I question. A lot. I pick peoples brains to the point of pain, I'm sure. I'm never happy with answers like "Because I said so." or "That's just the way it is." or "It just takes faith." The latter being the one that might bother me the most.
I've struggled with my beliefs over the years. Being turned off to one faith or the other by various people, places and events. I've been the ever wandering child, searching for something to cling to. I'd like to say that I find "religion" comforting. I believe with all my heart and soul that THAT is the main pull of religion. It's a comfort in painful, scary times. I mean, think about it....when do YOU pray? When someone's ill or hurt or suffering or dying or lost...the list goes on. When was the last time you prayed for someone or something because it was so well, healthy, perfect, wonderful, stable? We just don't do that. So this brings me full circle; I, personally don't find that just "having faith" that "it'll all work out in the end" very comforting.
I'm the first one to admit, I'm a control freak. I don't like handing over the reins, as it were. I've been taught, by my life experience, that the only person I can count on, day in and day out, is...well---me. If I need to have something done, I do it. If something needs to be taken care of for someone else, well, I do that, too. I'm in control of my own destiny. I have no one to blame or praise for how things are, then myself. No more. No less. I take the credit and the punishment for my own actions. I don't even WANT to be able to point the finger and be angry with an invisible being. I did it. I'm to blame. I'm flawed. Bad thing happen----not only to good people----but to ALL people. You can only control what you can control.
In that vein, I find it a challenge to wrap my head around an all powerful, all knowing, ultimately pure good being who gets all the credit for everything good and never the blame for anything bad. Now, I've been told that this is because of my limited human brain. I've been told that due to that limitation, I'm completely unable to imagine a "purely good" being. Perhaps. Isn't it just as likely that, shit happens? Isn't is just as likely that when a cancer "mysteriously" disappears, it could be because we don't know the first thing about cancer? We don't know where it comes from or why or how it "first" came to be? Maybe it's because our human brains are too limited to understand the very bodies that they occupy? God didn't take that cancer away anymore than he placed it there in the first place. You can not have only light and no darkness. The ying always chases the yang.
Now, I know what you're going to say..."Yes you can. Of course you can. That's God. He is goodness and light, embodied." Maybe. Perhaps, though, it goes back to that level of comfort that we all so desperately need. I don't want to think that when I die I just stop, anymore than you do. I don't like to think of my wonderful, warm, loving Papaw rotting away in the ground somewhere. I don't want to think that he's not watching over me, from some wonderful place. Happy. Whole. Perfect. But, if I were being truthful with myself, I just would have to say that that is a comforting thought for me. Merely, a way for my limited human brain to reject the pain of the loss. The death of another human being whom I loved more than myself. Honestly, if God really was only goodness and light, then why did he let my Papaw die at all? Why don't we, his most 'perfect creation', live forever?
Why does God allow the darkness to creep in? Why does he let babies be raped and murdered? Why does he let children get cancer at all? Why are people like Hitler allowed to be born? Again, I can read your mind......free will, right? WE humans are to blame for all the darkness and despair. Clearly. My understanding of "free will" means that God isn't forcing us to love him. A love without choice is no love at all. Nowhere does free will, as far as that bible's concerned, mean that we have to rape, murder and torture each other. It simply means that God wants us to love him because we want to. So, why couldn't he have chosen to make us all law abiding, clean, sober, happy, friendly people? We would still have the free will to chose to love him or not to love him. His decision to allow us to be ugly, dirty, pieces of shit people seems, well-----stupid. Flawed. Silly. Unnecessary.
Wouldn't the world have been a much better place if crime didn't exist? Why didn't this amazingly perfect creature, who made us "in his own imagine", make us bit more.....ummmm....."LIKE" him? Why can't we have a bit more "good" in us and bit less "darkness"? Why is "human nature" so flawed? So nasty? So tainted? We spend so much time and energy suppressing our "natural instincts" that life is a constant struggle. Is that the point; the journey being more important than the destination? Possibly. Doesn't God have THAT power? Why didn't he love us enough to help make that journey a little smoother? A bit less difficult?
Again, I can predict your response---"He did make it easier for us. He gave us faith." Hm.....yeah, well, you can see the cat chasing it's tail now, can't you?
Take a deep breath.........it's just another day in Perfect!
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