In a country as diverse as India, there can be a million ideas of what people think of God to be like, what religion to be like. Everybody knows how we should follow a particular religion and do this and that to earn God's blessings. As a child, I was always intrigued, amused, scared too sometimes, on hearing what people had to say about God. I wondered what he would look like but that was not where my imagination worked. I paid more attention to what he was from the inside. Was he angry or was he forgiving, was he boastful or was he humble?
So many years having passed since those days, I think I have got a brief idea about how God must be like. Firstly, I believe God is an invisible spirit. That means we cannot see him, though we can feel him. Being a spirit, I think he does not have a gender. He is neutral. He is as beautiful and caring as a mother and as forgiving and respectable as a father. Assuming God to be of a specific gender is something I am not keen of.
We see how countless religions preach that God wants us to worship him, hail him as the almighty, as the ultimate. But I believe, God is too humble to actually ask his own sons and daughter to worship him. We call him our father. How many of our fathers ask us to worship them?
God is forgiving. Despite of us committing sins in our life, God is someone who will always forgive us. Although I do not deny that he might try to teach us some lessons of life the hard way, I certainly do not agree on the philosophy that we will someday be "condemned to hell."
God is the ultimate symbol of love and kindness. I do not believe that God would declare love as a sin. When we love somebody, we give out positive vibes, we surely fill world with a little more goodness. Why would God want anybody to renounce his own people, to renounce everything in life and just serve him when in fact real service can be offered through love? When a friend helps another, the Lord is served, he is pleased, he is contented. When a father toils all day for his family, it is his sweat of love which serves as a sacrifice to God. The biggest service we can do for the Lord is by loving and helping our fellow beings.
I would like to make it clear that I absolutely do not abhor any religion and I respect and love every religion, their rituals, their beliefs, their practices. All I want to project through this note is that we have made a specific image of God today and we want everyone to believe in the same image, which might be even cruel at times and that God is not. God is freedom, God is faith, God is love.