Culture and society in Malawi are at bay. We proclaim to be a God fearing nation, but atheists, agnostics and religion scoffers are actively at work funded by the sort of rich people to whom Jesus said the camel would find it easier to pass through the eye of a needle than they would enter the Kingdom of heaven.
There are people who having obtained a PhD by licking the boots of Charles Darwin stand on roof tops and proclaim that there is no God. Let us not be misled by such men.
Civilisation owes its existence to the lives of a few great people: philosophers, scientists, writers and statesmen. Most of such men have proclaimed themselves believers in the Deity known by a variety of names such as Creator, God, Yahweh, Allah and so on. Here we introduce a few of these men.
Michael Faraday
He was one of the most brilliant British scientists in the 19th century. It was on the basis of his notes on the researches he had made regarding electricity that the great American investor Thomas Alva invented the electric lamp that has energised economies the world over.
Did Faraday believe in God? He was a member of a sect called Sandemanian which brought together dissidents from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and from the Church of England.
Albert Einstein (1919-1955)
The world acclaimed him the greatest scientist of the 20th century because of his Theory of Relativity. He is said to have challenged some of Isaac Newton’s legacy.
Did he believe in God and religion? Well, what would you conclude about a man who said “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind. God does not play dice with this world.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
By worldwide consensus, the author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina and numerous novelettes and short stories was the greatest novelist who has ever lived.
He uttered many epigrams having to do with the Christian faith. Among others, he said faith is the force of life. He wrote several polemics on Christian doctrines, some of which alienated him from the Russian Orthodox Church to which he belonged.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
India’s greatest writer of the colonial era best remembered for his novella Gitanjali. A Hindu by religion, his expressed beliefs reveal much that is common in the world religions.
He said: “I believe in a spiritual world, not as something separate from this world, but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must feel this truth that we are living in God.” This sounds like Christ saying: “The Kingdom of heaven is within you.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
The father of Indian independence wrote an autobiography titled God is truth. Though a Hindu he spared time to read the Bible.
He did not like the Pentateuch. But he wrote later: “The New Testament produced a different impression, especially the Sermons on the Mount which went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. The verses ‘But I say unto you that you resist no evil, but whoever shall smite thee on the right cheek turn to him the other also. And if any man takes away thy coat let him thy cloak too’ delighted me beyond measure.”
Plato
The ancient Greek philosopher and author of The Republic prayed thus “Lord of Lords grant us the good whether we pray for it or not, but evil keep from us, even though we pray for it.”
Benjamin Franklin
One of the founding fathers of the United States said “I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proof I see of this truth that God governs the affairs of men. God helps them that help themselves.”
Drafters of the American constitution included a motto “In God we trust.”