Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Just who is this 'God' guy, anyway?

Have you ever really asked yourself that? Ever really thought about it? Just who God is? What does it mean when you say 'God?' To whom are you referring? I asked my brother that one time, and he started with all the usual stuff- 'He's the creator of the universe...' etc. etc. But I'm not talking about what he supposedly did. I mean, when you close your eyes and pray to God, who do you think of? What do you see? When you tell others about 'him,' who is the 'he' that you're referring to? Since he's A. invisible, B. intangible, i.e. doesn't have a physical body, C. no longer speaks to us in a human voice, D. no longer manifests himself in clear, obvious ways, like he's said to do in the bible, many times over, and so on... So he has all these 'attributes,' and things he's done and continues to do- created everything, is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-that. And we humans can (and should) - supposedly - have a relationship with him. Ok, so who is he really, then? Think about it, I could tell someone about you guys- someone who's never met you before, doesn't know anything at all about you, never even seen a photo; I could say, 'This is Chuck, I've known him for x years, this is where he lives, what he does, what he's done, etc.' I could attempt to draw a sketch, so they could get some idea of what you look like. Admittedly, my drawing skills are not very good, but even so, I could go so far as to hire a sketch artist and have them draw you based on my description, so that the person I'm describing you to could picture somebody based on the description. True, they would actually have to meet you in order to say they know you, but still, they could get a decent idea of who you are. Even in the case of someone that none of us has ever met, or will meet, such as George Washington, we can still get an idea of who he was, based on stuff he wrote, and stuff that was written about him, but most of all on the fact that he was a human being, just like us, and anyone who's spent a certain amount of time on this planet and has seen enough things in life generally knows what people are like. Not so with 'God.' And I know exactly what the counter-argument is: 'Jesus was God in human form, so we can know what God is like, through Jesus!' Wrong. Flat-out wrong, and on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. I'm told by Christians, and used to tell others the same thing when I was a Christian, that you can have a relationship with Jesus, yes you can. A relationship? The kind where he never talks to me, or anyone else? Even modern Christians would look with a great deal of skepticism on someone who claimed Jesus actually spoke to him in an audible voice. Much more so if they claimed that he told them something ridiculous like, 'I want you to give up everything and be a homeless bum, so you can better witness to homeless people.' Or especially if he said to do something psychotic, like, 'Kill your firstborn child.' Although I don't know why that would be so outrageous, since Jesus is supposedly God incarnate, and God himself told Abraham to kill Isaac. The fact that he changed his mind at the last second is irrelevant; he still told him to kill his son, and Abraham had the knife lifted and was ready to go.
(On a side note, since we're on the subject of the Trinity, I remember one time in church listening to K talk about the Trinity, and how so many people have tried to 'figure it out' (how can he be 'one god, in three persons,' and all that, etc.) and he mentioned a quote that he'd heard before: 'It's been said that if you try to understand the Trinity, you'll lose your mind. If you try to deny the trinity, you'll lose your soul.' In other words- 'Just believe what we tell you to believe. Don't try to make sense of it, don't try to refute it. Or else.' Am I wrong? Because I really don't think I am.)
Getting back to the relationship with Jesus... So he never talks to us, at least not in an audible voice. Ok, so he speaks to our 'heart,' then? What if he tells me something different than what he tells you? What if he tells me that he wants me to move to Hawaii and be a surfer and drink fu-fu drinks with little umbrellas in them? I already know the answer to that- 'He doesn't work that way.' Of course he doesn't. Because whenever he tells someone something that greatly differs from the general 'accepted' idea of how he works, then he just doesn't work that way. It's all so convenient. It makes it so easy to put everyone in a box, or label them as the kind of person 'who thinks they are, but ain't.' It also drastically cheapens the idea of what a 'relationship with Jesus' means in the first place. I can have a relationship with him, but only if it fits with a particular set of beliefs and practices? And if it doesn't, then I'm just plain wrong, or 'deceived.' Or a deceiver. That's a good one. The idea that I really 'know the truth,' but I have some sort of hidden, evil agenda, so I 'deny the truth' and try to lie to others too. I'm just another puppet of the devil, I guess. But anyway, back to this relationship idea, and what I was saying before about how we can get an idea of who some people are even if we've never met them before, and never can meet them. I still maintain that we can't get to 'know' God based on Jesus and the idea that he 'was God' in person. What do we know about Jesus, anyway? Not as much as some people would like to think we do. He himself (allegedly) never wrote any books. Noone ever sketched out any pictures of him. Much of his life before the last few years is almost completely unknown, and what was written about him was written long after his death. But never mind all that, let's just say that everything in the bible that's written about him is 100% accurate (why not, right? Since mortal men didn't write it anyway- God did, so they say). Even with all that, we still can't get a 100% clear picture of who God is just based on that. You know why? Because Jesus is like a cloud, or a Rorschach test- different people look at it and see different things. People look at Jesus and see what they think they should see. There was a line from that DeGarmo & Key song, Radical, 'He's got hair down his back.' Of course he did; because they were Jesus rockers with long hair themselves. Then when the Christian metal scene started out in California and the kids who used to like that kind of music started getting flak from the older generations in their churches for listening to that kind of music, well, wouldn't you know it, that's exactly the kind of music they figured Jesus would listen to these days if he were around now instead of 2000 years ago. You go into a Lutheran church in northern Maine or Minnesota and you're likely to see one of those old-school painting of Jesus on the wall where he's very pail and white with medium-length locks, not too long, not too short. In southern churches he's more dark-skinned. I've been told that in China, he's more Asian-looking, and so on. And the Christians who are fed up with the hypocrisy they see love to quote the verses where Jesus is telling off the Pharisees, or overturning the money table- 'cause Jesus was a badass, just like them! People look at Jesus and see who they want to see. With so many people having so many different ideas about who he is, why couldn't he make things a little more objective? It's like I said in a previous post, why couldn't he have come in say, the 20th century instead of when he did? Then we could at least have photos of him, put a name to the face. Instead, we're left to close our eyes and see- nothing. We're allowed 'no other gods before him,' yet I have to ask- before who? It doesn't do any good to say things like, 'the one who created everything.' That still doesn't tell us anything about who that 'one' is. The Flying Spaghetti Monster claims to be that one, and he has the added bonus of having an actual image that we can picture in our minds. So could I picture in my mind the FSM and say, 'I don't know if that's what God looks like, but I'm going to worship the God who created everything and picture the FSM'? How do we know that God doesn't look like the FSM? Without any kind of idea of what to go on, we're totally left to our imagination, so I don't see why not. How can it be blasphemy, if we're still worshiping the 'one true god?' If I close my eyes and pray to 'the god who created me and everyone and everything, whoever you are,' but picture something specific, is that ok? Can I even ask that question, or am I in danger of going to hell for it? And why do I have to ask other people? Why can't I just go to God himself and ask him directly? And why can't I expect an answer when I do?

Here's a thought- how about we just forget the whole idea of groveling before an invisible, practically unknowable deity who hides himself from us in many ways, and go on living our lives until he sees fit to make himself known in a way that's plain and objective and obvious to everyone?