I just pretend to be a devout person”. I knew the answer. I thought that I was a religious person, without knowing what religious really meant. I have begun to realize that people who really love god from the bottom of their hearts are religious and not the ones like me, who measure their piousness by the number of masses they have attended or the number of confessions they have gone to.

I feel every one of us at one point in our lives has gone through being devout, losing faith, questioning god’s existence and finally gaining it back. We are all born into a religion and do not have a choice to select our religion. Our parents begin to inculcate good values of our religion into us. As children, we would wait to go to the temple/church/mosque. Acquaintances with people from other religions make us think about our religion, study it, argue about it, but from within something tells us that the religion we are born into is the best. These two phases are common and I am sure experienced by almost everyone who had the patience to read this article up till here. There would be a stage when we pray to him day and night and when we get what we asked for, we forget him. It is very hard to find people in one category throughout his/her life.

Then there are people who do not believe that God ever exists. I somehow have failed to understand the thinking of atheists. I have done quite a bit of reading on them and what surprises me is the ease with which they deny the existence of God. I have had the privilege of sharing some thoughts with atheists and the only reason they provide for every question is Science. All of us are taught about Origin of species in school. How many of us believe in evolution? I find it very difficult to understand that we were evolved from monkeys. According to Darwin I am a fit monkey and hence have evolved into a human. I pity those unfortunate monkeys who still whoop and jump from tree to tree. Moreover I would love to know how an atheist can answer the question of plant evolution, or the very birth of the universe and the very first thing from which we have “evolved”. Anyways the topic of evolution vs creation is very fascinating.

Well to sum it all up, in a way many of us are god fearing people and not god loving people. It is a fact. If given a chance to donate money to a religious project and a poor homeless man, 99 percent of us would choose the religious edifice, just to please him. Am I wrong? I hope I am. Only when the fear turns to love, I guess we will appreciate all the good things in our life which god has given us and would be able to see the world in a different and better perspective.

 

Anil D'Souza - Archives:


 

By Anil D'Souza, Halealve
To submit your article / poem / short story to Daijiworld, please email it to news@daijiworld.com mentioning 'Article/poem submission for daijiworld' in the subject line. Please note the following:

  • The article / poem / short story should be original and previously unpublished in other websites except in the personal blog of the author. We will cross-check the originality of the article, and if found to be copied from another source in whole or in parts without appropriate acknowledgment, the submission will be rejected.
  • The author of the poem / article / short story should include a brief self-introduction limited to 500 characters and his/her recent picture (optional). Pictures relevant to the article may also be sent (optional), provided they are not bound by copyright. Travelogues should be sent along with relevant pictures not sourced from the Internet. Travelogues without relevant pictures will be rejected.
  • In case of a short story / article, the write-up should be at least one-and-a-half pages in word document in Times New Roman font 12 (or, about 700-800 words). Contributors are requested to keep their write-ups limited to a maximum of four pages. Longer write-ups may be sent in parts to publish in installments. Each installment should be sent within a week of the previous installment. A single poem sent for publication should be at least 3/4th of a page in length. Multiple short poems may be submitted for single publication.
  • All submissions should be in Microsoft Word format or text file. Pictures should not be larger than 1000 pixels in width, and of good resolution. Pictures should be attached separately in the mail and may be numbered if the author wants them to be placed in order.
  • Submission of the article / poem / short story does not automatically entail that it would be published. Daijiworld editors will examine each submission and decide on its acceptance/rejection purely based on merit.
  • Daijiworld reserves the right to edit the submission if necessary for grammar and spelling, without compromising on the author's tone and message.
  • Daijiworld reserves the right to reject submissions without prior notice. Mails/calls on the status of the submission will not be entertained. Contributors are requested to be patient.
  • The article / poem / short story should not be targeted directly or indirectly at any individual/group/community. Daijiworld will not assume responsibility for factual errors in the submission.
  • Once accepted, the article / poem / short story will be published as and when we have space. Publication may take up to four weeks from the date of submission of the write-up, depending on the number of submissions we receive. No author will be published twice in succession or twice within a fortnight.
  • Time-bound articles (example, on Mother's Day) should be sent at least a week in advance. Please specify the occasion as well as the date on which you would like it published while sending the write-up.

Comment on this article

  • thomas, udupi

    Sat, Mar 08 2014

    Religion will not save you it will only satisfy you, but relation with God through his son Jesus Christ only can save you

  • stan , dubai

    Tue, Jan 01 2013

    I was reading and I found that there was world war 1 and 2 but I am not witnessed this, but I beleive that it has happened. Same way it is written in our holy books i.e. Bible/Quran that all has to work 6 days and seventh day we must not work and spend in worshipping our creater i.e. almighty. So I am worshiping our creater on seventh day by attending Church.

  • Steevan, Mangalore

    Fri, Dec 28 2012

    Nice article Mr.Anil, beautifully written.

  • andrea, manipal

    Wed, Dec 26 2012

    the article just read my mind. . the thoughts have been hovering my mind since a long time :):)i strongly believe where there is faith there is no fear.we often worry about what people think of us ,rather than what God thinks of us.nice article indeed!!

  • DR SUNIL J RAO, MANGALORE/BAHRAIN

    Tue, Dec 25 2012

    Excellent article Anil, and merry christmas to you and family,- after we have shed the indoctrinations of our childhood the questions before an adult mind are: Can we be kind, moral and just without belief in GOD? Should we behave out of fear of hell or love of GOD? Can agnostics or atheists also go to heaven? Can we be spiritual without subscribing to organised religion ? What is the proof for intelligent design or for that matter the big bang? Should we use only GOD as an explanation of creation or can we be neutral on this? so on and so forth..

  • Christine, Mangalore

    Tue, Dec 25 2012

    Love over comes fear! Where there is love there is no fear & where there is love there is God. Rituals really do not permit love to grow but they are the expressions of love sure. may you find the real God of love. Your article is thought provoking, inspiring and a tool for introspecting. Congrats

  • Uday Shetty, Shirva/Doha

    Mon, Dec 24 2012

    Well said Anil. I fully agree line by line to your article. We are borne to a religion where we dont had option - (one cant chose his parents). I like the way you opened up the phrase - are we God Fearing or God Loving - Excellent Anil, keep the writing going on.

  • fernandes, udupi

    Mon, Dec 24 2012

    Avery beautiful article and well said. I do agree with you.

  • jerome, mangalore

    Mon, Dec 24 2012

    You are rihgt, Anil particularly the 99% aspect of our christian life.


Leave a Comment

Title: Faith and Fear



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.