By Mesha Oh
That there is a transcendent Creator God behind the universe is something that I can easily understand—the evidence I can see in the world around me, and in my own self itself, is enough for me to come to that conclusion. But that said, there are some things about God that I just cannot understand, at least not fully. One such thing is why God has allowed for the existence of multiple and mutually-contradictory religions, each of which claims to represent the Absolute Truth, as a result of which humanity has been witness to horrific conflict between rival sets of religionists, each of who imagines that their religion is the best, or even, in some cases, the only way to God.
Why, one might wonder, has God permitted the existence of so many different religions that differ from each other in major ways in terms of belief and practice, which has led to much confusion, even conflict, among religionists? Wouldn’t it have been better, one might ask, had God permitted for only one religion—the supposedly only true one—to exist? That way, one might think, humankind would have been saved the horrors of hate and violence in the name of religion between rival sets of religionists. Surely, God could have arranged for this, being the All-Powerful One.
Theists (and I count myself among them) might respond to this seemingly puzzling predicament thus: “God has given human beings freewill. It is because man has misused this freewill to invent religions of his own making that there are so many different religions in the world. And so, if rival sets of religionists hate and fight each other in the name of God or religion, it isn’t God’s fault at all—it’s simply the fault of human beings who have misused their God-given gift of freewill, first of all, to invent so many different religions, and then, to hate and fight each other in the name of their religion.”
No doubt, from a theist’s perspective this response does make sense. Theists who believe that God gave human beings the gift of freewill would trace much of the evil we witness in the world of human beings to man’s misuse of this gift. Hate and violence in the name of God and religion being one such evil, they would contend that this phenomenon, too, is a result of man’s misuse of God-given freewill. They would, in my opinion, be correct in coming to that conclusion.
But here there is a point that needs to be addressed: Granted that hate and violence by religionists and in the name of religion, like many of the other forms of evil that we witness in the world of human beings, is the result of man’s misuse of our God-given gift of freewill, to what degree do people who are religionists actually possess freewill in matters of religion in the first place? To what extent can it be said that the religion that a person espouses is completely a result of the free exercise of their God-given gift of freewill?
As any sensible person will likely agree, for the vast majority of religionists in the world, the particular religion they identify with is the religion of the family that they happened to have been born into. They evidently had no choice at all in the matter of the family they would take birth in. This was something that they did not freely choose. Many theists would say that it is God alone who decides which infant will take birth in which family—a family that follows this or that religion (or no religion at all).
Now, in many, if not most, cases, what happens at a very early age in the life of a child that is born in a family which follows a particular religion is that its parents make efforts to socialize it into believing in, and identifying with, their religion. As a result, in many such cases, by the time the child attains maturity, it is firmly convinced that this religion is not just true but also the best of all religions, or even the only one supposedly favoured by God. In this way, the phenomenon of being made by God to take birth in a family that follows a particular religion (a decision in which the child evidently plays no role at all) leads the child to turn into an ardent believer in this religion by the time it turns into an adult, and even, in many cases, into a fervent champion of this religion vis-à-vis what he/she comes to regard as rival religions. A not insignificant proportion of people of this sort, who have been carefully indoctrinated from infancy onwards by their parents and others into identifying with a particular religion, are fired with fiercely negative emotions towards other religions and their adherents. And this, as humankind has long witnessed, sometimes takes the form of horrific violence in the name of God and/or religion.
If most religionists happen to believe in a particular religion simply because God made them take birth in a family that identifies with that religion (a decision in which they themselves evidently were not consulted and had no choice in making), and if they were carefully indoctrinated by their parents and others into identifying with this religion from infancy onwards (so much so that they come to regard it as the best religion or the only true one), and if a significant proportion of these religionists are fired by negative emotions towards other religions and their adherents, which often leads to hate and this violence in the name of God and/or religion, how far, one might ask, is this hate and violence really simply result of the misuse of human freewill, as some theists might contend?
In this context, someone might remark, “Had God made it impossible for infants to be able to inherit their religion from their parents and for parents to indoctrinate their children into their religion without the latter’s free consent, there’d likely be considerably less hate and violence in the name of God and religion. So, maybe it isn’t the misuse of human freewill that is entirely to blame for this hate and violence. Perhaps the way God has arranged things in this matter also plays a part in this. Had God made a religionist who violently champions the particular religion he was born into to have been born into some other religion instead, it is likely that he would have been socialized into ardently believing this other religion, instead of hating it and its adherents, as he presently does. He might even have grown up despising the religion that he now so passionately champions. So, maybe the phenomenon of hate and violence in the name of God and/or religion cannot be said entirely to be a result of the misuse of human freewill. If God had arranged the world in such a way that every child grew up free to choose any belief system (or even none at all), instead of as present (when a child is, evidently without any choice in the matter, made by God to be born into a family that identifies with a particular belief system and is accordingly socialized into identifying with it from a small age onwards), surely there’d be much less hate and violence in the name of God and religion. Had God not made people who later went on to become fanatic believers in the religion of their birth to be born in a family that identifies with that religion and that socialized them into firmly believing it from childhood onwards, maybe these people wouldn’t have turned out to be fanatical about this religion in the first place. Hence, perhaps God also is to blame for such people becoming fanatics, and not just these people’s misuse of their God-given gift of freewill.”
A theist might respond to the above suggestion by stating that no matter to what extent a person may have been socialized, from infancy onwards, by their parents into believing in a particular religion, they still possess freewill, this being a God-given gift that not even the most careful indoctrination can rob humans of. Because of this, such a person can freely choose to transcend the impact of childhood socialization and consciously decide not to fall prey to religious exclusivism and hate and violence in the name of their religion and even to abandon their religion, or even every form of religion altogether. This being the case, a religious exclusivist who has been socialized from childhood to believe that the religion of the family he is born into is the best of all or the only one acceptable to God and who engages in hate and violence in the name of religion cannot be said to be compelled to do so by the fact that God made them be born into this religion, as it were. God’s decree that someone be born into a particular religion does not rob him of his freewill and force him to become a religious supremacist or a violent fanatic.
Not everyone might be satisfied with this response that seeks to reconcile God’s power to determine things in the world of humans (including the family that infants will be born into and the religion that they will thereby inherit and accordingly be socialized into believing) with human freewill. But then, the fact is that we human beings simply cannot fathom the mind of God on our own, try as hard as we might. God’s ways often seem mysterious to us, and we mere mortals may not presently be in a position to understand them, at least not fully. Can we understand why God gave us only five or six senses and not a dozen? Can we understand why God created only two/three genders and not a hundred? Can we understand why God gave us hands and feet but not wings, like God gave to the birds? Can we understand why God gave us eyes in the front of our heads but not behind? Can we understand why God made thousands of species in such a way that they must live off other species in order to survive, which might seem a cruel thing? Can we understand why God made the earth a sphere and not a triangle? And so on… The answer to them all is ‘No!”
The fact of the matter is that we simply cannot fully understand why God does some things in some particular ways. We simply cannot fully understand why God has allowed for the existence of many different religions that seem to contradict each other in terms of belief and practice (a phenomenon that has been used, and continues to be used, to foment hate and violence) and did not make there to be just one religion in the world—something that some people might think would have been easier on and for humankind.
As long as we are in this world, there will definitely be many things about it that we just cannot comprehend. But maybe one day, when we depart from this world, God will explain these things to us. As the Apostle Paul beautifully puts it, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)