Ignorance: Definitions Can Be Misleading

By Esther Kurien

Definitions Can Be Misleading

The Bible says: "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God". Having first convinced himself, he then proceeds to broadcast it to the world. Nietzsche the philosopher announced that God is dead.

Later, mortal that he was, Nietzsche died. Had God the Creator sent an obituary notice to the newspapers, it would have read thus: "Nietzsche is dead! Signed: GOD".

A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. Yet the ignorant unhesitatingly pontificate on matters they know little about. Rushing in where angels fear to tread, the pseudo-philosopher weighs the God of the Old Testament in his own balance, finds Him wanting and condemns Him to oblivion. The New Testament is dismissed with contempt, in a show of intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy.

Long before the Rabbi-author launched into his explanation of why bad things happen to good people, Job in the Old Testament had flung a challenge defiantly at God. But wisely, in all humility, he ended up confessing: "Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand: things too wonderful for me to know!"

God Himself spells out this truth in the clearest terms in the Bible: "For, My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways My ways... As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts".

Even seemingly simple words demand definitions: Who are the good people the Rabbi has in mind? We turn to a vivid, dramatic scene in the Bible. A woman accused of adultery is dragged into the presence of Jesus by the "good" religious men, the moral brigade. Barely looking up, Jesus makes a simple suggestion: "Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone".

No one moves. Haven't they heard what Jesus said? Let the good man among you, who has never thought, said or done anything bad - and by implication, always thought, said and done what is right, let him throw the first stone. Every single one of the "good men" drops his stone, and quietly creeps away!

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory, the perfection of God" - this is God's diagnosis of mankind's sickness. "Call no man good. Only God is good", the Bible reminds us.

Pseudo-philosophers suffer from acute tunnel-vision. Listen to the facile claims made with utmost confidence: "From the perspective of perfect detachment, both bad things and good things disappear... The far more elegant solution to the problem of suffering offered, is the unkindest cut of all; that suffering is "a result, of our own attachment".

The 'elegant solution' or explanation for why some of us undergo suffering that could border on the unbearable - that the agony is mere illusion and hence not real - can provide neither comfort nor respite from the suffering itself. Such generalisations and simplistic explanations cannot bring succour to those suffering a terminal illness, for instance. How can the "bad" things disappear?

True, there are many questions for which we have no pat, easy answers. But "the constructs of our minds", false concepts of God's nature, are not the solution. Our ignorance combined with our self-centredness focused entirely on what we want to get and enjoy, has "created our own gods"; gods, as our philosopher rightly concludes, who were and are "whimsical, lustful, mendacious". God is not a super Santa Claus. Mindless rituals are not what God wants from us. He seeks a living relationship with us.