I’ve written a page in my notebook some time ago; it’s on my mind this morning as I sit awake, jet-lagged, in a Dallas airport hotel at two in the morning:
“An argument for a diminished god; a system based on ‘Almighty God’ does not allow for a society based on self-governance. It sets up ‘leaders’, not representatives. We have set ourselves a god that is harmed by insult, whose face and name we must protect at all cost. This has led to much suffering for both ‘ourselves’ and ‘the other’. A god of jealousy and grudge can never be stable—who can look up to a god that embodies the worst of our nature.”
It seems to me that, deep in the kernel of ‘organised religion’ that this is the crux of conflict; it’s not that people have faith and disagree over this in general, it’s that people become obsessed with the power of their proclaimed god and, by extension, their own power. When that power is defamed or threatened, there is a vigorous response (all involving some kind of spiritual or physical violence to either oneself or the other). When that power remains unchecked, there is hubris and the entitlements of power.
When one’s god is beyond all question of power and the norms of reality and you are part of or under the charge of that god, there is always the risk that you extend yourself beyond what you, as an individual, have any warrant to do. This can, of course, lead to great creative beauty and humanity; however, the more trodden path (or at least the more currently visible one) spans the range from everyday pettiness to violent martyrdom. It is the same hierarchal framework of war that we’ve been living under since the first king was set up over a given square of land (and there is a story in the Bible where God warns about the nature of kings). We’ve put the sceptre and sword in god’s hand and look for the opportunity of blood.
Last night, I continued a conversation with a friend begun after Easter weekend. We had spoken about the continuing process in us of learning to live in this life; the difficulties of learning hard lessons and having death and resurrection as we go. I wrote to her,
“I think that is just the model of the spirit of Christ within us; there is always this talk about ‘dying to self’ from the view that one has to sacrifice and leave behind everything that makes us human (so much so that the dying leaves the human part so deeply buried and removed and we are almost expected to be this inert perfected spiritual being). But the resurrection part, the living on and evolving, is what too often is forgotten. I think people are not so afraid of dying; they are afraid of the struggle of coming back to life afterward.”
We cannot make death the focus of god in our lives (either calling upon the vengeful god to support us in our violence to others or pleading with the merciful almighty god who will save us in the end). I want to listen for the quiet diminished god who is there in the much more difficult process of life and resurrection; the god who is close as the slow process of growth comes to bear or my wounds are healing cell by cell. That is the god who is everywhere regardless of these confusions of creed and conflict. I don’t wish for a more almighty god of power and sudden intervention; that’s not going to bring healing. I wish for a diminished god working slowly in this quiet Cosmos; that may be an idealist’s dream but I would rather close my eyes to dream on this than shut them in fear when the terrors come.