Laws of God (Post 3)

'The fool who has said in his heart, there's no God above.'

I’ll tell you why we have different religions; we do because we are all different not just in the way we view the world and perceive our experiences but also because of other wider influences like our environment.

If everyone around us is Muslim, if all we see in our area are mosques, if we are confronted daily with Muslim programmes on TV or the radio and if all of this happened from childhood - a highly impressionable stage of human development, then naturally, we are quite likely to believe in Islam. Period. And that is how and why most of us have chosen our faiths.

So when, Muslims vehemently defend their religion up North and Christians forcefully push with theirs down South, all I see is a bulk of ignorant people who have never really questioned their faith, challenged their belief system or really identified their motives in ‘pursuing’ God.

Oh and don’t take any criticisms of mine too hard; being ignorant is not a crime – it happens. We are all ignorant at some level or another; of one thing or another. Staying ignorant though is another matter; it is the sin against knowledge that cannot be forgiven. And I am not asking anyone to shirk their religion as a step towards getting out of ignorance; no, I am asking everyone to think, to learn, to gain knowledge and when you have, then, make an informed choice on your way of life. After all, there are many in Europe who don’t believe in God and don’t know why; they are just as ignorant.

So, to sum that rant up, don’t be a Christian, Muslim or whatever else simply because everyone else is. That is simply sheepish.

Anyway, let’s get back to the main issue – Religion as a whole, that belief in the supernatural or in a supreme being who created the Universe and everything in it.

One of my first problems with Religion is the fact that people at some stage in the distant past assumed that because a supreme being must exist, they ought to worship him. Does the first necessarily mean the other – not in my opinion.

But people began praising and thanking this being for their lives and fortunes until they actually ‘discovered’ rules with which this supreme being would want them to lead their lives. And it gets better, these rules would determine if they got rewarded or punished.

Actually, the main religion guilty of this rule-led doctrine that I know of was Judaism, from which sprang Christianity and Islam. I can’t remember a traditional African religion or any ancient religious cults of Europe and the middle-East where the gods enforced any rules directly over the lives of the people. Oh, and most of these ancient religions also had a concept of a supreme being; Olorun for the Yorubas and Chukwu for the Igbos. And do you remember that passage in the bible where the Athenians are shown to have had an altar raised to the ‘unknown god’?

However though, their worship of their gods, supreme or lesser, has never been shown to directly interfere with social laws. Laws on how the society functioned, on how people treated one another, on politics and economics were totally created and enforced by the community. Take for example, in ancient Igboland; if someone committed murder, that wasn’t directly an offence against any god even though the murderer would be supposed as evil in the eyes of Chukwu or the other gods. But say an unmarried pair has sex, the pantheon wouldn’t give a toss. The community, solely, would take such matters in hand.

These religions were inherently selfish; the gods and the people looked out for themselves; the people honoured the gods, approaching them with gifts for favours, protection or appeasement – not much more.

But enter the Hebrews of the old testament who, by the way were often lured towards pantheism and, unusually, their God begins giving out rules to govern their social affairs. These rules are still used today by many Christians of whatever race or culture.

But it is easy to see that the laws that are detailed in Deuteronomy are simply a collection of Jewish moral and religious codes. Moral codes – to govern their society; religious codes – to guide their worship, just like all our societies have. So, because the author of this book claims that these laws were given by their ‘God’ (what society wouldn’t) doesn’t necessarily make it so.