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Letter to the editor

If God were to die, would life change?

God Is Dead imagines a world facing the ultimate test of faith.

By Vikram Johri, Special to the Times
Published July 8, 2007

God Is Dead
By Ron Currie Jr.
Viking, 182 pages, $23.95

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God Is Dead is a brilliant novel, a taut tale that captures the importance of faith in our lives.

Ron Currie Jr. begins with the premise that God acquires human form to trawl the burnt and emaciated regions of Africa, where destitution is a way of life. Roaming these lands as a Dinka woman, God is overcome by the futility of his creation, which has brought immeasurable grief to so many. Racked by guilt and shame, God dies, literally.

The novel, actually a collection of linked stories that stand on their own, explores the aftermath of God's death. One of the most touching relates to a feral dog that starts speaking after feasting on God's flesh. The dog becomes sentient, but this only brings it unhappiness. Coming to terms with a life where the "basic red" of primal anger has given way to "the scarlet of irritation, the vermilion of resentment, the deep crimson of fury, " where affection can be used to deceive, takes its toll.

Then there is the story of Arnold, from the moment his parents think of having a child to his ill-fated journey home after war has ruined his life. In one of the lighter stories, False Idols, Arnold's father is a Child Adulation Prevention Psychiatrist, working against a malaise that has gripped the country since God's death: Parents worship their children as mascots of innocence and purity.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. The world has split into two camps, the Postmodern Anthropologists (who advocate free will) and the Evolutionary Psychologists (who submit to fate). A war for control starts, and one cannot help feeling that, God or no God, human beings will find an excuse to erect barriers.

At a time when the Richard Dawkinses and Daniel Dennetts of the world are howling about the problems of theism, God Is Dead comes as a fresh gust of wind. In imagining what crises might befall humanity if the cushion of faith were snatched from it, Currie pays gleaming tribute to the collective spirit of believers.

Vikram Johri is a writer in New Delhi.

[Last modified July 5, 2007, 10:30:24]