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GOD IS A METAPHOR
Dear Rashid Mughal and
Farzana Hassan,
After reading your intellectually stimulating
exchange about Monotheistic and Polytheistic God I remembered a part of my
article titled that I would like to share. Sincerely, sohail
GOD IS A METAPHOR
It gradually dawned on me that God was a metaphor and each person
and culture had made its unique interpretation. Concept of God over the
centuries had become part of our cultural psyche and mythology.
In some cultures we have a male God, in
others we have female Goddesses.
In some cultures God is fatherly and punitive, in others, God is
motherly and nurturing.
In some cultures God is abstract, in others God appears as man-made
statues and idols.
In some cultures God is perceived as a Creator and is believed to
exist outside the universe. In others people say All that Exists is God.
In some cultures people believe God lives within all of us, and we
do not need to believe in Him to know and experience Him.
In some cultures people believe we are all Gods in the making.
After studying different theologies and
mythologies, I came to believe that rather than saying Man was created in
God’s image, it might be wiser to say that God was created in Man’s image
and that the qualities assigned to God or Allah or Bhagwan
or Great Mystery are reflections of the human psyche of that era and
culture. There are no two human beings or cultures in the whole wide world
that have a similar concept or experience of the reality. For those who
project their fears and insecurities, God becomes a psychologist’s
Rorschach Test, and for those who project their fantasies, dreams and
ideals, God becomes a Santa Claus.
There is a time human beings as children believe in Santa Claus, but
then they grow up and learn to buy their own toys while they fulfill their
own dreams and follow their own ideals.
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