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The Fear of God

by I.J. SINGH

 

Don't let the title mislead you.  I am not going to trace the nature of God from a vengeful, angry presence in the Old Testament to a more merciful, compassionate being of the New Testament. 

Many times, I have described Sikhi as a religion of joy and not of suffering, and God as a kind presence, but that view is not always uniformly or widely shared.  I am reminded of an exchange I once had with a widely published author on Sikhism.  She insisted that there were two fundamentals to the Sikh worldview: absolute fear of God, and unquestioned obedience to the Guru. 

Then, many erudite people take that brief homily a gigantic step forward; they reduce the purpose of life to one single code: praise of God.  This, then, becomes the purpose of life  -  to walk through life in fear of God and to praise God endlessly.

So when I described God in Sikhism as a loving presence in our lives, I was immediately taken to task and, you know, I cannot entirely blame the readers who did so.

Most religions and faiths are instilled via obedience and fear, but these two features (or virtues, if you wish) to my mind are the hallmarks of a feudal society, in which critical analysis is diminished, if not dismissed, as a distraction. 

My first thought went to Mark Twain who, in his classic, Letters from the Earth, wonders if God is so massively insecure or selectively deaf that he needs our praises to no end, throughout eternity.  Only then would he be pleased, or else he might smite us with a bolt of lightning, turn us into pillars of salt, or consign us to everlasting hell, as his fancy turns at the moment. 

Clearly, it seemed to me that such a construct says little, if anything, about God, and reveals more about human foibles and insecurities.  In the final analysis, as Guru Granth teaches us, God has no dimension and no limit, and cannot be captured or measured by any of our measuring devices or descriptive tautology.  Any finite system that tries to capture an infinite reality must logically be inadequate and thus fail.

In life, we are often at the mercy of our parents, teachers, bosses, or those who can dominate or overpower us with their might, be it physical, financial or otherwise.  So, even a child discovers very early that for survival, one must master what the masters of our destiny want us to do.  When we err, our teachers, parents or bosses can get seriously upset and angry.  Punishment is likely to be sure and swift.  God must be similar in his behavior, except that he is more powerful and his anger must then be more substantial.

I wonder, then, if we have created a God in our own, very human image  -  perhaps older, sometimes kinder, even wiser and more loving, but also, at times, surely more capricious and arbitrary. 

The flip side of this coin is that this god is richer and more creative, and can bestow on us whatever our little materialistic hearts desire, if only we could cajole and flatter him into doing so -  as much as we please our earthly masters for our daily needs.

All this groveling and craving for toys we continue to do, in spite of the Gurus telling us clearly what we should pray for: "Deh naam santokhhiya utrey munn ki bhukh", tells us to ask for the boon that our inner hunger is sated.

I think we have then created a lesser god, not worthy of adoration.  Methinks this flies in the face of all logic, and also of the clear message of Sikhi.

I suggest that fear and unquestioning obedience are not the hallmarks of Sikh teachings, though they are often encountered in actual practice.

Yet, good scholars can and do recite a plethora of citations from Guru Granth, where fear of God is highlighted as a virtue, sometimes as the only virtue.

I hope to explore and parse the meaning  -  a way to separate the wheat from the chaff, without unnecessarily offending the believer in the process. 

Our interpretation largely stems from two Punjabi words that occur repeatedly in Guru Granth - Bhau and Bhaau.  There is no doubt that in our everyday colloquial Punjabi  -  in norma loquendi  -  "bhau" means dread or fear.

But there are also innumerable citations where God is refered to as sajjan or a dear friend, perhaps better translated in modern American English as a soul-mate.  Consider, as only one example of possibly hundreds, when Guru Arjan speaks of God as "sajjan saccha paatshah ... jis paas baithiya(n) soheeye...", meaning "God the soul-mate, in whose presence we are ennobled and enhanced".

In the preceding stanza, he speaks of his longing for God in words that take us to the story of Icarus from Greek mythology, who made a vain attempt to fly with wax wings to the Sun  -  the god he loved.  Guru Arjan says, "Khamb vikandrhe je lahaa(n) k(h)inna savee(n) toal, tan jaraeen apne(n) lahaa(n) so sajjan tol",  meaning "If wings were sold in the marketplace, I would buy them equal to my weight; attach them to my body and soar in search of my soul-mate.

Guru Arjan was clearly not longing for an angry, vengeful God.

There are also innumerable references that speak of the forgiving and kind God who is the creator and the caretaker of creation, and is never harsh with his creation. 

How then do we reconcile the two models of God  -  a compassionate presence or the one who invokes dread?

I think that, once again, we need to parse the language with care.  Words have meaning, but their interpretation requires attention to the context.  In reading poetry, what is all-important is to understand how the play on words is to be interpreted. 

To digress for a moment, the words Thakur and Ram occur repeatedly in Guru Granth. Sometimes the words are names for God derived from Hindu mythology and revered; at other times, they specifically refer to a stone idol, or the historic Ram, respectively, who can be dismissed.  If we lose the context, the interpretation will not hold.

Bhau largely means fear, but it may also indicate "wandering" or "a part of something". Bhaau generally stands for "impression" or "influence".  My two lines here do not exhaust what an imaginative poet like one of the Gurus might do with the words.  And keep in mind that the Gurus taught in the cultural and linguistic context of the Indian society of five centuries ago..

I believe that the words bhau and bhaau have been misinterpreted and mistranslated into English.  That should not surprise us.  Translation is not easy.  It requires mastery of two languages, two cultures, two different historical narratives, and a mind and heart that can switch seamlessly back and forth between them with equal facility.

And then, think of the lines of Guru Nanak that ask that we keep the fear of God within us, such that the fear of death no longer touches us.  I would contend that his first use of the word "fear" in this hymn is not to inculcate dread, but to ask that we feel the presence of God within. 

When these words occur in defining a relationship to God, I suggest that the meaning is closer to what we would term "awe" and "awesome".  "Live in the awesome presence of God" is the recommendation here, somewhat like the Biblical injunction to "walk in the shadow of the Lord".  Experience that sense of awe that governs your life as you come to terms with the oneness of creation, and the universality of the ultimate reality.  That this concept of the awesome presence of God is a historically demonstrable essential of Sikhi becomes clear when we use the word "Waheguru" as the name of God.

In essence, I believe the Guru recommends that we act, not from fear, but from love.  As President Franklin Roosevelt exhorted Americans during perilous times sixty years ago, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself".

November 9, 2007

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