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Why Do We Need God? A recent thread in an online discussion group posed this question: Why do we need God? My quick answer is that we don’t. But this does not come close to answering the questions that the question evokes. The first question is, how to define God? Those who believe in the white bearded old patriarch, whichever of the three religions of the book they belong to, will find the very question a heresy and sinful. I have written many times that this concept, of a God that has a personality, likes and dislikes, plays favorites, and cares who wins wars or Superbowls, needs to be transcended as soon as possible. That concept of God leads to religions that launch Crusades and Inquisitions and fly airplanes into buildings. What then are we left with? God as Nature has an appeal. God as all of existence is certainly inclusive. God as the individual spark within each of us is empowering. But none of them really satisfies, and this points to the heart of the problem. We only know two things. The Is, is, and we apparently are. All of the religions, philosophies, and other systems of thought are attempts to make sense of these two facts, which are, in fact, arguable themselves. Human inventiveness, being the amazing thing that it is, has come up with myriad explanations which are all of just about equal value; they are fairy tales. When people are willing to kill and die for fairy tales, that looks a great deal like insanity. When large numbers of people share that willingness, we have what amounts to a mass psychosis. Is it any wonder that the world humans have invented is such a dangerous place? But fairy tales often convey important information. Archetypes are expressed. Truths of certain kinds are articulated. We throw a considerable amount of baby out with that bath water to dismiss them entirely. We have learned some things. Existence does seem to be made of consciousness. Sure, there is chaos. But out of chaos comes order, which then merges back into chaos all over again. There appears to be intelligence in this consciousness that coalesces into the indescribable beauty of the natural world. Patterns fit within patterns that fit within patterns which we see in fractals and turtles, which brings us back to creation myths and versions of a God. God is just an explanation for the apparent fact of the Is. We certainly don’t need it. But does it have its uses? All of the religions, philosophies and other systems have ideas and suggestions that can be very valuable. In the part of the world that most of my readers will be found, the cultural background is the Judeo-Christian tradition. As a younger man, I rejected the church of my family background. I retained a respect for Jesus’ teaching, but thought Christianity too far gone to remain viable. In recent years, I have returned to Jesus’ teachings with new eyes. It may surprise some readers to know that I regularly recite the 23rd Psalm, sometimes many times in a day. Yes, “The Lord is my shepherd,” and all that. It does not trouble me in the least to refer to the Lord. But I see the Lord in my way, as the source of all being, and not as some fickle, capricious deity that may or may not respond according to merit or mood. Lao Tzu wrote that, “The Way that can be described is not the Way.” And then went ahead and wrote a book, The Tao Te Ching, describing the Way as best he could. The Is simply is the Is. There is no way to adequately describe it. But Jesus’ teachings do provide a very workable way of dealing with it. Language is inherently limited, especially when dealing with the ineffable. So the teachings have been put into language that can be interpreted on several levels, hidden in plain sight, but which, when understood, provide a very useful and workable approach to the Is. The creation process is from higher rates of vibration to lower. You can think of the source of all as God, the Father, the Lord, or whatever you want, but still it remains. Jesus taught how to make the most of it. So did the other major Avatars in their ways. Do we need God? No, we don’t, but it can make it a lot easier to deal with the Is to have one. |
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