The Life We Seek
Summary
This section explains that the world in which man presently lives is lacking in nothing but the answers he seeks related to truth. It is beyond man’s mind to work out answers to these questions on his own. Yet, answers he must have. Not everyone puts these questions into words, but they linger in the soul, causing untold anguish, which leads to upheavals if answers are not found.
The first question about man’s search for truth stems from an instinctive human consciousness of a Lord and Creator. The idea of a Lord and Creator Who watches over and sustains creation is imbedded in every human being. Ingrained in the subconscious of every human being lies the thought: “God is my Lord; I am His servant.” Everyone implicitly makes this covenant before coming into the world.
Subconsciously being aware of God, man wants more than anything to reach God. Above all else, he desires to firmly hold on to the Lord he knows in his heart he cannot do without. But the God he instinctively is aware of has yet to appear before him. Only by entering into spiritual communion with God can this longing be truly satisfied. Every human being needs someone to turn to, someone to whom he can dedicate the finest feelings that he has to offer. By their nature, every person wants to discover God and become His servant. Those who fail to find God give expression to their emotions before some other, false god. Hearts which have not found God experience unease in this world and eternal affliction in the Hereafter.
The second existential issue by which modern man is sorely afflicted is the question: ‘What constitutes a good society and the good life?’ Ingrained in man’s subconscious is the search for an ideal realm or Paradise where there has to be a certain standard of honesty in society. The problem is that in this present world, the accepted aim of life for a great many people is the attainment of material prosperity. Such people live a self-centered life, instead of a God-centered one. The insatiable lust for self-fulfillment leads to innumerable social evils, such as fornication, robbery, looting, fraudulence, kidnapping, treachery, terrorism, murder and, ultimately, war, which are the result of people pursuing the urgings of the ego. Inevitably, society pays the price for this. The fact that materialism has given rise to such conflict between individual aims and social purposes clearly indicates that the true purpose of human life is quite other than material pursuit.
Rather than aiming at worldly attainments, man should set himself to earning the approval of his Creator while he lives in this world of test, for this is what man’s purpose in life truly is. If he were to adopt this course, the individual and society will progress in harmony with one another.
A deep-rooted malaise of modern society is that although science and technology are progressing by leaps and bounds and are contributing magnificently to the physical wellbeing of man, there is a disastrously negative aspect to them in that they deny or are silent on the existence of God. While man’s body receives more and more nourishment, his soul is gradually being killed. Materially, he is pampered; spiritually, he is starved. It is this dichotomy that has proved to be the undoing of modern man. Spiritual starvation has reduced man to his present state of mental turmoil, in which he constantly seeks to satisfy his desires. Man is in conflict with himself, and the resulting disasters are plain for all to see.
The solution is for man to turn to God and to realise the true purpose of human life. For this, man needs to hold fast to belief in a Supreme Intelligence, the love of God and the brotherhood of man, lifting himself closer to God by doing His will and accepting the responsibility of believing that we are, as God’s creation, worthy of His care. Man must live a God-oriented life, in consonance with the Creation Plan of God. He can then hope to live in eternal Paradise in the world hereafter if he is found deserving of this based on the record of his deeds.
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), a close associate of Karl Marx, was known to the world as an atheist and a socialist. He held that ‘first of all, man needs clothes to cover his body, food to fill his stomach; only then can he put his mind to philosophical and political matters.’ Nowhere in this supposedly all-embracing dictum is God mentioned. But Engel’s atheism was a late development in his life, a reaction to an early, unfavorable environment. As he grew older and more mature in intellect, he became more and more sceptical of the traditional forms of religion he had known in his youth. To a friend he wrote, “Every day I pray that the truth should be made plain to me. Ever since doubts have arisen within me, this prayer is perennially on my lips. I cannot accept your faith. As I am writing these lines, my heart is heavy and my eyes laden with tears; yet I feel that I have not been turned away from the gate. Hopefully, I will find God. Heart and soul, I yearn for a vision of Him. And, by my soul, do you know what this longing—this intense love—of mine amounts to? It is a manifestation of the holy spirit. Even if the Bible refutes my words a thousand times over, still I cannot accept its refutation.”
Such was the longing for truth which welled up in Engels when he was young; yet he was unable to find fulfillment; disillusioned with conventional Christian religion, he became lost in economic and political philosophies. But, in truth, man has a much more fundamental need than these. First and foremost, he needs to know his own nature and the nature of the world he lives in, how he came into this world and what will happen to him after death. More than anything else, it is man’s nature to seek answers to these questions. The world in which he lives is lacking in nothing; it lacks only the answers he seeks. The sun provides him with heat and light, but he does not know the sun’s true nature, or why it has been put to his service. The wind is a source of life for man, but he is not able to stop the wind in its course and ask it what it is, and why it acts as it does. Man’s own being stares him in the face, but he remains in the dark as to what he is, and why he has come into this world for. It is beyond the human mind to work out answers to these questions. Yet answers he must have. Not everyone puts these questions into words, but still they linger in the human soul, causing untold anguish and something welling up with such force that they lead to insanity.
What this longing stems from is an instinctive human consciousness of a Lord and Creator. Ingrained in the subconscious of every human being lies the thought: “God is my Lord; I am His servant.” Everyone tacitly makes this covenant on coming into the world. The idea of a Lord and Creator— one who watches over and sustains creation—runs in the veins of every human being. Until he has found his Lord, man feels himself lost in a vacuum. William James (1842-1910), an American philosopher who was one of the founders of pragmatism, said that “faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse.”1
Subconsciously being aware of God, man wants more than anything to reach God. Above all else, he desires to hold firm to the Lord he knows in his heart he cannot do without. But the God he instinctively is aware of, has yet to appear before him. Only by entering into spiritual communion with God can this longing be truly satisfied. As for those who fail to find Him, they give expression to their emotions before some other false god. Every human being needs someone to turn to, someone to whom he can dedicate the finest feelings he has to offer.
On August 15, 1947, the Union Jack was lowered from Indian government buildings and the national flag hoisted in its place. On this occasion, the eyes of Indian nationalists were filled with tears. This was the moment of freedom they had longed for. In reality, they were doing obeisance to freedom; for that was what they had made their god. Now that they had attained freedom; it was as though they had actually found God. Their joy knew no bounds, for they had devoted the better part of their lives to the achievement of this end. The pattern is similar when national leaders visit the tomb of the ‘father of the nation’ and bow their heads in veneration. They imitate the actions of a man of religion when he bows low, then prostrates himself before his Lord. No different is the communist who slows his pace and lifts his hat in salute to Lenin as he passes by his Mausoleum. There is no one in this world who does not need to make someone his lord and master, even if he be only a figurehead. There has to be someone to whom he can dedicate himself and the very best that he has to offer.
But if one makes this offering to anyone other than God, one is indulging in polytheism and in the words of the Quran, one is doing a “great wrong.” This paying of homage to false gods is what the Quran calls zulm. The word zulm actually means putting something in the wrong place, somewhere that it is not meant to be. It would be like taking the lid of a vessel and attempting to use it as a cap. Turning, therefore, to anyone other than God to fill the psychological vacuum that every normal human being feels is also an instance of zulm. This is putting a right feeling in a wrong place; giving to others what should be given to God. To seek to lay everything one has at someone’s feet is a natural instinct in man, and, initially, it finds expression in a natural way. To begin with, people turn to their true Lord and Master to satisfy their spiritual hunger, but then, under the influence of irreligious circumstances and environment, they begin to fill the inner vacuum from wrong sources.
In his early youth, philosopher Betrand Russell was fervently religious and regularly used to pray. In those days, his grandfather once asked him what his favorite prayer was. “I am tired of life and succumbing under the yoke of my sins,” was young Russell’s reply.
At that time, Russell worshipped God. But when he reached the age of twelve he gave up this practice. The company he kept, being predominantly antipathetic towards religious traditions and age-old values, turned Russell’s mind away from these things. He died an atheist, having devoted the latter part of his life to mathematics and philosophy. In 1959, Russell was interviewed on the BBC by John Freeman, who asked him whether his enthusiasm for mathematics and philosophy had proved a satisfactory substitute for religious sentiments. “Yes indeed,” Russell replied. “By the time I was forty, I have reached the stage of fulfillment which, according to Plato, one is able to receive from mathematics. The world I lived in was an eternal one, free from the restrictions of time. I received a contentment (peace) not unlike that associated with religion.”
This great English thinker may have turned away from the worship of God, but he could not do without an object of worship. So he had to assign to mathematics and philosophy the place in his life that had previously been occupied by religion. Not only that, but he was forced to attribute to them qualities—freedom from the restrictions of time and space, which can only be inherent in God. For, without these things, he could not have received the quasi-religious contentment, which he instinctively sought.
If an article were to appear in a newspaper proclaiming that the late Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, had been seen bowing down in worship as Muslims do in prayer, no one would believe it. Yet, on the last page of The Hindustan Times of October 3, 1963, there was a picture which showed Nehru doing just that. Here was Nehru with head inclined and hands on knees, in the very posture that Muslims adopt ruku during their regular prayers. The occasion was Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, and the Indian Prime Minister was ritually paying homage to the father of the nation at the Gandhi Samadhi on the banks of the River Jamuna in Delhi.
Such things happen every day, all over the world. Millions of people, who do not believe in God or attach any weight to religion, can be seen bowing down before gods of their own making. In this way, they satisfy their inner urge to submit to somebody. Such events show conclusively that man has an innate need for an object of worship. No further proof of the existence of God is required: the very fact that man needs God proves that He exists. If man does not bow down before the real God, he has to bow down before other gods instead, for without a god there is no way the central vacuum of his nature can be filled.
But the matter does not end there. Those who take some thing or person other than God as their object of worship cannot ever find true fulfillment. They are just like a childless woman who cradles a plastic doll in her arms, trying to derive emotional satisfaction from it. However successful atheists may be, there come times in their lives when they are forced to reflect that there is more to life than they have ever been able to discover.
In 1935, twelve years before India’s independence, Jawaharlal Nehru completed his autobiography while in prison. In the concluding chapter he wrote: “I have a feeling that a chapter of my life is over and another chapter will begin. What this is going to be I cannot clearly guess. The leaves of the book of life are closed.”2
When the pages of the book of Nehru’s life were reopened, it was his destiny to become the Prime Minister of the third largest country in the world. For nearly twenty years, he exercised power over a sixth of the world’s population. But this accomplishment did not bring him satisfaction. At the very pinnacle of his career, he still felt that there were some pages of his life which were yet to be opened. The very questions that are rooted in the human intellect when one first comes into the world were still revolving in Nehru’s mind when his life’s story was nearing its close. In January 1964 a conference of Orientalist, attended by 1200 delegates from India and abroad, was held in New Delhi. In the course of his address to them, Pandit Nehru said that being a politician, he found little time to think about life. Still, sometimes he was forced to wonder: what is this world? what is its purpose? what are we, and what are we doing here? He said that he felt convinced that there were powers that forged our destiny.3
Disillusionment of this nature is rooted in the souls of all those who have denied God. From time to time they become so involved in their worldly activities and temporal interests that they feel they are on the verge of fulfillment; but once they are extracted from their artificial environment, Truth begins to surge within them, reminding them of how far they are from true fulfillment and peace of mind.
Hearts which have not found God are bound to experience unease in this world. But their affliction does not stop there. Far from being confined to the short period of their lives on earth, it will remain with them forever. The world which awaits them is one of unending darkness, great waves of which strike at them here in this ephemeral world. In that world they will have absolutely nothing to fall back on; in this world they already feel something of that helplessness, as a warning of what is to come. In the life after death, terrible ordeals await those who have denied God. In this world mental unease gives them an inkling of those ordeals. The doubts which beset them on earth are like puffs of smoke from the Fire of Hell, which all those who denied God or worshipped false gods will enter after death. If they heed the warning, they will be able to save themselves from that awful doom. Imagine that a person’s house catches fire while he lies asleep. A whiff of the smoke reaches him while the fire is in its early stages. If he is roused then, well and good; he will be able to save himself. But it will do him no good to become alert to the danger when the fire has already engulfed him, for then he is bound to perish. If only his senses had been sharper, he could have avoided the impending danger! Now that it has descended on him, there is nothing he can do to escape it. Will no one awaken while there is still time?
McGill University’s Professor Michael Brecher has written a political biography of Jawaharlal Nehru. While preparing this book, he met Nehru several times. One of these meetings took place on June 13, 1956, during which he put to India’s late Prime Minister the following question:
What constitutes a good society and the good life?
Nehru replied:
I believe in certain standards. Call them moral standards, call them what you like, spiritual standards. They are important in any individual and in any social group. And if they fade away, I think that all the material advancement you may have will lead to nothing worthwhile. How to maintain them I don’t know; I mean to say, there is the religious approach. It seems to me rather a narrow approach with its forms and all kinds of ceremonials. And yet, I am not prepared to deny that approach... I think it’s silly for a man to worship a stone but if a man is comforted by worshipping a stone why should I come in his way… so while I attach every considerable value to moral and spiritual standards, apart from religion as such, I don’t quite know how one maintains them in modern life. It’s a problem.4
Here we find an indication of a second predicament by which modern man is surely afflicted. There has to be a certain standard of honesty in society if any civilized order is to be maintained. But once man has abandoned God, he is left baffled as to how the code of ethics so necessary to the smooth running of society is to be established. For hundreds of years, man has searched for an answer to this question and he has yet to find an answer. There are, of course, innumerable examples of well-intentioned attempts to bring moral upliftment to society. For instance, in an endeavor to improve relations between government officials and the public, one week of the year has been declared ‘Courtesy week’ and is supposedly observed. But when civil servants persist in their officious and high-handed demeanor, the ineffectiveness of this method becomes clear: obviously mere exhortations to be courteous are not sufficient actually to make people change their ways. With commendable moral rectitude, posters in railway stations all over the country proclaim that “Ticketless Travel is a Social Evil”. There is a certain naive enthusiasm about railway authorities who hope to reverse their heavy losses through a poster campaign of this type, for posters really do nothing to prevent ticketless travel. If there is to be an end to such dishonesty, the impetus has to come from the public itself. Merely labelling ticketless travel a “social evil” will not set in motion any great measure of reform. Similar campaigns in the news media tell us that “Crime Does Not Pay.” Yet crime figures all over the world continue their upward spiral. Clearly, worldly punishment is not enough to wean people away from criminal habits. Again, with great naivete, the walls of government buildings are pasted all over with posters which are meant to impress upon government employees the evils of corruption. “To Bribe and to Take Bribes is an Evil”, they preach in a variety of languages. But inside the very walls proclaiming this message, bribery continues unabated. One is forced to the conclusion that government propaganda is in no way effective. Corruption continues to spread even as more and more posters are stuck on the walls. In railway compartments too we read: “The railways are national property. Damage to the Railways is damage to the entire nation,” This admonition is there for all to see, but that does not prevent people from running off with toilet mirrors and bulbs from compartments. Evidently the consideration of ‘national’ interests is not compelling enough to restrain people from the dogged pursuit of their own selfish interests. Those who wield power are no less offenders than the general public. On the one hand it is announced that the “use of public resources for private profit is a betrayal of the nation,” while, on the other hand, we hear of massive national projects having to be abandoned because the funds meant to finance it are being siphoned off by those in positions of responsibility. Intensive efforts have been made to improve the morals of society, but the majority of these have been an abysmal failure, and national life has remained bereft of the ethical standards that are a prerequisite for true progress.
All this testifies to the drastic effect that the denial of God had on human civilization. Placing this denial in scientific perspective, Fred Hoyle, in his book The Intelligent Universe, writes:
The modern point of view that survival is all, has its roots in Darwin’s theory of biological evolution through natural selection. Harsh as it may seem, this is an open charter for any form of opportunistic behaviour. Whenever it can be shown with reasonable plausibility that even cheating and murder would aid survival either of ourselves personally or the community in which we happen to live, then orthodox logic enjoins us to adopt these practices, just because there is no morality except survival... Frankly, I am haunted by a conviction that the nihilistic philosophy which so-called educated opinion chose to adopt following the publication of The Origin of Species committed mankind to a course of automatic self-destruction. A Doomsday machine was then set ticking whether this situation is still retrievable, whether the machine can be stopped in some way is unclear (Foreword).
Without God to guide it, the wagon of humanity has gone off course and is stranded in a quagmire of its own making. Only by turning to God can it extricate itself from this sorry predicament. The true importance of religion must be acknowledged; only then can society build itself anew. On any other foundation, its walls are sure to crumble and fall.
Chester Bowles, former American Ambassador to India observes: In planning and promoting industrial growth, developing countries are confronted by a dual problem, both aspects of which are perplexing.
“The first half of the problem is how to encourage the most efficient use of capital, raw materials, and skills which are immediately available. What are the needs? What are the priorities?
“The second perplexing aspect of industrial development involved its impact on people and institutions. While industry must be stimulated to grow as fast as possible, we must be sure that it does not generate more evils than it eliminates. In Gandhiji’s words, scientific truths and discoveries should cease to be the mere instruments of greed. The supreme consideration is man.”5
We can sum up his ideas in these words: the masses constitute the actual environment which is necessary for the development programmes to be implemented. The necessary tools of progress—investment and technical expertise, etc.—cannot function effectively in a political and cultural vacuum.
Modern thinkers have found no solution to the problems of how this vacuum is to be filled and how an environment is to be built up in which the public and government officials can work together to build society. Personal views clash with social concepts, and if God is left out of the picture, all attempts at human progress are doomed to failure, because they fall a prey to self-engendered contradictions. On a social level, the aim of the people is to build a peaceful, prosperous community, but at the same time they are unable to suppress the desire to seek material prosperity on a purely individual basis. Now if everyone is so inclined, society cannot prosper as a whole; no society can survive the stresses and strains of clashing personal interests. Far from working together in the interests of the community at large, self-seekers are at each other’s throats, hot in pursuit of their own selfish ends.
Materialistic philosophies which propound one theory for society and quite another for the individual will inevitably render ineffective any attempts to improve society.
When the accepted aim of life is the attainment of material prosperity, people feel free to satisfy their desires as they please. But the world we live in is a finite one, full of limitations. Here it is impossible for each and every individual to satisfy his or her own urges without this having an adverse effect upon others. In consequence, when self-centered people set out ruthlessly to fulfill their desires, they become a source of trouble, even danger, to others. People who are obliged to live on low incomes frequently feel deprived vis-à-vis others and, therefore, deeply frustrated. All too often, they then take to satisfying their desires by dishonest means—theft, fraud, bribery and so on. In so doing, they may materially compensate for their low incomes, but they then place society in that very predicament in which they had initially found themselves. The ideal of personal happiness has a catastrophic effect upon the happiness of society as a whole.
In modern times, human society has been affected by a novel, and extremely alarming malaise — juvenile delinquency. We must ask ourselves how a child becomes a delinquent. Since this problem is peculiar to modern society, we must attribute it to circumstances which did not in the past exist. And if such circumstances now exist, it is because of present day preoccupation with material happiness to the detriment of law and order. Matrimony too is no longer the respected institution that it was. It all too often happens that newly-weds, after exhausting the initial pleasures of married bliss, become tired of seeing the same face and making the same physical contacts and, in order the better to satisfy their sexual desires, go out in search of other partners. Eventually, whatever survives of the material relationship deteriorates to the point where divorce becomes an ugly necessity. Society has to pay for such separations, for the children then are no better off than orphans. They are alone in the world. With neither father not mother to turn to, such children are unable to take their true place in society. They grow up embittered and unchecked,—in effect, discarded by society. There is rarely any alternative for them but a life of crime. In his book, The Changing Law, Alfred Denning has laid the blame for child and adolescent crime fairly and squarely at the door of broken homes (p. 111). One infamous product of a broken home, who has recently aroused the morbid fascination of the public, is the notorious international criminal, Charles Sobhraj.
The root cause of the majority of the ills of modern life lies in personal philosophies and social aims being so often diametrically opposed to each other. What we call crime, corruption and all the other attendant evils are nothing other than the results of any given society’s members setting their sights on material happiness. Whether individuals, groups or nations are concerned, the moment the goal in life becomes individual prosperity, the seeds of destruction are sown for the rest of humanity.
The insatiable lust for self-fulfillment leads to innumerable social evils: fornication, robbery, looting, fraudulence, kidnapping, treachery, terrorism, murder and, ultimately war. All these are the result of people pursuing their own happiness, come what may—and, inevitably, it is society that pays the price.
The only solution to this problem is for humanity to turn to its true purpose in life. The fact that materialism has given rise to such conflict between individual aims and social purpose clearly indicates that man’s true goal in life is quite other. Rather than aim at worldly satisfactions, he should set himself to earning the approbation of his Creator in the life after death, for this is what man’s purpose in life truly is. If he were to adopt this course, the individual and society would be able to progress in harmony with one another, for there would then be no confrontation between the two; the individuals who constitute society would then be working towards ends which did not clash with those of society as a whole, but which contributed positively to the general good. Making eternity one’s goal results in harmony. The pursuit of false objectives can bring nothing but discord.
In modern times, amazing advances have been made in the fields of medicine and surgery, claims having been made that science is able to control all diseases, with perhaps the single exception of cancer. Yet as science discovers cures for ancient diseases, new and often more terrible diseases appear which have to be contended with. The latest scourge, AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) has so far defied all medical attempts to quell it. People who contract this disease are often dead within just a few weeks, and its spread has begun to strike terror into the hearts of western civilization. Because of its origins in the kind of unnatural homosexual practices which are abhorred and specifically prohibited by religion, people have begun to think of it as a form of divine retribution which spares no one.
“Be that as it may, there are other areas of physical and mental affliction for which science likewise cannot claim to have a cure. These fall under the broad heading of nervous ailments. What are these, and what is their origin? They, too, are essentially products of contradictions in modern societies, While all man’s efforts have been concentrated on the care and healing of the part of the human body which is made up of salts, gases and minerals, scant attention has been paid to the part which consists of consciousness, will-power and desire. This science has failed to cultivate. So we have a situation in which the material part of man has outwardly flourished while, inwardly, the real human part of him has been allowed to fall into neglect.
Authorities in the U.S.A. estimate that in big cities, 80% of medical patients are those whose illnesses can be put down to psychic causation. Psychologists who have investigated the nature of these causes have found crime, depression, paranoia, jealousy, indecision, stress, greed, tension and boredom to be predominant among them. When one thinks about it, all these afflictions come from man’s forsaking of God. When a person believes in God, he puts his trust in God; it is to God he turns in times of difficulty. He is able to overlook minor problems in life, because he is seeking the highest goal there is, and that is God. When he believes in God, man has the best motivation for doing good, and a sound basis for a strong moral character. “A great moving force,” is what Sir William Osler called the force that comes from faith. So great it is, that it cannot be weighed on any apparatus or examined in any laboratory. A mind nourished by this force is a treasure-house of well-being and equilibrium, while ignorance of, or lack of access to this source of psychic strength can only lead to derangement. Psychologists have shown great intellectual prowess in investigating the cause of mental disease; but unfortunately for the afflicted millions, they have failed miserably in prescribing any cure. According to one Christian intellectual: “All that psychiatrists have done is show us, in minute detail, the ins and outs of the locks which close to us the gates of good health.”
Modern society in its functioning is at cross purposes with itself. On the one hand, it does the maximum it can to provide man with the material comforts he requires in life. Yet, on the other hand, it has neglected man’s spiritual needs, with the result that man has become little better than a tormented soul. With one hand it doles out medicine, while with the other it administers poison. An excerpt from an essay on God in Medical Practice, by the American physician and surgeon, Paul Earnest Adolph, provides us with interesting evidence in this regard:
“Back in my medical school days I learned a basic materialistic concept of the changes which take place in body tissues as the result of injury. Studying sections of tissue under the microscope I perceived that, as a result of the various favourable influences which are brought to bear upon the tissues, satisfactory repair takes place. When I subsequently entered upon my career of hospital intern it was with a degree of confidence that I did so—confident that I understood injury and the healing process to the extent that I could be sure of a favourable outcome when the appropriate mechanical and medicinal factors for the promotion of healing were brought into play. I was soon to find out, however, that I had neglected to integrate into my concepts of medical science the most important element of all—GOD.
One of my patients in the hospital during my internship was a grandmother in her early seventies with a fractured hip. I had seen her tissues respond favourably as I had compared the serial X-ray pictures. Indeed I had congratulated her on exceptionally rapid healing. She had now advanced through the wheel-chair stage into the use of crutches. The surgeon in charge of her case had indicated to me that she should be discharged from the hospital in twenty-four hours to go back home, since he was fully satisfied with her prospects of early and complete recovery.
It was Sunday. Her daughter came to the hospital to see her on her routine weekly visit, at which time I told her that she could come the next day to take her mother home, for now she could walk with crutches. The daughter said nothing to me about her plans but went to talk to her mother. She told her mother that she had conferred with her husband and it had been decided that she could not be taken back into their home. Doubtless, arrangements could be made for her to go into an old people’s home.
A few hours later, when I was called to the old lady’s side as the intern on her case, she was showing general physical deterioration. Inside of twenty-four hours she died—not of her broken hip but of a broken heart, although in desperation we had utilized all emergency medical measures that might conceivably restore her to health.
Her broken hipbone had healed without a snag, but her broken heart had not. Despite all the favorable influences in vitamins, minerals and immobilization of the fracture that we had brought to bear upon her condition, she did not recover. To be sure, the bone ends had united and she had a strong hip, but she had not recovered. Why? The most important element needed in her recovery was not the vitamin, not the minerals, nor the splinting of her fracture. It was HOPE. When hope was gone, recovery failed.
This made a deep impression upon me, since it was accompanied by the conviction that this would never have been the outcome if this lady had known the God of hope the way I, as an earnest Christian knew Him.”
From this incident, we can form an idea of the deep-rooted malaise of modern society. Although science and technology are progressing by leaps and bounds and are contributing magnificently to the physical well being of man, there is a disastrously negative aspect to them in that they deny the existence of God. In fact, the entire educational system has been geared to ridding people’s minds of all thoughts of their Maker. While man’s body receives more and more nourishment, his soul is gradually being killed. Materially, he is pampered; spiritually, he is starved.
The result of this is only too tragically evident in episodes such as the one related above. At the very moment that the surgeons had successfully joined together broken bones, the heart had broken for a lack of healing faith. Physical health may be restored, but spiritual death can carry one off to the grave.
It is this dichotomy that has proved to be the undoing of modern man. The image he projects is one of brazen flamboyance, but this is only an outer shell which masks his internal anguish. Outwardly, he struts peacock-like, preening himself in glamorous clothes, but inwardly he is bereft of peace and contentment. Luxurious mansions shelter his body, but that pampered body of his, conceals a heart which is torn with misery. The lights of his cities twinkle and shine, but its streets are dark with crime and affliction. Rulers surround themselves with material splendour, but it is this very preoccupation with material gain that makes their governments hotbeds of intrigue and mistrust. We see grand projects conceived only to collapse because those charged with their execution are more concerned with self-aggrandisement than with the success of the task in hand. The Lord has provided man with an abundant spring of spiritual energy. But man has failed to nourish himself from it. Human life inspite of all its material advances, lies consequently in ruins.
It is spiritual starvation which has reduced man to his present state of mental turmoil in which he constantly seeks to satisfy his desires. Man is in conflict with himself, and the resulting disasters are plain for all to see. Scholars with great expertise in this field are the first to admit that man’s psychological ills stem from his abandonment of God. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1960), the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, has this to say:
During the past thirty years, people from all the civilized countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life—that is to say, over thirty five—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.6
Jung’s verdict is conclusively reinforced by the words of the former president of the New York Academy of Science, A. Cressy Morrison:
“The richness of religious experience finds the soul of man and lifts him, step by step, until he feels the Divine presence. The instinctive cry of man, “God help me,” is natural, and the crudest prayer lifts one closer to his Creator.
Reverence, generosity, nobility of character, morality, inspiration, and what may be called the Divine attributes, do not arise from atheism or negation, a surprising form of self-conceit which puts man in the place of God. Without faith, civilization would become bankrupt, order would become disorder, restraint and control would be lost, and evil would prevail. Let us then hold fast to our belief in a Supreme Intelligence, the love of God and the brotherhood of man, lifting ourselves closer to Him by doing His will as we know it and accepting the responsibility of believing we are, as his creation, worthy of His care.”7
Notes
1. Quoted by Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.
2. Nehru: Autobiography, New Delhi, p. 597.
3. National Herald, January 6, 1964.
4. Nehru: A Political Biography, London 1959, pp. 607-08.
5. The Making of a Just Society, pp. 68-69.
6. Quoted by C.A. Coulson in Science and Christian Belief, p. 110.
7. Man Does Not Stand Alone, p. 106.
