In Fear We Live

Life's Lessons - Joseph Mattappally

A generation living in fear - that is what precisely we are. Everywhere we hear stunning stories of psychics speaking tongues or predicting future and finally skulking away with thousands in cash and kind. Hear a few recent stories: Tammy Mitchell, the phony psychic from Midtown Manhattan ensnared a former Wall Street trader by telling him that his family was cursed. After his first week of sessions with Mitchell he was $200,000 poorer. Another lady Sophie Evon was caught and was charged of first degree theft. She persuaded a Chinese immigrant to give Evon $200,000 to win back her boy friend. If similar things happen in most advanced countries like USA, what could be the fate of under developed religious countries like India? Well said, the situation here in India is worse than the creature peddling between the devil and the deep sea. The people here are choked by God men and doctrines. At every nook and corner of the country there are fear factories and solution venders. No religion here lets a man be himself or know the truth.

Two men went out for trekking and happened to spend one night under the tent they had brought. One of them, a well educated scholar, woke up in the dark and looked up. He shook his friend also up and asked him to look up and began explaining theories concerning terrestrial bodies, which they were seeing in abundance. He finished his discourse and asked his friend, “What do you understand?” He awfully looked at the scholar and said, “I understand that somebody has stolen our tent.” The story is relevant in our everyday life. In our eagerness to keep away from day to day misfortunes we forget what we basically lose or where we want an urgent repair.

Instead of an ever loving compassionate God, we have an array of Gods and saints anxiously waiting with a long list of wrongs each human being has done. There was a withered tree standing in the corner of a man's backyard. "It's unlucky to keep a withered tree," said his neighbour. "Cut it down before something unpleasant happens." The man cut down the tree. His neighbour came with his two sons and asked for and dragged away all the branches for fuel. ‘All he wanted was the wood,’ thought the owner of the tree, ruefully. The dictators in every religion wants the lay to observe this and that but unless the lay is aware of what they choose to do, one day they might also regret like the man who cut down the tree.  

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