The Story Of GOD
With Morgan Freeman
All of us must be asked ourselves about God in different aspects of our lives but we have also a life that goes fast and cruel, so following the ‘Story of God’ is hard when there is deadlines, exams, company meetings or simply a dinner must be prepared before household starts to crave. But on the other hand I think religious questions and their answers affect our all these errands and way of our perception. They give us a purpose to be here on earth each and everyday and try to do our best. So this must be what also Morgan thought when he started to travel all around the world for learning the story of God. This documentary gives us a comfort to visit all different kind of rituals and religious cities from Jerusalem to Rome within the all rush of our personal lives. We ask ourselves lots of questions each episode of this amazing documentary, like: Who is God? What is the proof of God? Where did we come from? Is there a universal good and evil? Can evil be vanished away? What are the holy laws and why are these exist? This goes on but as a brief summary these are some of my favorite episodes and what I understood and explored:
Creation:
Societies have different theories and stories to tell about the beginning of time and the first man. In addition to these, there is a theory of science that we call the cosmos or the big bang. Comparing the stories of the big bang and religions on his journey, Morgan finds some of them very similar to the cosmos, while he finds others completely different, but discovers the logic and sublimity they contain. Asking himself whether civilization gave birth to God or whether the idea of God created civilization by making it easier for people to live together, Morgan discovers at the end of the episode that the idea of God is a very special bond that holds people together and make them feel grateful, regardless of their religion. For this reason, he says that religions are more have a power to bond people rather than divide. And he ends episode by saying:
‘Whatever we believe, we can share the one thing: The wonder and gratitude that we are here at all. It’s my sincere hope that people would open their hearts and minds and see that our beliefs don’t have to divide us.They have the power to unite us, to allow us together achieve remarkable things.It was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.’
Who is God?
Some people worship only one God while others more than one. But who is God in reality? In this episode, Morgan meets with people from various faiths and tries to understand how they interact with their God. He notices some of them make idols of their Gods while others say that God cannot take physical forms. He participates in various rituals to see how they reach this non-physical God, and finally discovers that communication with God is actually an inner journey. Incredibly he finds scientific evidences too. Even for exploring the new branch of medicine which is called neurotheology , he meets with scientists and takes part in an experiment and notices that religious motivation enhances the ability of brain’s frontal lobes. The most intriguing part of the experiment for me is that the ability of frontal lobes doesn’t enhances for atheist people so this actually points the direct link between religious motives rather than meditation. That’s probably why Morgan ends the episode like this :
‘If you ask who the God is, I would say that there is a piece of divinity in all of us. There is God in you, there is God in me. The God in me is the who I really am at my core. The God in me is the best version of me. The God in me is the person I strive to be, who I meant to be.’
Miracles:
In this episode, existence of miracles being criticized upon people who claims to experience them. It is questioned whether miracles occur by randomness within possibilities or by the intervention of God. And of course he meets with people who believes differently. One of the most impressive aspects of the episode for me was learning that miracles don’t actually have to be big things. Being able to change people’s minds, living together, knowing how to be happy are all different miracles. At the end of the episode Morgan says that he prefers to believe miracles. Because miracles turns things which seem possible to reality and the weirdest part is almost all people who believe that they have experienced miracles have achieved this process with focused motivation in their minds. It shows how far a person can rise above the threshold they think they are capable of simply by believing.
Heaven and Hell:
Heaven and hell concepts are as old as religion’s history. Though not always named as heaven and hell almost all religions have a good and bad place. Humanity’s fear of this bad place and hope to good place is universal. But how does this fear and hope affect our lives here on earth and why do they exist? Or are they only come out after death? We all tried to figure out these questions in this episode. We have witnessed that heaven and hell regulate human life and increase the sense of responsibility. We have seen that humanity has tried to describe heaven and hell for centuries, and we realized that some people live in this world, heaven and hell. That must be why Shams Tabrizi said this quote:
Don’t search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate we are in hell.
The idea that love should be a common religion is reinforced by the fact that at the end of the episode, when a woman who thinks she has experienced heaven is asked about her religion, her answer is love of God.
As you can understand from summaries, watching this documentary was like a sudden stop and explore a lot of random topics which seem unimportant but in fact most important. I think this is a must watch documentary!! It wasn’t as much detailed as learning a religion’s all perspectives but it was pretty enough to be amazed by a religion. What I learned by watching this documentary is in all part of the world people prays and expects the consent of the God by different scripts. But seeing that some people climbing over mountains by risking their lives, for sharing their non-violent ideas scaring to inhale microbes, sacrificing themselves for nine years just to give their public an image of God seems no better than each other but symbolizes our great humanity and desire to change world better. In the end I think we must focus on the common purpose of us rather than our different ways of manifestation to reach this goal.
Thank you for reading my writing!!
Photos:
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