When faith gave its own reason to live on…

By Philip Mudartha-Doha-Qatar

Bellevision Media Network

 

Doha, 26 Feb 2012: At 60, I divide my years into three neat stages.  The early twenty years consisted of care-free childhood, rebellious teens and coming of age. The luxury of suckling at mother’s breasts for milk even as I joined primary school is a God-given gift,seldom received by elder siblings. The young adolescent years saw foraging for edibles, while returning from school, picking seasonal fruits such as wild berries, cashews, mangoes and even big Jacks, belonging to anybody, as long as they could be brought down with sharp sling-shots and expertly aimed cobblestones.

 

The adventurous forays,during teens, deep into forests in search of delicacies such as assorted mushrooms and wild tubers as well as the fishing expeditions in lakes, rivulet streams and rivers fuelled the fire for romantic idealism and the rebellious social liberalismwhich burned within. Coming of age brought the shame of local unemployment and the penury of exodus following the ancestral footsteps. Neither the romanticism nor the liberalism survived the harsh realities of streets and slums of Bombay, which had its own idiom: Do or die; Fight or flight.

 

Looking back wistfully, the dominant emotion of the early stage of my life is blind faith. Rationalists say faith is always blind. It lacks reason. Therefore, in describing as blindly faithful, everything I thought, said, did and experienced defied reason and logic. I did not doubt that my thirst and hunger will not be quenched in the act of suckling. I truly believed in the largesse of nature, that in its belly it held all berries and fruits that I wanted for my tastes and fulfillment.  I trusted my own skills as sling-shot sharp-shooter, and failure was not a prospect.  Even the fish seemed to want to take the baits and be eaten.

 

In this world of no unfulfilled wants, with no thoughts of scarcities, faith in God, in the religion I was raised into and its rituals and dogmas was easy and unquestioned. Only sickness, personal and familial, had to be brought to God for Him to redress, if He so willed. “Thy will be done, Lord my God”.  Unwavering faith, I sought, and He would give. If He does not give, His Wisdom is unfathomable.  Even if I wept secretly and silently, when faced with grief and sorrow, asking Him and cajoling Him to work miracles for me, as I know He did in His days on Earth. Without ever doubting, in total faith, even when He did not deliver. Faith, where is thy reason?

 

Faith did not pull wool over my eyes. I did see glaring disparities in possessions: of health, wealth, talent, agility, beauty and endowment. When I saw, faith told me God loved those who are meek and poor. It is God’s grand vision to reward the poor with heavenly after-life rewards in exchange for privations in this life. He will reserve sufferings and privations of hell to the rich and powerful. This revelation did not seem right, though re-assuring.

 

Thus, within the ambit of faithful romanticism, shades of social liberalism were blended, again making Jesus the Redeemer as the Great Socialist. ‘All that is mine is yours” and “Go, sell what you have and give it to the poor, for verily I say, you cannot truly follow me otherwise”.  My faith reinforced the convictions arising out of budding socialist liberal reason and blunted any likely anger at worldly deprivations, comforted by the knowledge that the rich and powerful will grovel at my feet in the after-life! Reason, did you realize that faith has its compelling arguments and reasoning?

 

Those were the days. All I had was faith, and nothing more. They tried to educate me to reason things out, to conduct experiments in the labs, observe, make notes and draw conclusions. It was an act within the play of life, to enact as written, scripted, promoted and expected by my parents, siblings, elders, priests, teachers, mentors, peers, well-wishers and society at large: Conform to beaten path. Your education is for equipping you with a degree certificate on a piece of paper that tells others what work you can do to earn a living and practice faith. Reason, you serve faith and there is no other reason for your existence.

 

If only life ended at 20. But, alas, it did not. I survived and arrived at crossroads. I had to choose my way…that is another story, of second stage.,