God, Freedom, and Human Dignity - Essay Example

?God, Freedom & Human Dignity “God, Freedom and Human Dignity: Embracing God-centred identity,” is a complete philosophical book based on the approach towards God. It is a fine depiction of God. The first part of the book consists of 7 chapters. This part focuses on the deformed images of God as well as humanity. The first part further raises many questions and the answers of these questions have been given in Second part of the book. The first part focuses on the emergence and development of the “Me Centred” approach. The author Highfield starts with depicting the modern conceptions about relationship. In previous ages, the relationships would be natural or socially given. We could not be free from the social web and from the relationship imposed on us by the society. Highfield calls this understanding of self as “me – centred” This identity is not selfish or narcissistic but it is based on self desire and not on identity conferring relationship. Chapter 1 of the part one is based on the work of moral philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle In ancient culture, the identity of the person would be decided in a moral space, where respect, fullness and dignity were recognized by the external things such as the person’s family status, war and the glory he had achieved. Earlier Plato and later Augustine and Hippo put forward the theory of inwardness. Augustine gave importance to the purity of heart. Unlike the previous philosophers, Galileo saw the world as a machine, a dead matter. Rene Descartes, the French philosophers accepted the same view of Galileo, though he was not completely atheist. There were slight differences between both of these experts’ philosophy. Unlike the teleological views of Plato and Aristotle, another philosopher, John Locke was anti-teleological. He opined that human nature seeks only pleasure and avoid any pains. For Plato wisdom is more important than military glory and honour. Christianity strongly supports the idealness of life only through the complete dedication and commitment towards God. The medieval Christian thought that the path towards God can be found only by renouncing worldly pleasure. Sixteen century Protestant Reformation movement on the other hand aimed at breaking down the medieval spiritual hierarchy. They were of the view that salvation came by faith alone and not by self-negating works. The devotees do not need any mediator between him and God. While discussing the principles of Deism the author makes it clear that Deism believes in the existence of God, though they reject all religious books and dogma and demagogy and believe that God has given human being an ability of reasoning. Hence following the rules of the nature is the only way to believe in God. Happiness and sorrow are the two paradoxical sides of the same coin. The happiness and grief are subjective and circumstantial. He tells different views of the people about God. Some feel that God is hostile towards humanity. Some are doubtful about His existence. Some consider God as their arch-enemy. The second chapter mainly throws the light of the characters who are challenging the omnipotent divine power i.e. God. Among them are Prometheus and Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Many of the literary experts have glorified Prometheus as he challenged God fearlessly. Many think that God is a threat to their freedom and dignity. Chapter three argues the two concepts, i.e. deviance and subservience. God is omnipotent. The writer informs the reader about the influence of God on the primitive man when man used to get afraid of the natural calamities and he realised that there is a supreme power controlling the universe and the same power is the creator of human being also. To please this power for the sake of a secure and comfortable life, man started worshiping the power and the power is God. Since the time of creation, man has been worshiping God to attain something and to accomplish his desires. But no one worshiped Him for love. The writer confesses that he would be jealous to God for his Divine and omnipotent status. Submissiveness as we people show towards God is also cunning. According to Highfield we are certainly not like Prometheus or Milton’s Satan. Though we are submissive, we are cunning and hypocrite. The next chapter focuses on the indifference showed towards God. In this chapter, Highfield points out the difference between conformist and esthete. Conformists are the people who utilize their complete energy in achieving and maintaining the financial security, respectability, personal well-being and abundance. Esthetes seek only pleasure and indulgence and conformists seek fame and name. Man has been striving for fame, identity and celebrity status since ancient time. In those days the identity was preserved by human beings by showing glory in war, by building monuments and so on. Modern time the ways of preserving identities have altered but the desire to establish identity remained same. Today we try to keep our identity through virtual world. Our value is measured through the number of people who know us. The writer explains the term indifference to God in the sense that we have forgotten God and our relationship with Him. We consider the worldly things important and hence the strong desire to seek God can never nurture in our mind. This is a lack of passion, which Highfield calls indifference. The writer further tells about the agnostic approach that is permanent scepticism about the existence of God. Thus in chapter 5 Highfield has examined three types of attitudes towards God: defiance, subservience and indifference. Personally the author feels that most of the people from the world are dominated by the third attitude that is indifference. The next chapter Highfield catches the attention of the readers towards the threatening image of God and describes how it pits us against God. God is omnipotent and omnipresent and nothing can be out of His sight. He is everywhere. In chapter six Highfield wants to depict the image of humanity that corresponds to this divine image. While pointing out the opinion of Sartre, Highfield describes his opinion about being free or obtaining freedom. “To be free” according to Sartre does not mean ‘obtaining whatever one has wished’ but ‘to determine oneself to wish’ success according to Sartre is not important to freedom. True freedom, as Highfield describes is the state of knowing and willing the good. When our inner condition of ignorance and confusion is overcome, we attain a genuine freedom. Highfield also describes how the dignity of human being matters. Human being is a special entity and he should be treated with dignity. Much has been discussed about human dignity by Highfield in chapter six. The second part of the book is “God-Centred Self.” This book starts with the discussion about God. Highfield wants to reveal the fact that we can never be free from God. He argues how God can be our enemy or an obstruction in our private life and our freedom. On the contrary God’s power gives us life and freedom. God is nothing but an unconditional love and a ceaseless flow of love and affection. His love is divine and can never get diminished. The book starts with chapter eight “The Self – Giving God of the Gospel.” Highfield propounds that God is an eternal love and questions against Zeus’ revengeful nature. He asks how God could be revengeful and envious to the creatures that He has created. He further insists that God can never be the threat to human beings. He opposes those who feel that God is a threat. God is our creator and how our creator can be a threat to us? He reminds us the Christian doctrine that God created the world “from nothing.” We are His creation. Some people think that God loves us because He needs us. This is a purely human logic and definition of human love and it cannot be applicable to God’s love. Highfield strongly refuses this approach by saying that God does not need us but God loves us. His love is unique, amazing and reliable. God is our end but we are not His end. Highfield in the end wants to point out that our dignity cannot be measured by our authority or wealth or power, but it is measured by the Greatness of God who created us. In chapter nine (Part 2) the author has discussed different misunderstandings and misconceptions about God. God’s omnipotent is related to God’s possession of power. The divine power is misunderstood by quantifying it. While discussing the glory of God, the writer says that He hides his glory and power so that we can make free decision. God never tries to protect our freedom but He comes to us to win our love. Unlike man, God’s power never get exhausted or even affected. This power is not less and it can never be destructive. Talking about power, the author says that God’s power is non-competitive. He does not overpower but empowers us. There is a vast difference between God’s knowledge and human knowledge. The fact that, God knows us better than we know ourselves Jesus, the son of God, asserts complete trust in God, who sent him into the desert. I place my life in God’s hand. I will not try to save myself from death. God’s word is everything for Jesus. When the devil comes to tempt Jesus but Jesus was firm with his belief in God. He told him to leave as he will not be away from God. Jesus through his act shows that human being should always be in relation to God for ultimate happiness. Jesus does not reserve this intimacy with God for himself alone but initiates his disciples into the relationship with God. Compassion and forgiveness are very difficult but they keep you close to God. It is because anger and revenge are against divine love. The belief should always be in our mind that we are the beloved of God and the relationship will never end or change. When we are talking about individual identity, the question is what is our identity? and who has given it to us? The answer is God. We came into existence because of the grace of God. We get freedom only by getting ourselves bounded with God. We get complete freedom when we entirely give up our self. God’s love is constant and it is the only universal truth and our dignity is found only in the love of God. Highfield concludes the second part by comparing Milton’s Satan and Prometheus. Through the actions and approaches of Satan and Prometheus we just become insecure and part ourselves from the divine, serene and consistent love of God whereas Jesus brings us close to the love and affection of God. God, Freedom and Human Dignity: Embracing God-centred Identity’ is a book deals with spirituality. It is spiritual approach to the Western modernity which is quite individualistic and which is focusing on freedom and individuality. Highfield wrote this book after an interaction with undergraduate students. It is the common western perception that individuality and freedom means completely free will. Modern people want to be free from relationship also. Some people, who claim them to be the rational, think that God cannot be a solution for the problems of our life. They also think that they have lost the freedom and dignity because of their bondage with God. But relationship with God can never be the constraint or an obstruction to the freedom or individuality. Here Highfield redefines the concept of freedom. He also focuses on the dignity. We can attain the real freedom only in the company of God. According to him, freedom is "the power to live as we were created to live and to be what we were meant to be" (183) The suspicious approach is the culmination of scientific approach and finding scientific cause in everything. Unfortunately people do not understand that when the scientific knowledge stops at a certain place, spirituality starts from that point and it has no limit. The science claims that everything is controlled by our brain. But through rationality and scientific approach, we cannot find the mysteries of life. For example during the intercourse between male and female, millions of sperms release from male body to female body. Only one sperm is there which can reach to its destination after its long journey from the mouth of vagina to the womb. For such a micro sperm, this journey is equal to some thousand kilometres. There is no light to direct it but the journey is in the darkness. Then how can it reach to the destination? Who guides him to reach to the destination (womb)? Who show the sperm the right path? The sperm is so small, and micro, so there is no question of having brain to the sperm. Then how the brainless sperm succeeds in its mission? The logical and convincing answer is yet not there with medical science. For searching the answer of this question, we have to go to the spirituality. It is the soul or spirit who is there in every human being. The soul itself is a divine like a small drop of the Divine Energy called God. Some atheists tend to criticize God for his unjust with Adam and Eve. They feel that Adam, Satan as well as Prometheus. It was because they had the courage to oppose God’s tyranny. These people tend to think God as the great tyrant. They think that God did not want man to be powerful and knowledgeable. So He was intentionally keeping Adam and Prometheus away from the knowledge. When He comes to know that Adam and Prometheus has performed rebellious activity and disobeyed Him, He gets furious. My question is how can God be furious and revengeful? If He is furious, he is certainly not God, because God is away from the six enemies or six weaknesses of human beings. These are lust, anger, greed, conceit, temptation, and envy. These six enemies keep human being away from God. Once we overcome them, God’s grace, infinite love and the real ecstasy of freedom is not away from us. In the eyes of these atheists, God is always revengeful, and tyrant. These people think themselves quite logical and scientific in their view. They don’t know that God is something which cannot be understood by logic, brain, intellectuality. These things are very inadequate with human beings. Human brain, logic and intellectuality are limited and they cannot go beyond certain periphery of thoughts. For understanding God, you need the constant flow of love in your heart. God is understood only through love. We cannot think God either as a rival or a competitor or a revengeful power. What is human dignity? Who has bestowed it to us? We can condemn God; we can be rational and refuse God. For this, we indulge in lots of arguments and try to convince our mind that we do not believe in God. But we forget that this rationality, capacity to argue, having knowledge, all these things again are the grace of God. How and where can we go away from God? He is everywhere. He is in us, in all human beings, in all animals, flowers, plants, sky. There is no place which is not occupied by Him. Highfield also elaborates love of human beings and God. If Zeus is having an arbitrary power, he cannot be God. God means just love and compassion. Our relationship is ultimately with God. We have come here in this world in a physical form. Till our life is going on, our relationship with the people from the world remains. It is mortal. But relationship with God is immortal and the only one. The relationship is not restricted to any religion. Rather religion is purely a man made thing. God has never told man to establish certain religion. He is beyond the peripheries of religions. We surrender ourselves but this surrender is for gaining pleasure, for fulfilling certain wills. There is a bargain with God in our submissiveness. We do not think God as a threat, but at the same time we do not understand that He is our soul’s passion. Jesus has a complete belief in God. Even after the temptation from the devil his faith remained unshaken. Even when he was being crucified, his faith did not shake. Here I would like to give one more example of Saint Meera. Saint Meera or Meera bai. She was one of the greatest Indian saints and devotees. She was a quintessential devotee of Lord Krishna. She was obstructed by worshiping God from her family members. She was offered poison by her brother in law, a poisonous snake also was sent to kill her. She had given everything to Lord Krishna. She had never bothered about herself. She had completely given herself to Lord Krishna who was her lover, her husband and her survivor. The love being with a God cannot be compared with any worldly pleasure. The entire world is made by God. It is His world. Not a single leaf can move without the will of God in this world. He has encompassed everything. He is in a small, micro thing to the giant things like planets, Milky Way and sky. He is infinite. Nothing in the world is made without his existence. God and relationship: Jesus’ relationship with God was of son and father. He looked at God as his father and kept complete faith. He spread the divine message of God to his followers and the entire world. There is no name for the relationship. Some saints think God as a feminine power and supposed as their mother. There are many saints in Hinduism who had worshiped the feminine form of Divine power. These saints have composed many holy poems in which they call God their mother. For Jesus Christ, God was a father figure. Meerabai loved God as her lover, her divine lovers. So her love becomes eternal. There is no gender for the Divine Power, we call God. It is a divine love between the creature and creator. The only matter is our devotion, deep faith and love to God. All of these were great souls. When there is anarchy, confusion, and people lose their faith and love in God, God appears in the form of human being. He spread his message of love to these creatures whom He had created. Here Highfield seems to be against idol worship. Personally I feel that idol worship facilitates us towards salvation and attaining God. In our meditation for example if a certain image is not there in front of our eyes, it is difficult for the common people to keep their attention in the worship. If Christians are worshiping God, there is an image of Jesus Christ in front of them. Otherwise how could it be possible to define the formless figure of the Divine power? I personally feel that Highfield has become successful in encouraging everyone to explore and understand oneself. Our existence is decided by God. God has sent all of us on the earth to perform certain task. It is our duty to perform the task assigned to us by our Divine Father or Divine Mother or Divine Lover. We can keep ourselves attached to him with any relationship. Our real freedom lies in forgetting ourselves completely and giving up ourselves completely to God. Let him decide everything in our life. This complete giving up is the only way to make ourselves free and to attain the real dignity. Highfield’s approach is very incisive towards modern Me-Centred culture in God, freedom and human dignity. Self-Giving is the way conveyed by Jesus and other great prophets of the world. According to me, this book is edifying and a complete enlightenment of the people who have lost the right path towards spirituality. This book is a fantastic depiction of strong and passionate love of God. It tries to reveal the truth that God is the foundation of true freedom, as well as human dignity and our identity is rooted in Him. Read More