MJ Akbar
THERE are contemporary algorithms of the perpetual search for meaning: jump from the plateau where nothing happens to the valley of the shadow of life to the base of the next hill and up to the summit where you are warmly embraced by the shadow of death. Amen. I checked the meaning of Amen since one learnt long ago that it is dangerous to place pride between you and a dictionary. So be it. Said at the end of a prayer.
The patriarch prophet Abraham, a self-professed friend of God, asked the good Lord a sensible question when the Almighty was about to use His might to destroy Sodom, a city famous for its sins: see Genesis, the first chapter of the Bible. The pious call Abraham’s message a prayer, but it was an admonition, not a supplication: “Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be it from Thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Why punish the innocent with the guilty with a napalm bomb which cannot discriminate on moral or ethical distinctions? Even if there were only ten righteous people in Sodom, said Abraham, they must be spared the death penalty. Good argument, but no luck in heaven’s court of justice. God employed sulphur and fire, the napalm of the millennium before the birth of Christ, and Sodom along with Gomorrah entered a virulent niche in history’s long memory.
Death in our genes Logic is not a top priority for God. Example is. All examples must be terrifying to become exemplary. The human race learnt all it needed to from such divine justice. Is death justice? We live, largely but not wholly, in an age where life imprisonment has replaced the electric chair or a noose or an axe. If death is justice, then we are all guilty of something for death comes to saint and sinner, martyr and murderer. Guilty of what? Guilty of being alive. Death is written into our genes the moment we are born. Religion is the only answer we have for why.
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We do not know why we are born and why we die; we merely celebrate or mourn when, ignoring why. We wander through what of existence, unsure of elemental purpose, with just about sufficient common sense to know that if we do not swim together we shall sink together. My apologies, dear God, and please do not be harsh towards impertinence, but if the principle of Sodom justice were applied consistently there would be no one left to pray to You. The Creator cannot exist without the Creation. That is not so difficult to understand. I suspect the allegory of the Old Testament was a one-off; an instance of doom to keep us alert. But wherever one looks there is injustice, inequality, infirmity, iniquity, indolence, and our only sustainable response is indifference. If we care too much, or even if we care a little, the burden on conscience becomes unbearable.
Numb to the world Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven: but till the summons comes to slither into Thy presence, could you kindly make me numb to the world that You created? Feelings do not help. We want to be delivered from evil, but how is that possible when You forgot to exclude evil from the human mix of diction and contradiction? There is only one consolation prize in this life. We can always blame God.
