In Which I Explain God....

How’s that for an arrogant title? Okay, I probably won’t explain God but I want to talk about the current trend toward denouncing God and religion and everything else that we don’t control. There are a number of books out right now by a variety of writers and I have spent a little time with those by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. All of them are well written, well argued, and have excellent points to make. My only issue with them is that they all make the same mistake — they blame God for the atrocities committed by man.

In a way their premise is almost touching in its simplicity. Throughout the course of history horrible wars have been fought, people have been tortured and abused, populations have been oppressed all because of God and religion. All of them spend a good deal of time talking about the current jihads waged by sectarian Islamists and the fundamentalist Christians who create their own problems all because “God told them to do it”. I understand exactly what they mean. I agree with them.

I watched a documentary with Dawkins in which he visited the Holy Land and interviewed people from all Faiths and talked in depth about the warring factions that have torn at that land in the names of their various Gods. He makes excellent points.

The thing I kept thinking through all of it — the documentaries and the books — was what has any of this got to do with God? Men are horrible to each other. Mankind kills its own, tortures its own, suppresses its own, acts in unconscionable ways all the time. Isn’t blaming it all on God an easy way to ignore our own responsibility for what we do? It doesn’t seem to me that it is God who drops those bombs and pulls those triggers and flies those planes into the sides of buildings. Sometimes when I read the proclamations of those “religious” fundamentalists who do these things they remind me of David Berkowitz claiming his neighbor’s dog made him murder people. Ooooo-kay...

I don’t pretend to have an answer here. I am a person of Faith and have been for many years. It is not something I particularly asked for at all. Even during those years of college and for awhile afterwards when I was going through my agnostic/questioning phase trying out different religions, belief in something greater was always there. I was one of those “thank God I’m an atheist” types, Finally I realized how stupid my attitude was and I accepted that I was stuck with believing. My life is better now.

Albert Einstein once said, “I want to know the mind of God.” Bold sentiments. But there is something in there. Scientists tell us that we only use a small percentage of our big brains and they don’t know what the rest is used for. We are, clearly, capable of being far greater than we are and, to me, that vast unused territory of the brain is where many of our answers about God and the meaning of all that will eventually find answers.

I know when I am fully engaged in writing or creating something happens and, for me, that is God-presence. There have been times when I have written something and read it later and think “who the hell wrote that!” And that is God-presence. There is Something. I don’t know what but I know there is Something.

Man has tried to shape God in his own image from the beginning of time. I’m always amused by some of those attempts — “well, if God is so good why does my grandmother have arthritis?” Aurgh! Man can be violent, cruel and stupid. Much of the time we are not that far from the cave and then we blame it on holy wars and religious directives. And sometimes we are filled with light and empowered and creatively alive. For me that is being filled with God. I don’t know where that comes from, maybe those uncharted regions of the brain. But I am okay with calling that God. Instead of blaming God for all the failures of mankind to one another why can’t we focus more on our own failures and try to redeem that by giving more of our time to letting in that creative light?

Thanks or reading.