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What Will We Do with God?
Reverend Brian J. Kiely,
Unitarian Church of Edmonton, September 10, 2000
Message to: God.com
Dear God,
Well, here it is, the start of another church year and, silly me,
I have decided to lead off by talking about you...whoever or whatever
you are. Now, if you are who some claim you to be, you, in your
all knowing wisdom, will know that this presents something of a
problem for me, since, after all, I have been at best, wishy washy
on whether you are out there or not.
Indeed, I have gone all the way from capital T True capital B Believer,
albeit when I was too young to know any better... to complete atheist...back
in my 20s when I thought I knew more than you anyway. Pretty big
pendulum swing, don’t you think? Nowadays, as I imagine you
also know, the pendulum swings a much shorter distance. On one end
it reaches an intuitive sensing of your presence, which may just
be an emotional longing for you to be there and for there to be purpose
and order in the universe... and then it swings across to the other
not very extreme end of pure simple I dunnoö agnosticism.
So here I am, a religious leader, supposedly one familiar with the
study of you and usually expected to be able to discuss your godlike
self with some degree of conviction, and I am set up to preach a
sermon on the likes of you for, well... a bunch of headstrong Unitarians.
To be utterly and completely honest God, I haven’t got the
first idea on a.) whether or not you exist and b.) if you do exist,
then what your nature might be. This is the crux of my preaching
problem, Your Omnipotence, and one I wouldnt mind your help with,
if you have a few moments to spare.
I can be reached by phone, fax, letter, e-mail, or a parting of
the clouds if you’re in a more dramatic mood.
Yours, not quite faithfully,
Brian
* You’ve got mail!
Dear Brian,
I’ve chosen e-mail to reply since, oh I don’t know, it’s
so contemporary. I would have called your cell phone, but you don’t
have one, tsk, tsk. I’ve generally given up on the parting
clouds and hurling thunderbolts thing, partly because it’s
a lot of work but mostly because it’s lost it’s effectiveness
thanks to Steven Speilberg and all those special effects geeks. Did
you see A Perfect Storm ? Geez, those guys did a better job on the
storm than I did on the original! if, of course, I am capable of
that sort of weather management...
Actually, I’m kidding. I never really did any of that water
stuff, either the stirring up of or the parting of. That was mostly
the work of the Biblical PR Department. You know back in those ancient
days before the Jesus flap, they didn’t have phones or movies
or even novels as you know them today. Those dramatic images were
the special effects of their age used to move the story along and
to underscore significant points more than anything else... kind
of like these Industrial Light and Magic folks do today. I mean you
know George Clooney didn’t really go down with the ship, right?
The point I’m getting to (if indeed I exist as a conscious
entity and this isn’t the product of your own feverish brain,
Brian)
Anyway, my point is that every culture and time has their own way
of expressing their thoughts about me. And they all wonder, in their
more hesitant moments, if they’ve got it right. I have developed
one strict policy, I never tell anyone who or what -- or even if
-- I am. Perhaps your intellects are too puny to grasp my true magnificent
nature. Or maybe I’m just some great fraud like the Wizard
of Oz. Or maybe I’m not really here at all, and you have all
just made me up to suit yourselves. I’m not telling.
I will say, that I have had eons of entertainment from you people.
I’ve been cast as everything from blood thirsty baby-eater,
to loving mother to stern judge to partisan army general, to a whole
pantheon of males and females with all kinds of characteristics.
Sometimes I feel like a dress-up doll -- like Ken or Barbie. You
guys just put on the clothes that you think are right.
None of that bothers me much, in fact it’s kind of fun to
see what you come up with. You humans are -- all in all -- a pretty
entertaining species, at least compared to say, a codfish. But boy,
some of you could use a sense of humor. That John Calvin guy couldn’t
get a joke no matter how many times I explained it to him.... and
your Michael Servetus wasn’t much better!
The catch is that sometimes those overly serious types start dressing
me up and then proclaim the image of their mind as absolute fact,
handed down to them directly by me. Well as I said, I never tell,
so they didn't get it from me, and my minions are unbribable, so
it didn't come from anyone in this realm. Nope, those dress-ups are
products of your human brains, but some of you figure that if you
yell it loudly enough, people will believe you, and many do. As that
famous Universalist P.T. Barnum once said, "Theres one born
every minute." , although between your population explosion
and network television it's more like every 10 seconds these days.
The really sad part is that these too serious ones use their beliefs
to divide instead of unite. Just look at that Cardinal Ratzinger
fellow this week. He's the one who is supposed to keep Catholics
in line, the party whip if you will. He jumped back 100 years this
week again proclaiming Catholicism (Roman variety) as the One True
Faith and ordered Catholics to stop thinking of Protestant churches
as legitimate religions. God knows what he thinks about the Buddhists!
Well, actually I don't know what he thinks, but I can hazard a pretty
good guess.
It's people like him that use religion to start wars in my name
and kill people. That's just sick and it's not very fair to me. But
I suppose it's understandable if you buy that Biblical stuff about
the plagues and floods I was supposed to have caused, not to mention
the firebombing of Sodom and Gomorrah. For the record, I had nothing
to do with that. And while Iæm setting things straight don't
pin all those sexual and dietary laws on me either. I'm with your
old Prime Minister Mr. Trudeau on that one. To paraphrase, God has
no place in the bedrooms of the nation.
Morality has a place there...but that's another notion that doesn't
belong to me. You guys make the moral rules, not me. It's just that
a few of the more self-righteous of you proclaim them in my name
to give them more weight. You know, I think I could do well in a
slander suit against them.
As far as morality goes, all the universe does is send out some
general guidelines. You guys have to interpret them, and you sure
have come up with some interesting twists over the ages. What was
that Victorian thing all about, anyway? Never have got a handle on
that. Oh, and by the way if you read those last sentences as me claiming
to be the force of the universe, well, don't. I might or might not
be. As I said, I don't tell.
So, does that answer your questions, Bri?
Your friend (maybe),
God
Dear God,
Thanks for your prompt, if only marginally helpful reply. If I have
it right, you're not even owning that the reply came from you and
while you told me a bit about what you're not and what you haven't
done, you haven't told me anything about who you are or what you
do...and the sermon is Sunday! I'd like a little more clarification,
if you please.
Confusedly,
Brian
Dear Brian,
I was looking at your hymnbook today...by the way, it's a refreshing
change from some of the relentlessly turgid hymnals I've seen.
There's a reading you might want to look at... number 611 from
the Bhagavad Gita. Here are a couple of snatches,
I am the Self that dwells in the heart of every mortal creature:
I am the beginning of the life span and the end of all... I am the
mind; I am consciousness in the living. I am the knowledge of things
spiritual... I am the knowledge of the knower... There is no limit
to my divine manifestations.
Now I suppose you're going to claim...maybe even whine a little...
that there isn't much specific in that passage, and there isn't....
but that's the point. Think about it!
Yours,
God
Dear God,
Thanks for the tip on the reading. I'll use it. Maybe it will strike
the right chord for someone out there, but to me it seems, well,
kind of large and amorphous and non-specific. Do you ever get specific
about anything?
Brian
Dear Brian,
Nope! Keep thinking. Use your natural -- perhaps even God- given
thinking ability!
God
Dear God,
Now you're starting to sound like my mother and that's just creeping
me out! Okay, what I'm getting is that our human concepts of god
are too limiting for whatever you might or might not be. That any
attempts to define and therefore limit you are ultimately doomed
to fail and might even provoke your witty scorn.
So I guess that leaves us religious liberals with just a couple
of options: 1. We can deny your existence. We can deny you by saying
that no self-respecting deity would allow as much evil in the world
as we see around us. But I guess that argument is predicated on the
existence of the Biblical God who takes sides and intervenes in our
lives. Even though you seem to be talking to me, you're pretty clear
that you stay out of our affairs. The other reason to deny you would
be because you are too vast for us to grasp. Thinking about you strains
our brains too much, so let's forget the whole thing. But it's too
hard isn't really a very satisfying reason to deny you. Option 2
would be to allow for the possibility of your existence, but to give
up our obsession with defining, particularizing and limiting you..
Now that option would take a lot of work. For one thing it puts the
responsibility for our lives back squarely on our shoulders, and
that's pretty hard when we're alone and need help. Not having a God...or
even a higher power, would play havoc with the 12 steppers whose
path to healing involves surrendering to you. Some of us need to
make an act of faith, and God? You're the object of that act. What
do you think about that? Are we just wasting our time?
Helplessly,
Brian
Dear Brian,
Good! Now you're nearing the crux of the matter. What's more important
about this act of faith? The act itself or the object of the faith
whether that be me or a parent or a spouse? Surely you have read
enough psychology to be able to connect those dots!
God
Dear God,
Okay, I think I see where you're going. The need to believe, to have
faith is a key part of our human nature. Without the acts of faith,
it's hard to generate hope in ourselves. And when we're feeling
hopeless, it's also pretty hard to love anyone...even ourselves.
Am I on track?
It would follow that our need creates you, that we need you more
than you need us. To approach you in humility is not so much to acknowledge
your godhead as much as it is an exercise in admitting the limits
of our own powers. By giving you a name and ôdressing you upö as
you say, we're really admitting that we're not gods ourselves, that
sometimes we need help, that sometimes we need to believe that there
is something greater and more eternal than our merely human selves.
How am I doing?
Curiously,
Brian
Dear Brian,
You're on the right track. Maybe that's why I come in so many shapes
and sizes and cultural variants, because I am the product of your
need. And of course, once you get that far, to the realization
that your act of faith is far more important than my existence,
then who or what or if I am become questions that rapidly fade
in importance.
I know you are aware of that relatively contemporary school of thought
called "Process Theology". They have gotten imaginative
enough to suggest that you humans are co-creators with God. They
suggest that whether or not I exist, my work of creation could not
go on without your active participation. That's the most enlightened
idea I've heard you humans devise in some time. Of course, I wonÆt
tell you if itÆs right or not...that's just my fickle way.
But it is an elegant thought, that beings and their divinities are
interdependent.
Of course it's not entirely new. Go look at the Greek stories and
how humans were integral to the sagas of their gods. I won't tell
you who or what I am, but I will allow that I would be nothing without
you.
Well, Brian, you have posted a sermon title of "What will we
do with God?" The answer is as always. You'll invent me, dress
me up, deny me, praise me, hate me, work with me, work against me,
think creatively about me, and think about me not at all. You'll
curse me and desperately call my name in foxholes . And through it
all, I will remain distant and mysterious. And that's a good thing,
for as much as you protest against them, you humans love a good mystery
the same way a dog loves a bone. It gives you a spiritual thing to
chew on.
As ever,
God
Dear God,
Thanks. This was helpful.... even if it wasn't you who was answering
me.
Brian
Name: God?
God? Type: unspecified type (application/octet-stream)
Encoding: base64
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