05.11.2006
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When God Created Man
_ By Raluca Enescu
Once upon a time, God created Man. In the middle of the Universe, this new-born creature was peculiar for resembling, in certain amazing ways, with his Almighty Creator.
God had created Man with a free will, a reason and a conscience, with a mind to discover the world and a heart to care about it, with inner value and dignity.
Then the world filled with more and more people. God had created all of them equal in dignity and gave to each of them life, freedom and other gifts nobody was to take away from them.
It’s hard to say what happened next, how people discovered power and its consequences, how they assumed or didn’t assume its responsibilities. It has been natural for these rational human beings to form societies, to establish ruled based on mutual agreements, because that was the best way to live. Nothing of it could have explained oppression, war or discrimination.
But there came days when some of them, perhaps blinded by greed, or by certain fears, started questioning the harmony of the Creation: the fact that all men were to be free and equal, that all men were entitled to dignity and similar to God. They built-up theories to demonstrate that some people ought to be slaves, because the color of their skin is different; that women are inferior to men; that people do not have the ability to decide for their own future. And so on. They implemented them by manipulation and by force where manipulation failed. That’s when people, more and more people, started to live in fear.
And that’s when the world turned cold and absurd. How can you be free, if your right to freedom is denied? How can you keep your conscience if you are threatened to conform to rules you don’t agree to? How can you trust your neighbor, if you know that he would report you to the militia as a “terrorist” because you think people should have rights? How can you still love, still have friends, still have reason and feelings? Ultimately, how can you still believe in god, if a claimed uncontestable authority tells and repeats you that God does not exist?
However, by a certain miracle, Man kept on believing in God. Actually, that is why oppressors claim atheism with every single occasion: because God and his miracles will always be above them, far beyond their control and restrictions. Because God is Hope, even when you are supposed to be hopeless. Because God is the Truth, even when the oppressors consider it is then who have the ultimate control over people’s minds. Because God gives Love, even when you are told that you don’t need love anymore. Because our God-given rights cannot be stolen and taken away from us; we can be denied our rights, but this will only remain a lie, an artificial construction unable to last, an insult to god and its creation, unable to affect its deep inner meaning.
Around the world, people are praying. They are praying for an end to the oppression, for the recognition of their dignity, for the world to turn normal again. If we still believe in God, then we know for sure we are still able to keep our inner light-the only thing no dictatorship will ever take away from us.
And there is God above who sees everything. One more reasons why oppressors tell us that God does not exist: God is Justice. And He will not let the empty-hearted hurt the beauty of his Creation.
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