Yousuf Raza – Why should we love God
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the psychological benefits of holding onto a spiritual belief system and the potential risks associated with it. They also discuss the psychological harms and dangers associated with it, and the importance of addressing the emotions and risks associated with it. The speaker suggests addressing these potential risks and emotions in a deeper way in the future.
AI: Summary ©
Why should we love God?
Is it because He created us or blessed
us?
If so, then we did not ask Him
to create us.
And also there are many who are not
blessed from multiple angles.
Yeah, so there's assumptions in that question.
A lot of assumptions in that question.
Where do we start?
First up, we did not ask to be
created.
How can you be so sure about that?
I mean, yes, in your conscious memory, you
don't remember asking to be created or doing
anything to come in to be the way
you are.
But does that negate that any choice was
made at any point of our evolution, of
our development that led for us to be
who we are today?
Can we negate that all right, all out?
Do we have sufficient memories to the contrary?
If I could say that I remember every
single thing for the entire life of my
consciousness, and that's a very loaded statement.
So what does that mean for the entire
life of my consciousness?
Well, how long have I been conscious?
You can answer that since I was conceived.
Okay, you don't have any memories of that.
You don't have many memories of your, the
life spent in the womb, do you?
Of course not.
Most people don't.
And any decisions that you made there, even
if there were any, you wouldn't know, would
you?
You're gonna, no, no, no, no.
I was conscious when I was born into
this world.
Were you?
Really?
What do you mean by that?
No, no, no, no.
My consciousness began from the time where I
have memory of life.
So you're telling me, and that's what your
earliest memories go back to when, when you
were three, four, and that too, like sporadic
one or two memories of that age, a
little more as you're growing up, and then
a whole lot more as you're growing up.
What does that say?
So you're telling me you were not conscious
as a one-year-old?
Then when did this light of consciousness all
of a sudden come in?
So there's, there's a lot of questions there.
And to have such firm beliefs that I
never asked to be created, I wouldn't be
too sure.
I would not be too sure.
And then I can't comment on whether it
is a religious injunction for you to love
God for the religion that you subscribe to,
or the understanding of religion that you subscribe
to.
What I can tell you is there are
psychological benefits of holding on to that spiritual
belief system, especially if that spiritual belief system
is centered around an individual God who responds,
who loves, and is to be loved, who
wants the best for you, who wants for
you to be the best version of yourself.
And therefore, in reciprocation of his love, you
love him.
I can talk about the psychological benefits of
such a belief system.
At the same time, I can talk about
the psychological harms, the psychological dangers of similar
belief systems as to how evil they may
be.
And the psychological benefits and harms, dangers in
their own place as a culture we're experiencing.
How religion can give us an incredible amount
of good with respect to the upliftment and
development of our society, that it holds people's
morality in check as to how our interpersonal
behavior, we don't rip each other's heads off,
at least not every day, even though we
have tendencies to do so.
Because we're held in check by centuries of
tradition rooted in religion, rooted in an understanding
of God.
So there is that, yes, that every single
person has to acknowledge, that's like fact.
But then there's also a similar level of
fact that we do rip each other's heads
off as well, that too, in the name
of God.
So there's both dimensions to it.
And a judicious addressal of the subject, a
judicious talk on the different dimensions of this,
the different psychological dimensions of this belief would
obviously require that we address all those dimensions,
the good and the bad.
And when we do address the bad, when
we do address the dangers and evils, as
we have been able to do intellectually, especially
over the course of the past two centuries,
the benefits that then this system of beliefs
has to offer, informed by those dangers, will
be way more mature, will be much more
secure, which will have, it will have a
whole lot more to offer with respect to
the development of society, the development of individuals,
if it is very, very clear.
So to put it very, in a very
personalized sense, that for you as a person,
if you are aware of what the benefits
of loving God as you believe in Him,
the benefits there are for you psychologically, if
you're aware of them, that's good.
But you need to be aware of the
dangers of that belief as well, as to
how we are prone as human beings to
use precisely those beliefs for evil.
And I'm not even talking ISIS particularly.
Yes, that too.
Also in our daily lives, in our one
-to-one interactions with other people, how we
judge each other, how we, out of a
sense of superiority, because we may be apparently
more religious than others, how we undermine others,
how we put them down, take advantage of
them, exploit them, and feel like we're justified
simply because we are, we have this sense
of entitlement on the basis of a claim
to religiosity or spirituality, whatever the case may
be.
So these are just surface examples, and there's,
it runs much deeper than that, it's way
more intricate than that, as to how we
can use one of the questions that I
just answered, going for charity when my responsibilities
to my parents are not fulfilled.
That's destructive.
If that charity especially is in the name
of God, then I would feel oh so
holy when I have subjected my closest relationships
to the greatest torture at my own hands.
And that messes things up.
Right?
So there's a lot of layers to this
discussion.
Maybe at some other point, we can talk
about this in a whole lot more detail
than