*Warning: Theological Content*
"Dear God, we have a problem. It is us!"
This is a message I saw recently on the signboard of a church near my house. It makes me cringe. I would've liked to have followed that statement with something like, "It's not that it doesn't have a good...[fill in the blank]," but I can't think of one thing about it that I feel is good. I guess prayer is good, or is good for some people, but this isn't really a prayer. It's more of a flashy challenge to passersby - "Deny it! Ha, you can't!" But worse than that, it's like a pointing finger, poking in all directions without giving any clues as to what might be done. It's as though the posters, whoever put up the sign, are saying, "Well? What are you waiting for, you terrible sinful people? We're telling you right here what the problem is, now stop!" And if it IS a plea to God, I don't think it's going to be very effective. I'm pretty sure He/She/It can see what is going on here, and if He/She/It wanted to put an end to things, He/She/It would. But as I already discussed in a much much earlier post (circa sophomore year), I think God is like a parent, looking on, trying to guide us, hoping that we don't get hurt, that we'll pay attention to advice given out of love and concern, but if we don't heed it, that we'll at least be able to learn from our mistakes. God's not like a superhero, swooping in to save the day at the last possible second. I think that God read that sign and sighed and said, "Yes, I know. But you have to learn to get along and work things out yourselves because you're big kids now and I can't be there for you all the time to fight your battles."
Some people say that we were created in God's image. I don't think I believe that, either. I think that if we were created like anything, we were made to be a form of angel. I think God saw potential for sentient beings who could care for the earth. Or maybe we were an experiment, to see what might happen. If you create a sentient creature, you no longer have control over it because it can think for itself, make decisions on its own, etc, etc, and maybe God thought to put some such creatures here and see what they did. I think the strongest argument for free will is that it is highly unlikely God would motivate someone to kill or rape or torture in any way another human being, because there's no lesson learned there. And I don't believe it's Satan moving the limbs of those people, either. I believe the only devils that exist are in the souls of human beings. Does that mean I can't believe in God? I don't think so. Maybe not the Christian God, but even that God takes many forms depending on the theist. I think that God can exist without a devil because of free will. If God does not move us explicitly for good, there does not need to be an antagonist who moves us explicitly for evil. We are our own movers, and we decide where to place our bodies. Experiment, design, or accident of nature, we are the ones now in control of ourselves and our destinies. It's just that our destinies intertwine so much that we get hopelessly tangled in webs of lies, deceit, greed, corruption that we didn't even want to be part of in the first place.
But we can always infect the web with good and kindness and compassion and love and caring. We can pollute it with activism, with charity, with philanthropy and friendship. We can shimmy along a dark strand, clean it up, and watch it gleam. Of course, some strands take longer than others and require large groups of diligent workers, but there are other small strands that are easier to fix, cleaning up that can be done by a single person acting in good faith towards others. Free will doesn't deny the existence of the group collective and the power of individual effort in synergy with other individual efforts. Free will only allows us to decide for ourselves if it is worth it to reach out.
And to me, that is the purpose of God in the whole scheme of things. God is a presence that keeps watch on things from afar, but not out of malice or a desire to see mankind do itself in. I'm going to close this with a quote I came across recently that I feel sums things up quite nicely, and also with the thought that I'm not really done musing about this but that there's only so much thinking one can do before it gets too late to be coherent. This quote is probably from a religious text, but I don't know which as the author was unknown. Maybe that makes it all the better, to be more unbiased. (The emphasis at the end is added.)
"Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, 'Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?' God said, 'I did do something. I MADE YOU.'"
This is a message I saw recently on the signboard of a church near my house. It makes me cringe. I would've liked to have followed that statement with something like, "It's not that it doesn't have a good...[fill in the blank]," but I can't think of one thing about it that I feel is good. I guess prayer is good, or is good for some people, but this isn't really a prayer. It's more of a flashy challenge to passersby - "Deny it! Ha, you can't!" But worse than that, it's like a pointing finger, poking in all directions without giving any clues as to what might be done. It's as though the posters, whoever put up the sign, are saying, "Well? What are you waiting for, you terrible sinful people? We're telling you right here what the problem is, now stop!" And if it IS a plea to God, I don't think it's going to be very effective. I'm pretty sure He/She/It can see what is going on here, and if He/She/It wanted to put an end to things, He/She/It would. But as I already discussed in a much much earlier post (circa sophomore year), I think God is like a parent, looking on, trying to guide us, hoping that we don't get hurt, that we'll pay attention to advice given out of love and concern, but if we don't heed it, that we'll at least be able to learn from our mistakes. God's not like a superhero, swooping in to save the day at the last possible second. I think that God read that sign and sighed and said, "Yes, I know. But you have to learn to get along and work things out yourselves because you're big kids now and I can't be there for you all the time to fight your battles."
Some people say that we were created in God's image. I don't think I believe that, either. I think that if we were created like anything, we were made to be a form of angel. I think God saw potential for sentient beings who could care for the earth. Or maybe we were an experiment, to see what might happen. If you create a sentient creature, you no longer have control over it because it can think for itself, make decisions on its own, etc, etc, and maybe God thought to put some such creatures here and see what they did. I think the strongest argument for free will is that it is highly unlikely God would motivate someone to kill or rape or torture in any way another human being, because there's no lesson learned there. And I don't believe it's Satan moving the limbs of those people, either. I believe the only devils that exist are in the souls of human beings. Does that mean I can't believe in God? I don't think so. Maybe not the Christian God, but even that God takes many forms depending on the theist. I think that God can exist without a devil because of free will. If God does not move us explicitly for good, there does not need to be an antagonist who moves us explicitly for evil. We are our own movers, and we decide where to place our bodies. Experiment, design, or accident of nature, we are the ones now in control of ourselves and our destinies. It's just that our destinies intertwine so much that we get hopelessly tangled in webs of lies, deceit, greed, corruption that we didn't even want to be part of in the first place.
But we can always infect the web with good and kindness and compassion and love and caring. We can pollute it with activism, with charity, with philanthropy and friendship. We can shimmy along a dark strand, clean it up, and watch it gleam. Of course, some strands take longer than others and require large groups of diligent workers, but there are other small strands that are easier to fix, cleaning up that can be done by a single person acting in good faith towards others. Free will doesn't deny the existence of the group collective and the power of individual effort in synergy with other individual efforts. Free will only allows us to decide for ourselves if it is worth it to reach out.
And to me, that is the purpose of God in the whole scheme of things. God is a presence that keeps watch on things from afar, but not out of malice or a desire to see mankind do itself in. I'm going to close this with a quote I came across recently that I feel sums things up quite nicely, and also with the thought that I'm not really done musing about this but that there's only so much thinking one can do before it gets too late to be coherent. This quote is probably from a religious text, but I don't know which as the author was unknown. Maybe that makes it all the better, to be more unbiased. (The emphasis at the end is added.)
"Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, 'Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?' God said, 'I did do something. I MADE YOU.'"