“You’re a god, and I am not, and I just thought that you would know.” -Vertical Horizon
There are some days when I strongly believe in a higher power causing the sun to rise in the East and set in the West, a being stronger than us who gives us free will but also pulls the strings when necessary, an iconoclast who by his very nature defies his own existence, who is revered by many but truly loved by few. Lip service, that’s what we usually pay to such a god, and we do it in prayer, sometimes down on our knees, sometimes standing up, sometimes over Skype with our grandmother who is in the home but we choose not to visit. And she believes in such a god who sits high and judges low because so did her grandmother who has been gone lo these many years, a woman who took religion as seriously as she did her shaving rituals.
Then there are days when I honestly don’t see how there can be a benevolent god in a world so full of misery and devastation, when good people die daily and bad people live to be a hundred. Then I stop myself because are there really good people and bad people? There are just people who do bad things, right? And sometimes those same people also do good things, but of course that’s when no one is paying attention. What kind of a god lets things happen, even in the name of free will, that could have been easily prevented? Some days I sit high up in my chair and judge low, feeling like maybe I’m that god I’ve been doubting all along, that maybe being made in his image means I’m upholding an image that is just that, an image, a mirage, a picture in my head that is shared by many who also doubt.
But I’m no atheist, for whatever that’s worth, because more often than not I believe in a higher power, but I can certainly understand where the atheists are coming from with their viewpoint. There’s no way, though, that some random event happened to spring us into existence, to cause this world to be so perfectly suited to our needs and then for us to evolve here and not keep evolving after we’d reached this state of nirvana. Then allow us to be weeded out by each other for the sheer sake of providing fit examples for future generations to follow. Perhaps this version of god is the Sylvester Stallone version, the one who’s always raring for another go-round even though you can see that there’s not much left in him. Yet we’re supposed to believe, because we’ve always believed, sight unseen.
“God, sometimes you just don’t come through. Do you need a woman to look after you?” -Tori Amos
When things go wrong, though, whether or not we believe, we blame this version of god who is fallible, who can make mistakes, and we don’t see the stupidity of those beliefs. We should be hot or cold, but never lukewarm, which is from the Bible, but it makes sense. At least our belief system is one we uphold when we say there is no god, but when it changes from day to day it means we don’t know what we believe, and how can we raise the next generation when we don’t even know what to make of our own internal world? Yet, as humans we aren’t built that way, either by divine hand or by random chance, and we wander from one belief to the next, never understanding consequence.
Which is probably just as well, because if there is a god he’s probably looking down on us and shaking his head, and if there isn’t then we seem smart at least part of the time. Works for me.
Sam
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