Believe in God and Be Happy
“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” There are 800 buses running across the United Kingdom carrying this slogan. The campaign is part of an anti-religion movement. They managed to raise £140,000 (Rs.1 Crore) for this campaign.
The slogan is an expression of an exaggerated humanism that believes that the way, perhaps the only way, of liberating humankind is by killing God. My faith tells me that God is not an insecure Being that I must rush to protect. There are others who do believe that God needs to be protected. They may even justify killing human beings in the name of God. These abhorring attempts by fundamentalists actually backfire. They prompt the opposite pendulum effect in anti-religion movements, equally fanatic, as seen in the bus slogans. In fact, the fundraising for this campaign began as a direct reaction to Christian bus-adverts that said non–Christians would burn in hell for all eternity.
We know from history that most forms of violence in the name of God, including the crusade, the jihad, or even the religious violence seen in India in the name of hindutva, is largely political. Religion is only a scapegoat that magnanimously takes the brunt of such hideous denial of the basic message of every religion – peace!
That aside, what we are talking about here is the war of words and ideologies. So I would like to use my freedom of expression to reflect on, what I perceive as, the latent messages of this slogan.
“There’s probably no God.” This is a modal expression like the one used in weather forecasts: “One or two places in the highlands are likely to experience some spell of showers in the next twenty-four hours.” While weather forecasts are departing from their traditional modality, our expressions of faith are taking on such language. This is not bad in itself. The atheists are being honest. They are just pondering about the reality of God: “there’s probably no God!” It is true that we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, as physical science could ‘prove’ in the laboratory that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Therefore believers don’t need to get utterly dismayed by this statement. What they do need to reflect about is the second part of the slogan.
“Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” I am a staunch believer but I don’t think my faith stands between me and my enjoyment of life. If your previous faith, or your perception of others’ faith, created a false impression that faith in God contributes to worrying, and robs someone of their ability to enjoy life, then this is a point for discussion. “Do not worry” is the noble message of world religions. The core of the Four Noble Truths of the great Buddha is to alleviate human suffering. The goal of human life, according to Buddhism, is to liberate oneself out of the cycle of bondage and enjoy the state of nirvana. The Bhagavad-Gita recommends an inner state of nish-kama-karma, which can be translated as, being free from the attachment of the fruits of one’s actions. It calls for an inner state of equanimity. Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself (Mt. 6:34). The Semitic religions, Judaism and Islam, encapsulate the state of freedom from worrying in their expression, ‘shalom’ or ‘salaam’. This is in no way an exhaustive discussion on the subject. In any case, at the core of every genuine religion is the wish for the authentic state of happiness.
However, it could also be true that some neurotic individuals take the sense of balance recommended by world religions in their own hands and push their followers to impudence and insanity. Therefore, atheism, including the U.K. slogan, does a great service to religion: it tidies up the world of bad religion.
On the other hand, if my discipline is prompted by my faith, it does not mean that I am not enjoying life. I would like to assure these well-intentioned philosophers that my enjoyment of life goes beyond amassing excessive wealth, or drinking alcohol, or eating pork, or having uncontrolled sex. The disciplined life that I am able to live, due to my religious choice, gives me tremendous freedom from the clutches of the hedonistic culture. It helps me live a healthy life, enjoy a continuous inner serenity, and perform well enough in the world.
In any case, I see the covert epicurean ideology in the slogan as dangerous. The cultural overtones of this campaign cannot be overlooked. It is an expression of the contemporary Western cultural hegemony. It exhibits the positivist scientific hubris. It advocates capitalistic consumerism. Why do the well-informed western minds not see the havoc caused by this philosophy of ‘enjoy your life’ – the environmental crisis, for instance? The way to fight credit-crunch is to buy more, they say! We produce to consume; we consume to produce! What will be the end of a dog that chases its own tail? Why can’t we see the vicious cycle that the western world-order has landed us all in?
As for me, my faith in God will not be threatened by these slogans. My faith depends on my own experience of a personal God, mediated by my faith community. And my God sets me free! I don’t worry. I enjoy life. I am happy.