“Every man makes a god of his own desire”
– Virgil
Introduction
Schoolchildren waiting at a bus stop were run over by a speeding bus. A photograph of that accident scene appeared on the front page of next day’s newspapers. It showed many people struggling to pull out the dead and wounded children from underneath the bus. It also showed many others busy capturing the gruesome images of the tragedy on their smart phones. People were shocked. Their shock was the result of their failure to realize that every individual is unique in the way his or her mental processes run and that it makes different people respond differently to the same situation.
Since the mental process of each person is unique, it should also influence the way each person perceives his or her god. However, we often take it for granted that everyone aligned to a particular religious faith holds the same idea about the god of that faith. Had this been true, there would have been only one universal Church and every Christian should have carried the same understanding of Jehovah, his God, Jesus, the Son of God and Holy Spirit, the third factor of the Holy Trinity. But the reality on the ground is altogether different. There are some 33,000 odd different Christian denominations currently operating in the world. This being so, there should be as many unique images of the god of the Christian faith.
However, the matter does not stop with just the issue of a plethora of sects and their unique ideas of the divine. It is unlikely that even the faithful within the fold of a denomination has a common view of the god they worship. Since every individual has a unique personality, he would try to create his own personal image of the god based on his own perceptions and experiences. In short, the truth might be that Christianity is harbouring as many unique images of god within it as the count of people within its fold.
If we extend this argument to cover other faiths and the atheists who do not believe in any god, we are likely to reach the conclusion that every individual creates his own god or ‘no god’, that suits his unique personality.
This post seeks to examine whether there are sufficient grounds for taking such a view.
The Human System
The overall design of the human physiological system is comparable with the design of the computer systems. Both systems follow the common sequence of input, process and output. In fact, computers seem to have been so designed to ape the human system. Yet, for the same stimulus, the response is different in some ways when it comes to two different human beings. But machines running the same software respond in identical ways to the same command.
The basic human biological system of all human beings follows a uniform design. It is fitted out with the same components in all normal human beings except for the gender differentiating parts. In other words, normal people belonging to the same sex are all constructed identically except for the marginal variations in the capacities of the components. But this human hardware is as dead as the computer hardware. It needs software to become active.
For the benefit of those having difficulties in capturing the meaning of hardware and software let me say that software is similar to music stored in a DVD. The DVD is the hardware. It is tangible in the sense we can see, touch and feel it. But the music within it is intangible. We know it is there inside the disk, although we cannot see it even by breaking the disk and examining the inside. Software carries the instructions to drive the hardware. A computer turns alive when the software it carries is activated. Similarly, the human hardware too needs software to become functional. It also needs the signals to activate it in desired ways.
The human software is stored in our bodies in a molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA carries the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive and reproduce. These instructions are stored in the DNA as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. But the pattern of its storage varies in individuals.
The pattern of storage of the bases within the DNA determines how the organism is built and maintained. It also ensures that a human mother does not give birth to, say, a calf or a kitten. DNA sequencing is something similar to the way letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences. Every human being carries the same basic assortment of genetic alphabet. But the words that these alphabets form depends on the way these alphabets are arranged. Differences in its arrangement make people different.
Heredity operates through DNA. During reproduction, DNA, along with the instructions it contains, is passed from the adult organisms to its offspring. This would result in the passing of the parental qualities into their children. A gene is the basic physical and functional unit of heredity. A genome is an organism’s complete DNA instruction book, including all of its genes. In humans, a copy of the entire genome is contained in every cell that has a nucleus. It is carried in the 23 pairs of chromosomes.
When a sperm cell is manufactured, the father’s genome is split into two, so that each sperm receives one chromosome from each of the 23 pairs. The same thing happens with the egg cells in the mother. When the egg and the sperm combine to form an embryo, the resulting genome contains half of the mother’s chromosomes and half of the father’s. The selection of these halves is done at random.
Theoretically, same-sex siblings could be created with the same selection of chromosomes that should make those siblings identical. But in real life, this is extremely unlikely. Even identical twins do not necessarily have identical DNA. Stray cosmic rays and chemicals in our diet, such as caffeine and nicotine, can cause point mutations in random genes. Whatever it be, the core component in your system that makes you, you, is the DNA you carry.
Identical twins are not identical individuals. You are you, and your identical twin is most certainly not you. You may appear similar in your physical features to your identical twin. But you have a personality that is certainly different from your identical twin and everyone else in this world. This means that even while DNA is the basic code that determines you, it is not what makes you, the real you who is unique.
People Are Different
If we type ‘make love’ at the command prompt of a UNIX system and tap the Enter key, the system would instantly return the message ‘I do not know how to make love’. Repeat the command and you would get exactly the same answer. Try the command on another UNIX based system with identical or different configuration; you would receive the same answer. But, try it on a human being or two people who are identical twins, or several people who are unrelated. I am certain that their responses are unlikely to be identical. And the same individual might give different responses on different tries.
The point is that people are different from machines. People are also different from one another. Irrespective of external resemblances, each individual is unique in his temperament, attitude, thoughts, beliefs, behaviour, character, perceptions and value systems. In short, people are unique in their personalities. If this is so, we might safely assume that the world has seven billion plus people with their own unique personalities. Now, how do people come to acquire their unique personalities?
People develop into what they are from their exposures and experiences. For instance, people living in the same home, working in the same office, associated with the same project etc. do not derive the same experience as we tend to assume. Their thoughts are different, their motives are different, their perceptions are different, their attitudes are different, their creativity is different, the way they communicate is different, their tastes are different and the way they make and break relationships is different. Also, people have different ideals, different value systems, different dreams, and choose different means to achieve their ends. People are also unique in their intelligence levels and the ways in which they apply it. No two people are riding on the same wavelength of intelligence. That is why teams are formed in order to find solutions to complex problems.
Our senses play a major part in making us uniquely different from others. For instance, each individual sees different things and sees the same thing differently. When one person looks at a thing or situation, that person does not look at it exactly the way another person looks at it. For instance, ask two people to describe a road accident. Their account would never match each other. This is because each individual becomes conditioned to see situations in his own unique way.
It is Mind that Makes the Difference
Two computers manufactured by say, IBM with exactly matching hardware configurations are physically identical computers. However, a computer working in the software development lab of Infosys and another computer identical in its hardware configuration deployed in an outlet of Reliance Fresh would have very few matching functional features. Different applications make the computer function differently. Someone who controls the system decides which application is to be run to achieve the required functionality he seeks.
Mind is the control centre of the human biological system. It too is part of the software system running the human physiology. Mind too is intangible like any computer software. Nobody can see or touch the mind. We are not sure of its exact location within the system. We believe that mind is closely connected with our brains. The activation signals for the human system arise from our minds. It controls the functionalities of the human system.
We think with our minds. Thoughts generate the signals to drive the human physiological system. It creates energy impulses; it modifies the chemical composition of the body. It creates changes in the human biological system. It triggers and controls body metabolism. According to Buddhist philosophy, repetition of action becomes a habit that would turn into a person’s character. Thus, the way people develop their personalities is determined by the kind of thought signals their minds generate.
The consequence of our mental processes is that two people born even with identical DNA codes would turn out to be different people in course of time. The biological systems of all are undergoing both physical and chemical changes every moment of their lives. In fact, when I sit for dinner, I am not the same person I was at my breakfast. This is true for every living being. The important point is that individual beings within the same species too change in their own unique ways. The continuing changes keep widening the gap among individual personalities.
People Create Their Own Gods
The Bible says that Esau and Jacob were twins. Both brothers lived in the same home. They were brought up under same common environment. Eventually Esau became a hunter and outdoorsman. He was adventurous, open and trusting. Jacob turned out to be a shepherd. Jacob was soft and meek. But he was also crooked and cunning. He duped his father into bestowing up on him the rights of his elder brother and ran away from home for fear of retribution by his angry and athletic brother.
Jacob went to Haran and lived there with his mother’s brother. He took his uncle’s daughters as his wives, continued with his deceptive ways and eventually became very rich. He realized the risk of staying further at his father in law’s place and set out on a journey to return to the land of his father. But, the fears about his brother Esau kept haunting him. When he came close to his hometown, he sent messengers to his brother to inform him about his return. Jacob’s idea was to assess the mood of Esau.
Esau told the messengers of Jacob that he was going with four hundred people to welcome Jacob back to his native land. Obviously, the response of Esau only escalated Jacob’s apprehensions. He believed that his brother was coming with so many people to annihilate him and his family.
Eventually Esau came along with his men. The brothers saw each other after a gap of some twenty-one years. Esau ran forward and embraced his brother. The Bible says, both brothers cried, although knowing Jacob’s nature, one has to take the tears of Jacob with a big pinch of salt.
Both Esau and Jacob were born to the same parents. Their father Isaac was the son of Abraham whom Jehovah called from among the polytheistic idol worshippers of Mesopotamia. Jehovah wanted Abraham and his future generations to become worshippers of the one god, Jehovah. In view of this, it could be safely assumed Isaac too was a Jehovah worshipper. Thus, both Esau and Jacob were brought up in a family that worshipped Jehovah. The brothers too might have been part of the same faith. But, it appears from what we learn from the Bible, that each member of the family of Isaac saw the same Jehovah in their own individual ways.
People develop their beliefs based on their perceptions. But perceptions of people are dependent up on their exposures and experiences in life. Consequently, what I believe about myself, my family, other people, the world, sin, virtue, god and devil would never match exactly with another person’s beliefs on these. For instance, the way I perceive the Christian God Jehovah or the son of God Jesus or the idea of Trinity would be certainly different from the way my brother, my wife, my son and others see these. If that is so, the Jehovah of my perception is unlikely to be the Jehovah of the rest of my family. Thus, each of us come to have an image of Jehovah created based on our own unique perceptions. This is likely the situation with other people too since the mind of each individual operates in its own unique ways.
It is true that broad similarities with regard to their idea of god might exist among people belonging to the same faith. But, it is quite unlikely that every individual understands and accepts the deity of his faith exactly the way others within the faith do. The highly fragmented situation of the Christian faith proves that people tend to develop their own unique ideas of the divine power they worship. But the difference does not end with the denominations. People are also likely to have different perceptions about the ideas of the divinity of their own sects.
Religious doctrines were developed by learned people based on their deep and profound thoughts. These are often highly complex and confusing for the bulk of ordinary believers. So each believer creates within him, his own unique idea about the god or ‘non god’ of his perceptions. I believe that this is true irrespective of the individual’s religious alignments on the outside.
Conclusion
The god of our personal faith is the god evolving out the divine image presented to us by our parents, priests, pastors, saints, sages and prophets. We also gather it from the scriptures of our faith. In most cases, the god others paint before us does not come out of their personal experiences. Even in cases where these images spring out of the experience of people, it is impossible that another person would be able to capture the same experience. It is a fact that a person can only pass information to another person. Nobody can pass one’s experience to another person. For instance, I can describe the beauty of a rose I see to another person. I can describe the softness of its petals. I can describe its sweet smell. I can photograph the rose and send it to someone. But another person would never be able to have the same experience that I have when look at it, touch its petals and smell its sweetness.
I receive information about the god of my faith from various sources. Based on that I create an image of that god. It is unlikely that image would match with the image created by another. The image of the divine power I have is certainly not the image that Prophet Ezekiel, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist or Apostle Paul had. My experience of the divine is not the experience of those people although I have read the accounts of their images and experiences. Consequently, the seven billion odd people now on this planet would create that many unique images of god.
Let me now close. Isaac of the Bible was a man who, as a teenager, was almost sacrificed to please Jehovah. Rebecca came from a family that worshipped the idols of its family gods. Esau was a hunter and the favourite of his father. Jacob was a shepherd and the darling of his mother. Their exposures and experiences were diverse. Their thoughts were diverse. Their relationships were diverse. Their personalities were diverse. Obviously, the image of Jehovah that each carried in their hearts too was diverse. Each of them must have carried his or her own unique image of Jehovah.
And perhaps, God chooses people who carry His appropriate image within their hearts. That image is not necessarily the image that the faith one follows creates for him. That image is also not necessarily the one that gets public approval. It probably explains why God chose Jacob although his biography could not have recommended him. Yet God changed his name to Israel. His children the Israelites (Hebrews) became the chosen people of Jehovah. And Esau, his brother, turned out to be the enemy of the people of Jehovah. “…for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
Yes. Each man creates his own god, his own heaven and his own hell…
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