Critical Reflection on Core Beliefs

Many years ago, my mother, who was then in her late 60s or early 70s, fell ill and had to be admitted to hospital. I don’t know what the issue was, but it was likely serious because she was put into a special ward in the hospital and spent quite some days there.

It was painful to see my mother in a hospital bed, and I turned to God for her to recover. Now, this was a long time ago, and so, I can’t remember what exactly I told God, or if, indeed, I said anything at all to Him in words. But what I do recall is a sort of bargain I thought I would enter into with Him on the matter. I decided I would make a big charitable donation, and on account of this good deed I hoped God would cure my mother.

I was desperate for my mother to get well, and this was a price I was most willing to pay for it to happen. And so, I gave a young man who worked as a domestic help in my mother’s home a substantial amount of money (which might have amounted to between a third and half of my then annual income). This was my part of the ‘bargain’ I thought I’d strike with God. I expected or hoped that God would, in return, do His bit, responding to my generous charitable gesture by making my mother get alright. Maybe I didn't even for a moment think of what the young man would do with the money that I gave him or even consider the possibility that he might waste or misuse some, or all, of it. He was, in my eyes, 'poor', and God was happy if we helped poor people, and so, if I helped this poor person by giving him a big sum of money, God, I thought, would or might agree to cure my mother, which was all that mattered, as far as I was concerned, at that moment.

It so happened that my mother did recover and was finally discharged from the hospital. Now, I don’t know if my kind deed played any role in making God arrange for this to happen, but what I certainly do know is that the act of generosity on my part that I hoped would make God intervene and cure my mother reflected a particular understanding of God that I then held but one that I now find, on critical reflection, to be quite problematic.

My act of giving away a big sum of money to a poor person in the hope that God would thereby cure my mother seems to have been based on a notion that I then had of a God who might do things for us only if we do things for Him or that please Him; a God who is whimsical, arbitrary and unpredictable, whose ways of behaving we can’t ever fathom and who must be suitably appeased in order to have even the most noble requests (such as having one’s mother being cured) met; a God whom one can enter into a quid pro quo sort of relationship or bargain with in order to have one’s prayers answered; a God whose relationship with us is of an essentially transactional nature, He doing the things we want Him to do for us in return for us doing the things He was us to do; a God who might refuse to grant us our requests, and who might even grievously harm us, if we don’t be and do as He wants us to and says we should; a God whose love for us is highly conditional; a God whose attitude towards us we can never be sure of—we can’t ever know if He really does love us and is concerned for how we fare, as He is said to. This God was very much like a person who professes to have great affection for us but whose actual feelings for us we suspect, not being at all sure if they are genuine in what they claim and somehow feeling that not only might they not really care for us but also that they might even secretly despise us.

Although I had likely never given much thought to the nature of the God I believed then, this actually seems to have been the sort of God of my understanding at that time. Today, however, my understanding of God—who God is and what His nature is like—has shifted. Hopefully, it has evolved for the better. And so, maybe if a situation similar to what I was faced with when my mother was admitted in hospital many years ago were to arise now and if my mother, who passed away some years ago, were still alive, I might behave quite differently. I might pray to God to cure my mother without thinking that I needed to enter into a bargain with Him for Him to grant my request. Also, having learnt a lesson from the past, it’s unlikely that I would again give away money to any cause without bothering about how it would be used by the recipient of my charity (At the same time, though, if God did indeed cure my mother, along with thanking Him for it, I might ask Him if I could do something concrete—an act of charity perhaps—to express my gratitude and act as He might suggest in the form of a prompting that I might receive from Him in this regard).

A basic point that I seek to highlight through this discussion is the need to be aware of the nature and broader implications of core beliefs that we may hold, including about God, beliefs that play a major role in shaping our attitudes and behaviour and the overall course of our lives.  It is important for us to take the effort and make the time to consciously reflect on these beliefs and to critically evaluate them on the basis of such criteria as ethics and logic. We need to leave aside those beliefs that we no longer resonate with, that now seem unreasonable or harmful or that we have outgrown. And, if need be, we need to evolve new, wholesome convictions that can help us in the process of our personal and collective evolution.