Of beggary and devotion

Pleading with or entreating another person or other people to help us or favor us, is usually considered with disfavor and distaste and if not done with dignity and poise is often described as begging. But if such pleas and entreaties are made to God or divine beings, it is considered to be a great virtue and is elevated to the state of devotion.

To beg of men is beggary and indignity, but to beg of God is devotion and piety

This begging of God that is almost second nature to humanity is welcomed and encouraged by all religions. Of course religion calls this begging prayer and devotion apart from other high-sounding encomiums

Religion helps in socializing and communalizing prayer and devotion and separating it from what could have been a personal and subjective experience

So religion in effect makes it fashionable and dignifying to indulge in beggary with God in public and in large groups, by providing the superstructure and infrastructure in the form of scriptures and places of worship. 

That leads to another and probably the most common and popular name given to begging and pleading with God, which is worship.

Worship is perhaps the most common form of human communication with the supernatural world. And most of humanity engages in this exercise most part of their life. Depending on which religious persuasion that they belong to, the regularity, pattern and intensity of worship differs.

Most religions of the world have their manuals or hand-books of worship which go by the name of scriptures or holy books

Similarly most religions also have designated places for men and women to carry out their begging rituals and orgies, which go by the names of temples, churches, mosques, synagogues et al. 

The job of scriptures and holy books is to make all human pleas to divinity sound very esoteric and abstruse and also to throw the gloss and veneer of verse, imagery, symbolism and metaphor besides every other available device of human creative imagination to mask this pathetic exhibition of human vanity and superstition.

It also employs its creativity further in inventing arguments and excuses for offering unending gratitude and supplication to the divine order.

Thus the well and the ill, proud and the humble, rich and the poor, fair and the foul, fortunate and the unfortunate, joyous and the suffering alike are expected to be grateful for whatever state they are in and express that gratitude in the endless solicitude of prayer and worship.

In the same vein, religion invokes the doctrine and principle of humility and abdication to divine authority  to serve the purpose of silencing and preempting any inquiry or application of reason to scriptural messages and commands  

We shall see in subsequent posts how each religion has been perfecting its own method of beggary