What About God?

 

What About God?

by Craig Willms

I don't normally talk about God or religion in polite company. Sadly, it's fraught with untold downsides and little on the upside. Politics is usually enough, right? Indeed... In a real sense, they are one and the same, the two can't really be separated. When I heard Jordan Peterson claim that by making this one statement Jesus set the course for the epic rise of western civilization: render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's. This call to have a separation between church and state is taking millennia to accomplish, but it's helping create the modern world as we know it by carving out a space for each.

Is this going somewhere? Well, just this... We are asked on occasion, faced with a question in one form or another, in one context or another, does God exist? A fact no one can definitively prove or disprove. So, we all get to choose what we believe.  Myself, I say yes, absolutely, Gods exists. You might ask, what do I mean by God?

Well, for starters Jesus is not my imaginary friend nor is God a bearded old man in the clouds. Dispense with the 14-year-old's version of a religious argument. Don't make a point citing the extreme, fringe elements of any faith as definitive, we all know what radicals are capable of. The Bible while being a mile wide, and a mile deep, is often misused by friend a foe alike. Instead, we need to consider ideals, to consider values.   

We in the west think little about it, but we got our values from somewhere. Whether we want to accept it or not they came from our dominant religions. It is possible that some of our deep-seated moral values are actually hardwired, having been codified in our religious traditions. There are evolutionary reasons why certain values would enhance survivability. Right is right regardless of where it originates. Nevertheless, these values are deeply woven into the fabric of our cultural existence whether you personally identify as agnostic or not. Claiming it isn't so doesn't make it any less true. We are steeped in a Christian ethos. Those who vehemently declare their segregation from anything to do with Christ fail to understand how much their lives and beliefs have been permeated by the fundamental values of cultural Christianity. Even in the post enlightenment era these values endure. It is these virtues that bring us meaning, and it's meaning that is the basis of reality, our reality presents us with the foundations for what we believe and how we act. The modern world has obscured this notion with scientism and materialism but consider this; neither is a source of values, neither is a guide on how to live or how to treat each other. We rely on ancient traditional values, and they are good.

Distressingly, instead of bringing peace and harmony, the extremes, the perverted offshoots of misguided interpretations and the misdeeds of same spoil cultural perceptions of what Christianity is, of what faith in God really is. If we claw our way back to the message of Christ without the layers and conditions of religiosity, we'd see the righteousness, we'd find common decency; we'd step back into the light.

Before you scoff and claim all values existed before Christ and even Moses before him, you're right, it's true. No one claimed that Jesus or Moses invented "good" values. Our teachers, parents and mentors try to show us the highest values, they don't invent them. Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher trying to show us the right way to live. I assume teachers, parents and mentors were showing others good values long before Jesus or Moses. Those good values and traditions had been subsumed into western religiosity. 

When we strive to live right, do the right things and seek to repent when we don't, we are living embodiments of God. It is why people seek to do good, help others, even sacrifice themselves for others in an unacknowledged pursuit of a Godly outcome. Why would people do this? Delusion? Idiocy? Glory hound? Because they are inherently good? Or are we all actually living embodiments of God? I choose the later. We are part of God, or better put God is in us. 

We are limited beings, we don't know - we are incapable of knowing - everything. We can't begin to understand how reality came to be, just that it is. You have just as much chance being right by claiming that all reality is a result of chance. Or you could say that everything that was, is or ever could be is pre-determined, and chance itself doesn't exist. Or that God created everything with a word. The truth is unknowable. To pretend otherwise is folly. 

I choose to believe in God. It begs the question; how would we know God? It is said that God is love (yeah, yeah, yeah, then what is love, smarty pants?) Well, you start with agape which means unconditional love, motherly love, the highest form of love, charity. You say, 'Now you're using the word love to describe love!!' Fair enough, I say this to you - we all know love when we feel it. As Jesus said when he was asked what are the most important commandments? He answered, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment of them all. The second most important commandment is like this: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”.

If you believe that we are living embodiments of God, or better God is in us, then Jesus is saying love yourself, and love others as yourself. This is the right way to live. Nothing good will come if you don't follow these.