The day I fired GOD!

In our culture we have Gods, not one but many. We believe in many forms of the same God, each form being a separate God for all practical purposes.

Like one spirit that dwells in all - we have hundreds of thousands of Gods. If our prayers are not answered by one, we switch and seek out another God hoping to get an answer.

In fact, it’s not just people that are competing for jobs, Gods too are on high alert in my country(India). God too can be fired!

This competition is good and bad - good because our God is going to grant what we ask for. Bad because the competing God figure may be the one creating the troubles in the first place to make us switch the sides?!

In my teen ages, I have to confess I may have switched Gods for things I no longer remember or care for.

I guess our saints have long figured this potential chaos and that’s why they have designated certain specialties to our Gods.

Say, if we have trouble studying we can pray one God, and if we have phobias we have another God who specializes in such prayers.

We are a country of over 1.5 billion people and over a million God figures. We have never coerced or converted anyone from another faith into believing each other’s Gods. Never. We are able to be ONE with so many diversities, not just of cultures, but also of Gods.

It wonders us as to why rest of the world finds it difficult to be in peace with their ‘one’ or ‘two’ God figures.

Is it because most of the world lacks what we have? Choice! Or is it because of the rigidity in the beliefs about having one path to salvation versus the multiplicity and whole array of paths as depicted in our culture that teaches us that ‘God’ is ONE, whether you call Him* this or that.

If you are not comfortable calling him with one name use another name - it doesn’t matter what you call Him who is beyond the labels, names and descriptions. The idea of millions of Gods is unimaginable chaos for rest of the world but we have created peace in place of chaos. That’s because we have choice.

We believe in oneness in the multiplicity while the rest of the world is getting split for one God or the other.

*I used Him not because I believe God to be a male but just because it rhymes better that way. I believe I am not competent enough to assign gender to God.