NATURE: CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD?

“And in the beginning there was Man.” We have heard this in the Bible and many narrative movies. But what eludes us is if God made them or Science. I do not wish to discuss the pros and cons of Evolution or ponder on Man’s origin. All I want to throw light on is God and Nature. If I have to believe the likes of Richard Dawkins, contemporary Darwinist, even for a second, I will then be forced to state that we all are children of Nature. We have no God, Nature is our God. Otherwise we can go with the teaching of the Church which says whether evolution or not, Man was created in God’s love and not as some random fusing or mutating or chemical or metaphysical reaction. Now whether God chose it through evolution or any other way is for Science to unfold. Gravity already existed even before Newton threw light upon it. Newton’s discovery of what is gravity doesn’t force God to repudiate His claim to designing it.

I wish to speak about love. When I move out of my home and board a train swarming with people who are peeved at each other. When I walk the street and observe that not many find it worthy to fight for another’s cause. They either play the spectator or walk briskly ahead as if nothing happened. When someone is in need of a favor from me and the ball is in my court or when I need a favor and wonder what can convince him to oblige? Should I smile or rather make him smile by bribing him?

What can motivate us to love others? Where do we find love in a world that our elders define in the following ways: ‘wait to help someone and you will get duped’…’think about others and others will not bother to think about you’…’as long as he is of help to you, be on good terms with them’…’you try to be a nice guy and the world will make you pay’…’everyone lives for themselves in the world and no one is different’

Such ideas perpetrate a gross pessimism in which Love cannot thrive. If I have to calculate my loss of time or money or comfort before helping someone, surely nothing much is motivating me to love. Why isn’t a man’s suffering out of an accident not motivating me to pick him up and take him to the hospital? Why don’t I look at a man trying to con me or not being proper to me as I am to him, with sympathy and compassion on the man’s weakness?

I believe it roots in our worldview of existence and origin. Love starts from our choice of our deepest belief. Love goes back to God. Pachomius was a secular young man, he volunteered as a soldier in Constantine’s army. Some soldiers were camped outside a little village near Thebes and could not be supplied with food. The citizens of that community were friendly Christians. They took care of the soldiers with kindness and courtesy. Pachomius was impressed. He asked for an explanation of this kindness and was told about Jesus Christ. He was stirred awake. His life was utterly changed¹.

This is the principal difference between a child of Nature (CON) and a Child of God (COG). A CON has no reason to feel motivated to love. He can live just like Evolution tells him: be fit enough to survive. Why should he bother about ethics or any other aspect of life that impacts another? Even so a CON may and often does live ethically as a responsible citizen or an honorable person but this too is a means to live in harmony with society or to abide and maintain the highest standards in society. In other words, love of self or betterment of Society motivates it.

If ten people on the boat have reached their maximum capacity and one is left on a burning ship, a CON would not know how to weigh the life of a man hanging on the choice people in the boat make. He may be ethical but because its nature we are talking about and not God, he probably is clueless to the respect for each man’s life. He would mathematically decide to weigh the life of ten people, more important than the life of one left there in the ship to die.

Even if I have to concede that a CON does show sympathy. It is my sympathy in fact with all those people who show sympathy without ever questioning: where does this sympathy come from? Why do I feel this sympathy to another helpless person? Is it because he needs love? And why should I give him that? As no one else would? A CON will stumble upon truth but never reach the complete truth. His kindness to the helpless fellow helps him (the fellow) to better society but there is no contribution from Nature as a parent to motivate him to love. It is just his gratitude for his own life and reflection on the way the helpless fellow is suffering compared to him.

A COG is also motivated by love if not general sympathy. Seeing the helpless person as God sees him and remembering that Christ said: Love one another as I have loved you so that the child can show his love for God and love his neighbor as he would love himself. Loving God motivates us to love others. I do not know one person who has felt motivated to love others because an inanimate vague nature has said so or the radiant beauty of nature motivated him to be kind to his neighbor.

A COG may err and fall into wrong doing. But because the child has his reference as God, and God knows all and in principle can never be confused. The child is aware that either he is right or wrong. There is no middle ground or anything subjective in the sense that is alright for him to do but not others and others to do but not him. For God can neither be deceived nor be in a dilemma. Thus the COG, though commits a wrong, acknowledges it as his weakness that he did something wrong and hopes God would have mercy and help him ahead to be more courageous.

A CON doesn’t see wrong doing as an act whose consequences is perpetual or something he will have offer an explanation to. A CON is not obliged to think that his action is transcendental. So in an event that he commits an immoral act or perpetrates wrongdoing, he may just approach it as…”well, everyone does it, I had to survive…had to stay afloat…no point telling the truth if it doesn’t serve my purpose.” Values and ethics just serve as a means to an end for a child of nature. A child of nature expects others to be ethical when it serves him like paying ticket to board a train and may not be ethical himself while overcharging a product because he is just doing it to protect himself and his business. There is no reference. A CON is lost in the confusion and relativism of the world

The final point is that a CON can only do so much. He can love all he wants but what he achieves is just…”every one of us will live in harmony and brotherhood.” Such pursuits are only to the betterment of society and so that we all can co-exist peacefully. This is a very subtle and subconscious selfishness, actually. A COG just loves because God is love. He loves as Love is an end in itself. Thus our love for god reflects in our lives as we try to bring God to others. If God truly enters our lives, it bends us and breaks us and makes us new moulds into clays the Potter decides. All virtues that are instilled in me, all gifts, and all graces are God’s will and generosity. A child of God has nothing to claim as his own. There is much to hope to be a COG. Alas, the child of nature leaves the show at the time of death. For the Child of God, the show has just begun, banquet that awaits him for running God’s show.

1. Living Love, a Treatise by Francis de Sales on the love of God