Irrespective of what people want to believe, The God in their minds is only a reflection of themselves. When they claim absolute belief in a particular religious doctrine, they are essentially trying to shift the moral responsibility onto something external to themselves. The god lives in their minds in the way they have conceptualised Him ¹. And how do they do that? From whatever that they have picked up from their surroundings. The people, the circumstances, the social media, and whatnot. Religious indoctrination plays only a small part in it.

Let me be clearer. What I seek to discredit is a myth, which has been endorsed vehemently by those who follow religion as well as oppose it. They want us to think that human minds absorb ideas losslessly. In a class of mathematics, nobody thinks that all children learn and master a subject equally. Even under a master tutor, you will find plenty of people who would flunk spectacularly. The formulae, the concepts, the lessons in logic - they all are absorbed differently by the constituents of a classroom. But when it comes to catechism, the catechumen is assumed to be a master learner who picks up and retains everything they have learnt about the religion.

It is based on this wrong assumption that we debate religion. Debating religion only exists for theatrics and power games for the most part. Much like the newsroom debates that seldom change crystallised political opinions, these debates only appeal to the undecided masses: people who belong to other religions that are not being discussed, or a minority of atheists who concern themselves with discrediting religion for ideological purposes. Apart from that, debating religion doesn’t take us towards Truth. This is because the Truth about God exists independently of what people think about him².

Essentially, we forget everything that is not repeated often in our lives. Consequently, the theology and spiritual arguments are lost as we age. Perhaps one utility of debates and continuous observation of religion is to ensure that the learnings are not lost. Again, the way religion lives over communities is different from how it is internally perceived in the minds of the believers.

How I look at myself as a Muslim (or any other religious identity) can be very different from how the religion actually operates over the laity. And the way I imagine god could be very different from how I am supposed to see him according to the scriptures. Scriptures introduce another layer of abstraction because the very same words evoke different meanings within different people.

So, the sensibilities of the God in their minds are reflective of a complex reality that encompasses their everyday lives. The god is likely to be a conservative bum, if that is what the believer is. On the contrary, the God could be love and all chill about the possibilities of humankind, if that is what the believer in question is. The true nature of God is immaterial. What matters more is what the ethical and temperamental composition of the believer is.

If your mind is as big as the Universe, your God will be too. If it is a narrow room that derives sickly pleasures from proscribing others, your God will be a deranged policeman.

Again, be mindful that many of these restrictions stem from a fallacy that unrestricted human freedom could be a malaise. Such thoughts have political origins rather than spiritual or psychological concerns. A projection of their narrow worldview onto God is an easy thing to do - if what they desire is more and more social and political restrictions over others. One can debate the pros and cons of the so-called sexual liberation, drug culture etc in this context. But the ills associated with them can always be explained away by the lack of informed choice, rather than the fallibility of human condition in the face of unrestricted freedom. But here too, the God and the Truth are held ransom to attain political ends.

Say, you are making a wrong choice. Two alternate scenarios with respect to our context can be considered. One - that you could be prevented from making that choice because you are proscribed. Two - you don’t make the choice because information available convinced you to act likewise. Which one is more sustainable? The ones that has to invest in creating barriers, or the one that seeks to broaden mental horizons?

Of course, one could argue both ways. But the belief that controls will work in regulating human behaviour is a fundamentally political one. It has nothing to do with the nature of God, or his perceived abilities³. This important distinction is lost when people try to club religion with a set of socio-political values. Given the nature of human diversity, it is only natural that the same religion will produce radically different societies. And this is what we see around us. The bigots want us to believe that religious identity could mean something (usually negative), when it comes to describing a people. And the zealots too impose on us such a belief that their religion is fundamentally different (religious exceptionalism), and both arise from material concerns rather than anything spiritual.

Diversity within the same religion is scoffed at by puritans for the very reason that they are intolerant. And their intolerance is reciprocated in kind or harvested by the Fascists around them. These political projects find fertile ground in the minds of people who are not strong enough to hold a God as big as the Universe. For those who struggle with the injection of such a vast humanity within themselves, a ready solution is to shrink the God and accommodate Him in the narrow alleyways of their constrained minds. Fascism thrives on misinformation and a radical obfuscation of truth. To do that, one easy method is to reduce their god to a madman—a rigid moralist incapable of kindness and generosity toward all of humankind.

Likewise, it is a necessary condition that your God is belittled by the march of Fascism within your religion. It cannot contain a god as big as the universe for the simple reason that the bigot/fascist/moron cannot conceive such a god. And the Fascist ends up hurting his own people by robbing them of their own gods.

This simple dictum is true not only because of science. Rather, the faith demands a god that has to be true. Or your brain would relegate that god into an illusion - something that we are evolutionarily trained to avoid.

And hence, don’t let anything make your god appear small within you. Mind you, the God is not made bigger by the size of the crowd that cheers with you for Him ⁴. But by what his presence means to your value system. The size of the God in your mind is dictated by the size of your mind and your ability to think for the whole of humanity and everything animate and inanimate.

Modernity isn’t meant to regress and make you insular; it is supposed to create great men out of the ordinary lot. And that should arise from the random acts of kindness that underpin our persona. And that would make a true believer out of each one of us.