Religion predates many of the known existing socialisational phenomenons. Religion and culture goes together. Religious scholarship asserts that it is only through the lenses of culture that an ethnic's religion can be understood. There is a general consensus among scholars that religion is by and largely shaped by culture. For over three thousand years, religion has not ceased to be an opium of the human species. While religion has succesfully convinced a majority of the world's population that above the sky, somewhere up there,lives a super-all knowing,all present being, doubts about that cannot be ignored.
The questioning of God's existence has its root in the birth of an era called Enlightenment. This is a period that marked remarkably progress in education in medieval Europe. This period coincided with the rennaissance era which witnessed a growing enthusiasm in arts, literature and philosophy. For the first time in chronicled history,religion felt the scathing launch of missiles rooted in dialogue and rationale thinking than on military crusades. Germany boasts of great known philosophers who even introduced historical methods of biblical study. Never in it history has the Bible been subjected under heavy scrutiny as was the case with the dawn of these eras. Traditions of antiquity have placed great protection on religious tenets and myths. The twist however, came with the questioning of God's existence.
The Church as a religious institution was soon confronted with a new predicament altogether. Every known dogma was interrogated objectively. New names came to connote pionners of such virginal undertaking, sometimes wrongly percieved. Heretics, anti-Christ and satan's agents were labels used. It was all an exercise in futility. Today the world has seen great men and women who publicly confessed their disbelief in God or any gods. This is especially dominant in the west. There are many known atheists there,some who were once evangelised.
God! Coming from a hyped religious background in Swaziland,I can attest that almost all Swazi families believe in God's existence. Children are indoctrinated through the passing of missionary teachings that God love them. He sent his only Son to die for their sins. I never got to escape these teachings too . At home,school and Sunday school. They are entrenched across the Swazi social life,cutting across every spectrum. In Swazi societies, the social theme and expectation of the people is total submission and acceptance to cultural trends, traditions and traditional structures, submission to indegenous and Christian beliefs without questioning. So, as we grow up in terms of age and academical strides, we face a strange battle: questioning beliefs and traditions than worshipping them. I faced my own battle at university. All the tales about a speaking serpent, language confusion in the building site of the Tower of Babel and many senseless biblical stories began to resemble a sculpture. A stone curved image with no breaths. Then it was the antithetical anthromorphosis attributes of God! They began to make a huge joke on the deity I grew up knowing. God caused misery to mankind in the Old Testament. He is self-craving and highly demanding, wanting all the attention like a small child. Failure to do that is punished by misery and suffering, as the capture of the Israelites privides a grandiose kaleidoscope . Professor Dawkins justly put it in his work, ''Religion is a poisoner'' when he sees God as a ''misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, megalomaniac and a malevolent bully''. Of course this could possible be the potraits of religious fanatics who created God. I say so because,like one atheist reasoned, it makes more sense that humans created God than the other way round. Religion is what is alive, not God.
It is the mighty of religion that has made an impact on human lives than the mythical objected power of God. It is through religion that relative social tranquility has been realised. However,that is not to say peace is un-attainable in the absence of religion. It is not the intention of this paper too,to say it is not possible to attain the apex level of morality without religion. Every atheist and humanist worth of his or her values would attest to this. I have seen religion drives people to lend a helping hand on social developments than the hand of God. Some social ills have been perpertuated and committed under the wielding power of religion,than the power of God. In Swaziland,religion have been used to cement the authority of the monarch, not the voice of God.
I think this whole thing about God had been blown out of proportion. It has delayed developments and supported tyranns. I know many people say God speaks for himself. I disagree. They do the talking for him. If he ever lived, He is dead by now. I do not want to think He is incompetent or rather, too busy to notice the hell humanity is going through. It cannot be His will.
In Swaziland,God is taken for granted. Four months ago, a terrible road accident occured at Malagwane leaving the rest of us reeling in pain. The solution to this, it was agreed was prayer. On or about 2011 ,the kingdom experienced some economic meltdown. The churches of Swaziland organised a prayer. This was an insult to able thinking Swazis because our economic problems are man-made. Again,religion was used to disguise the maladministration of government. People who should have lost their jobs, worse, take a detour to prison escaped through religion.
This paper intends to assert that God does not live. It is only the pious imagination of uncontent people who created all this. If He lives, let Him prove himself to this generation that is trying hard to find an evidence that he lives. It is not enough to hear from Christian apologetics such as St Paul, the disputed apostle ranting about seeing the Lord. What happened to the Old Testament belief that anyone who sees God does not live to tell the tale?
By Khayelihle Simelane
No comments:
Post a Comment