Why do we need a God ?

The “god” discussed here isn’t a Jesus or a Buddha or a Vishnu or an Allah; it’s no one’s deity but just the concept of Him. Why is it that we need a “God” to be there, someone to look up to?   

There’s one sentence that echoes across all the religions of the world, which reverberates in all the Holy texts—That God is all around us and if we need to find him, all we have to do is look inside. They might be true, literally. The said God isn’t a supernatural, omnipresent, all-knowing and all-seeing figure but our conscience, that is ‘inside’ all of us and it’s up to us whether or not to follow its in-built directives.  

As children we were often told things like “Eat your food or the crow will” , “Do your HW or the lion will come and eat you while you sleep” and various other varieties of it , the most famous being the one from Sholay, “Beta so jao, nahi to Gabbar aa jayega!”. Anyways, these ‘threats’, apart from being harm-less, encouraged us to do things that we may not have liked at the time but were in our interest and helped to keep us in check. The concept of God could have been introduced along the similar lines. There is no greater fear than the fear of the unknown, and someone unknown more powerful than anything you know (GOD) would instil fear in the best of us. Other than respect, fear, is the easiest way to have people follow rules and thus came religion. The concept of there being a force that watches your every move and sooner or later will make you pay for all your sins is the best way to keep people from sinning.

                                       

                                         “Man made Religion, Religion did not make Man.”.

One of the earliest religious directives ’The Ten Commandments’, are basically ten rules that each of us as a member of a society are expected to adhere to, even if it wasn’t written in stone or brought to us by a Prophet. Rather than there being a God, it’s the presence of the concept of there being a God is what makes all the difference.        

There’s another basic trait in us that shows how much we need the idea of a supernatural presence in our life. Its, more or less, a lack of confidence. We pray, mostly, only when we need something...only in the situations when all we have is hope and there’s nothing more that we can do. Say, when a loved one is in hospital we can’t do anything other than hope for a speedy recovery and instead of keeping our faith in the doctors and trying not to worry what we do is turn to the One Supreme force—God. We pray day and night to something that doesn’t exist rather than having confidence on the doctors who are actually trying their best to keep your dear one alive. It’s the lack of confidence in doctors that makes us turn to god. Similarly when we have some big problem staring at us, we do what is necessary but more than that, we pray! One of the most heard phrase in sports is ‘Everybody loves an underdog’. Why do we? Why do we like a strong team (unless we support that team) being beaten by minnows? Well, it’s because we can relate to the minnows, we consider ourselves weak in front of life, galore with problems, just like the minnows and ‘life’ becomes the common formidable opponent. It’s completely understandable when we rejoice in the underdog’s win. So, it’s the lack of confidence that makes us want to believe that there is some higher power working about us, that controls our fate and, at some point of time, will definitely ensure our success. 

 All in all, the fear of God makes us a better person, it’s a belief system that makes us more confident (pseudo-confidence) person but doesn’t the hardcore belief in something non-existent make us a delusional race? It’s up to you to select your path, to believe or not to, but is it really necessary? No, all we need to do is give our best in situations, do whatever we want to ,as long as we are not hurting somebody else and then the need for relying on anyone else, even God would go into oblivion.