A Short Story
Like everyone else in his village, Boba believed that once upon a time, some centuries ago, the Creator of the universe had sent a certain man—let us call him A—into the world to tell people how they should live. He exalted himself above the rest of humankind, making many claims about himself. He didn’t speak on his own, he stated. Rather, he claimed that he spoke only what the Creator had instructed him to. He insisted that the only way that people could please the Creator was to believe in him and to follow everything that he taught. If they failed to do this, he declared that the Creator would severely punish them in this world and that they would be hurled into Hell after their death, a harrowing fate from which, he said, they could never escape.
For generations, people in Boba’s village had believed these things. They had never met people who believed differently. They didn’t dare question what they had been taught to believe, for fear of angering the Creator of the universe and being sent off to Hell forever.
*
One day—this was when he was around 20—Boba went to a distant town in search of work. This was the first time that he had travelled so far from his village.
The town was very different from Boba’s village in almost every respect. One major difference (which Boba discovered very soon) was that no one in the town whom he met believed in the figure A whom he had been taught from childhood onwards to revere and fear. Most people there hadn’t even heard of A. Instead, almost everyone in the town was (or claimed to be) a follower of another figure—let us call him B.
Like A, B was believed to have lived a very long ago (a couple of centuries before A). Like A, B had apparently claimed to have been sent by the Creator of the universe into the world on a special mission. B too insisted that only by believing in him and the claims he made about himself and following what he taught could one please the Creator. Again like A, B claimed that if a person did not believe in him and do as he taught, the Creator would be angry with them and would cast them into eternal Hell.
The people of the town had believed the things they did about B (even though they hadn’t ever met him, for he had lived a long time ago, in a distant part of the world) because that was how their ancestors had believed, as far as they could remember.
*
When Boba learnt about the beliefs of the people of the town, his initial reaction was of revulsion. “Of course these people must be wrong,” he instinctively reacted. “It is our master, A, who is the Creator’s chosen one, whom one must follow in order to please the Creator and to get into Heaven. There’s no other way acceptable to the Creator. These people who follow B are completely deluded,” he told himself.
This was exactly what everyone in Boba’s village had believed for generations, and so it was not surprising that Boba reacted the way he did.
But some days later, as Boba made some friends in the town, his views began to change. It started when a friend said to him, “You believe the things you do about A only because everyone else in your village believes that way, and since childhood you’ve been taught to believe that this is the truth. But can you really be sure it is so? What if it is actually false and the truth lies in what we believe? What if our master B—and not A, whom you follow—is the only way to please God and go to Heaven? What if the path that your A taught is a way to Hell, and not Heaven, as you believe?”
Later that day, when he was by himself, Boba thought, “These people are as confident in their beliefs about their master B as we are about our beliefs about our master A. How can I be sure that they are wrong? Might it not be possible that they could be right? What if theirs, and not ours, is the way to please the Creator and to go to Heaven? What if what they say is correct and that the path that A taught actually leads to Hell?”
Oh, all of this was so perplexing! Boba had no answer to these questions.
*
Over time, the more Boba mulled over these issues the more confused he got. Still, he couldn’t get his mind off the matter. He just didn’t know what and who to believe. A and B had made similar claims for themselves, and while there was a superficial similarity in some of the things that they had taught, on most issues their teachings were diametrically opposed to each other. Faced with this reality, Boba was confronted with the following dilemma:
Who was right? Was it A, as Boba and his people had all along believed? Or was it B, as the people of the town thought?
Given the fact that their teachings were so different from each other, it was simply impossible for both A and B to be right. Either A was wrong or B was. But there was also third possibility: It could be that neither A nor B was right. It might well be that both were wrong!
Boba’s dilemma wasn’t a mere intellectual issue. Rather, it was a matter of immense personal concern to him. He took the matter very seriously. The reason for this was that he understood that his entire life (and his life after death, if there was indeed such a thing) crucially depended on the decision he took about what and who to believe—A, or B, or neither of them. This decision would fundamentally shape how he led his life—his beliefs, his likes and dislikes, his attitudes, his thought patterns, his actions, his relationships, his choices…Given how important this decision really was, it was absolutely essential for him to make the right choice. It would determine his life in this world and the world after death, and so he had to be sure that he made the correct decision in the matter.
But how could he decide on his own who was right—A, or B, or neither of them? His instincts, emotions or intellect might urge him to choose one of these options, but he knew that if he did so, he couldn’t be really sure that he was making the right choice. After all, being human and fallible, there was every possibility that he could make a mistake—and a mistake in this matter could result in him completely ruining his life, here on Earth, and then also landing up in Hell after death. Oh how terrible that would be!
You can’t imagine how troubled Boba was with a sea of conflicting thoughts and emotions swirling about in his mind!
*
One day, Boba hit upon a brilliant solution. Instead of agonizing over who and what was right and what belief-system to follow, he would hand over the matter to the Creator to handle. “He created me, so let Him handle the issue. Let Him guide me, instead of me trying to guide or misguide myself,” Boba decided.
“O Lord,” Boba said to the Creator, “I am utterly confused and do not know what to do in this matter of enormous consequence for me, in this world and in the life after death. I don’t know who is right—my fellow villagers or the people of this town. I don’t know if A is right or B. Or, perhaps neither of them is true and the truth lies elsewhere. I can’t discover the path pleasing to You on my own, and I don’t want to blindly follow something which might be wrong and cause me to waste my life and also lead me to eternal loss in the Hereafter. So, Lord, I request you to please handle the matter. You guide me to You! Thank You!”
When he had finished praying, Boba felt greatly relieved. He had now decided to let the Creator lead him to what was right and true, rather than blindly following what he had been taught in his village as a child or unthinkingly accepting what his friends in the town believed. He would suspend all belief and let the Creator do with him as He willed.