“On another day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before Him. And the Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”
“Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.”
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity?
Curse God and die!” He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
— Job 2:1-10
I have been a Christian from my youth — from my days of adolescence. But before my eyes were opened, spiritually, towards that interpretation and approach to life I had — as far back as I can remember— a consciousness of God which, when I now think of it, seemed innate. The existence of God for me, for some reason, was never an issue for debate. Unlike the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who asserted in his book, Why I Am Not A Christian, that belief in God was based upon a fear of divine retribution and of hell, that was not the basis of my belief. The notions of accountability and of concomitant rewards and condemnation came afterwards. My concerns about God, however, ran in another direction.
I remember, for example, on one occasion while playing a game as a boy, on a sunny Jamaican afternoon — romping which did not require the involvement of other children — when I became enthralled by a deep question of theology. After I had whirled around on the grass, barefoot, until vertigo had set in, I fell on my back on the ground beneath me. Looking up at the sky the world seemed to move around me. Then came my query, a thought which I had contemplated for a moment, and which seemed to have come out of nowhere: “Who made God?” and not, “Is there a god?”
I received no answer to that question, I heard no voice from heaven, and yet it mattered not. There was, indeed, for me, a God, and that was that. But since that question, which emanated from a boyish mind and which was posited to himself by that boyish mind, other questions have since arisen about God, some of which were of a more complex, of a more confusing and of a more vexing nature.
Some of those questions, when they were posed by others, and not getting answers that were satisfactory to them, have resulted in a cooling off from their ardent faith in God — or from that vested in any other deity for that matter. There are people, in all sincerity, who have not just lapsed into what orthodox theologians call “apostasy”, but there are others — who had never walked through the door of a church, of a mosque, of a temple, or of any place consecrated to religious worship and instruction — who came to cynicism, and who then held such positions as agnosticism and as atheism which, for them, were logical outcomes in their quest for metaphysical answers. But, as resolute as I have remained in my own faith, and as strident as I have been in the dissemination of it, I have softened over the years and I have become less judgmental of people, given their many, their varied, their trying and their tragic experiences in this oft tempestuous journey that we call life. I had come to appreciate the following words that the songwriter, Joe South, had penned and had published back in 1968:
If I could be you, if you could be me
For just one hour
If we could find a way
To get inside each other’s mind
If you could see you through my eyes
Instead of your ego
I believe you’d be
Surprised to see
That you’ve been blind
Walk a mile in my shoes
Walk a mile in my shoes
And before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes.
The word “Namaste” is a greeting from Sanskrit that means “I bow to you” and is used to show respect. A common spiritual interpretation is “The divine light in me bows to the divine light in you,” recognizing the sacred within each person. It is often accompanied by the gesture of pressing the palms together at the chest and bowing slightly, a gesture known as anjali mudra. Although I am never one for theological syncretism, such a concept is, by no means, offensive to me as it seems to run parallel to the Judao-Christian doctrine that man was created in the image of God. The irony is, I have oft received more respect from some who do not believe in God, and from some who believe otherwise — outside of the church — than from some who profess to be Christians.
This attitude of mine towards others who do not believe as I do, and for whom believing in any deity is an intellectual opprobrium to them, is captured in the excerpt from the Book of Job in the Bible, quoted above, after a series of calamitous events had befallen the person for whom the Book was named with the full knowledge and permission of The Almighty. Job had lost his children, his livelihood, his health and his respect in society. In fact, he was blamed by his associates for being the cause for his very own ordeal — a practice that continues in the world today where victims are oft condemned as the culprits responsible for their own dilemmas.
It was during that particularly difficult time in Job’s life, when his wife, having lost her children, having lost the creature comforts which her husband had provided for her — with him always giving credit for his great success to God — and seeing her beloved husband suffer, egregiously and needlessly, out of her own consternation, confusion, frustration and anger suggested that he abandon his faith in God which, for all intents and purposes, had seemed, ostensibly, to have lost its efficacy, and to be of no earthly use to him, to her, or to anybody else for that matter. Death was her solution for relief from his terrible misery. She still had great respect for his integrity despite what he was going through. But, I had never seen that initially. And the Book revealed nothing about God condemning her for what she had recommended to Job.
I was one of those who tended to harshly criticize her for her lack of faith and for her blasphemy, until I came to realize, through eyes of compassion, that I had never gone through her ordeal and I shuddered — and I still do shudder — at the thought of her excessive pain and of her awful grief in my very own life. “He who feels it knows it”, as it has been said. I might have been more hard on her than I was on God who could have prevented that whole affair.
Our principles should never blind us to the prospects of developing human empathy, and, when possible, it should ever aid us, conversely, towards a life of compassion if our religion is worth its salt or its weight in gold. We who claim to be Christians ought to remember Jesus’ treatment of the publicans and the sinners. He tended to be more understanding, more merciful and more patient towards folks who fit those descriptions today, morally speaking, than many in the church do today. Why is that so?
As I had indicated before, I had grappled with more weighty questions about God and about His ways of doing things, since I had posited the question: “Who made God?”, as a very young boy. I have encountered things which were recorded about Him and which were done by Him, which I, as a mere mortal, have found to be utterly confusing, very hard to accept, and yes, even quite infuriating. And some individuals might view me as pathetically naive to have continued to pursue my faith in Him — but, so be it, so be it. We all, I verily believe, will have to give an account for how we treated Him and for how we lived in our relationships with others in this world, out of a good conscience towards Him, someday. Yet, as for me I will not heed the urging of the wife of Job.
As to why God allowed certain people who were near and dear to me to suffer and to die the way that they did — I may never know. As to why He had allowed so many to die horribly due to the violent wickedness of men, like in Gaza, like in the Ukraine, like some in I.C.E. custody, and like those who were secretly lynched by racists, saying that they had died by suicide, in recent years — I may never know.
As to why He had allowed the tragic assassination of a white male, in the prime of his life, to garner more grief in American society than for the many young mothers who had bled to death after a miscarriage — having been denied medical care because of newly made laws, and that for the numerous children who were butchered in school by gun violence, with the blessings of Congress — I may never know. Why He has allowed religious, academic, political, cultural and economic hypocrites to oft rule the day — I may never know.
As to why God has allowed selfish and cruel political gamesmanship to cost the jobs of thousands of skilled, hard-working and honest people — I may never know. But, I will not and I cannot curse Him and die, as perplexing as all those issues are. Mankind, I have found, is ever so quick to play the victims, where and when we please, when in fact the culprit of our own pain and of our own demise was us. Does it even make sense that we who claim liberty as a part of our inalienable human rights should then turn around and blame God for having not intervened in our folly?
Although Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah and Jonah — all well-known faithful servants of God — had witnessed His great mercy and power, according to the Biblical record, their confusion and their anger at the way that He did things sometimes never led them to lose faith in Him, nor to curse Him, although they had all asked for relief from service to Him through death at His hands.
Perhaps my readers can live without God, or without the very idea of His perfection — mythical or not — but I cannot. I am in no position to judge. However, if God is a tale, then what an incredible tale or what a stupendous invention He is. I know someone, one who is quite dear to me, who blames religion for all the ills of man. I pray that my own life will, somehow, belie that terrible and tragic assertion, although it is not one without some basis in fact. And yet my reading of history has revealed many accounts of Muslims, of Jews and of Christians living and working together in peace — not perfectly — but in peace.
I have read where greed, where love of power, where hubris, and where prejudice affected those who denied the existence of a deity as well as those who did not, and, perhaps, more so in the former than in the latter. I have read where both were all willing participants in gross criminality and in acts of great wickedness.
Mankind has ever corrupted that which has been proven to be good and turned it into evil. One puts up signs prohibiting litter and with a broom sweeps an area to cleanliness, only to have others come and vandalize the signs and create a dump in the same area. By a process of logical deduction the common denominator in all of those issues was mankind and not deities or religions. But, then, mankind possesses the uncanny ability to make a god or a religion out of anything. Mankind, therefore, is the problem in this world and history bears me out on that assertion. And yet, in the midst of injustice and tragedy in this world there have been those who have handled the fallout with the grace of Job, never ever losing their integrity and yes, giving glory to God.
