God is in the details

I had lunch with two friends earlier this week. However it happens, the conversation turns to religion. Between the three of us, we covered a wide range of religious perspectives. And we weren't merely confined to different denominations or distinctions of the same faith, either!

First, there's me. My belief in a god is pretty small, so that when asked, I replied, "If there is a god, he is so far distant and removed from everyday life as to be irrelevant." I don't know if there is a god. I'm not sure it's possible determine whether there is or is not a god. But I don't believe that the God described in the Bible exists. That God was always intervening in the lives of ordinary people: turning wives to pillars of salt, causing floods to destroy the world, sending an envoy who gets raised from the dead, and causing plagues like you wouldn't believe.

The Biblical God is not subtle. He always claims credit for things, in one way or another, which makes sense: how can you convert people with the awesomeness of your power without leaving a calling card behind? But nowadays, obvious miracles like this just don't happen. And nobody claims credit for them, at least not someone with divine handwriting. When was the last time God unequivocally destroyed a city, and let everyone know why? (I'm not talking about New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, and Pat Robertson) When was the last time God visited successively worse plagues on someone who didn't obey him, while God's prophet did supernatural things and acted as the envoy? When was the last time someone was brought back to life simply by having a holy man instruct them to get up?

Why does the Bible end? If God is awake and doing good, why aren't there a thousand MORE books in the Bible? Shouldn't there be a continually updated and expanded record of the grace of God? Why is it Jesus comes along, then Paul gets converted on the road to Damascus, and then... well, not much. Why isn't there some chapter about a priest in the Middle Ages, who has divine things happen to him? Why doesn't the story continue? Sure, there are records of all kinds of holy deeds, but none important enough to be cataloged into the Bible? The Bible may be the divinely-inspired word of God, but he just stopped giving dictation at some point?

I got on a large tangent. My point was that I consider God to be irrelevant and inactive in our lives (if a god even exists). If God exists, then he is beyond the edge of the universe, in the vast unknowable beyond. So far beyond, that he no longer deals with the issues in our lives directly.

The second lunch guest believed in "energy". She explained this in the context of a "spirituality" that doesn't involve "God" so much as a connection of ephemeral forces that move and shift through our lives. When two people meet and fall in love, it's a result of those energies. When bad things happen to good people, it's because of a balance.

I'm not quite as clear on this outlook, and to be fair, she didn't get much time to elaborate. It seems to be a lot of the "God" stuff, but without the physical manifestation of a particular entity. If I can extrapolate, it's a sort of "diffuse god", who exists in all of us and between all of us. It's neither positive or negative, but simply *is*. I'm intrigued by this idea, and hopefully she'll get a better chance to explain this to me in the future.

The third lunch attendee believes in God. No question. His stated reason (one of many) was that he really likes having a "guy in his corner, no matter what." It gives him comfort and stability. It calms him to know that there is someone (God) who loves him no matter what he could possibly do or NOT do.

This, I find interesting. He values the stable and unchanging nature of God. God loves you no matter what. God is an absolute. When everything else in life is suspect, God is not. God is the person (?) who will never leave. God will be with you even unto your dying breath. God does not change. The third guy at the lunch table views all these as positive traits.

I don't.

I find no solace in an eternal and unaltering God. I feel that the static and unchanging nature of religion, which so many extol as a virtue, to be the most grievous problem with religions. In order to deal with new aspects of life, the ancient words must be "reinterpreted" by modern humans to suit the changing world. Religious texts like the Bible are the ultimate in "things were better in the old days" stories. Way back when, we got a list of laws, and Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers". And everything they said or did is still completely relevant to people of today. Good things most of us don't have to worry about coveting our neighbor's ox. Whew! Because somehow all those prophets living thousands of years ago, who never heard of penicillin, or stem cells, or ozone, or Hummers, or the Internet, or Playboy, or internal plumbing, or appendicitis, or nuclear weapons.... somehow, they know best how to deal with all of this.

Listening to the radio on the way to school this morning, I heard the preacher detailing the evils of the "relativistic" society. The preacher was on a tirade against those who feel there are many ways to approach life, many ways to achieve happiness and success, many ways to feel fulfilled. His point was there was only one way: God's way. All else was, in essence, "of the Devil and deceitful."

And the thing is, I don't think anyone wants an absolute, non-relative God. Let's take Commandment VI: Thou shalt not murder (or kill, depending on your translation). Since the definition of murder is "unlawful killing", this commandment is about killing. Specifically, killing is prohibited. Period. No exceptions, no qualifiers, no corollaries. You can't kill. Killing is ending the life of something. End of debate.

But we kill all the time! Never mind all the human violence, what about animals? Cows and chickens? Killed! What about fish? What about spiders and flies? What about mosquitoes? What about bacteria? They're alive, in much the same way a newly conceived human zygote is. Sanctity of life, and all that. But we gladly use anti-bacterial soaps, and bacteria-catching tissue.

We are, all of us, mass-murderers. And worse, we continue to flout the Commandment. I mean, God specifically told us not to, but we keep on killing plants and animals. We are all guilty. Seriously guilty.

Unless there's some wiggle-room. The commandment probably doesn't apply to bacteria, plants, or even animals. People in the Bible do sacrifice animals sometimes, and it usually pleases Him. And if we don't kill *anything*, how are we going to survive? So we'd all better hope God doesn't really mean what he says, at least in some cases. We hope that he follows the spirit of his words, not the actual letters (which are likely to have been mistranslated somewhere along the way).

Note to Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church: I'm reminded of the persistent rumor that a terrible prejudice against homosexuals is all thanks to a typo; God actually hates "figs".

Please correct your signs, and spread the word.

Amen.