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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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September 23, 2006
One Does NOT Want to Live in a Universe Where The Creator Plays Favorites! by Donald Croft Brickner
In a truly loving universe, God will never interfere with our free will and decisions, dreadful though both may be on occasions. That statement may be mere extrapolation of the facts and anecdotal implications, but on the Tenability Scale, it has to rank at least as high as a "9." That, allowing that one grants the overwhelming likelihood that we do, for sure, live in a genuinely loving universe. Please don't wrestle too deeply with the Loving Universe concept, either, as it's pretty solid. The experiential evidence to support it is compelling. Just ask any heart-invested Christian, anywhere in the world. What they'll strive to explain to you, in a variety of phrases, is that the secular world view is blind to its own divinity -- and in particular, blind to the bounty of "confetti miracles" (in so many words) Earth's inhabitants encounter almost daily. Miracles needn't always be earth-shaking, either, to qualify as the real deal. I speak from experience. Where every single Christian I know will take heated issue here, though, is on the God-never-interferes part. And Christians are certainly not alone in that respect. But I don't see any other conclusion possible. For example, there's nothing loving about any God turning a curious, if terrified and exhausted fleeing woman into a pillar of salt, for starters (as one Scriptural reference). And since when does harmless disobedience deserve such a harsh reprisal? If the Book of Genesis story of Lot's wife is to have any meaning or merit, real or imagined, then her death had to result from some source other than God's wrath. Explosive Impact Event of some sort, maybe? God's wrath, as a concept, flies in the face of unconditional love -- which is an absolute requirement in a loving universe, designed and ushered into existence by an incredibly smart, caring Creative Force ("God," loosely speaking). Rather, wrath is an overt expression of vengeance and even rage, neither of which are loving qualities and, in fact, are quite the reverse. And if God loves you more than me, then He's playing favorites -- which can get scary. When might such a God turn on you, then, might you suppose -- and under what frivolous circumstances? So you don't believe in The Rapture (a word that's not even in Scripture), as so many true believers do here in the states? Boom -- God just turned you into toast … or, as far too many Americans are convinced, "left you behind," in this would-be humanistic hell. Unless one's idea of love features a Mafia Don of the Heavens, who unleashes horrid (and illogical) displays of displeasure and spite for anyone's failure to suck-up adequately (or figuratively pay protection money), a spiteful God simply has no place in the delivery of a loving universe -- which must be created by that God. Intelligent design -- it's here. Get used to it, as they say. Our universe was not a random accident. And why would God destroy any life form to which He/She/It/They granted free will? If Anyone(thing) would be at fault in such a circumstance, it would be God, and God alone, for having failed to design humanity better in the first place. Let God turn "him"self into a pillar of salt. He's the One who screwed up, in such an improbable scenario. What -- a non-loving God doesn't have to answer to justifiable criticism? Nonsense. A loving God will survive such an act, even if it's misplaced -- and so shall we. Replete with God's blessing, one strongly suspects. Okay, big picture: Here's God, over here … … and here's all of us, over here. Now -- are you really convinced there's no one, or No Thing, in-between? I, for one, certainly am not. When we experience what appear to be "heavenly" interventions in our lives, there necessarily have to be Godly Representatives, let's call them, perhaps arguably assigned to such a task, Who are far more probably responsible for them. God, or whatever synonym is applied for God culturally, would have to be overwhelmed were God the sole source for such interventions -- particularly when, during armed conflicts, say, individuals on both sides of the battle lines are praying for God's intervention. God can't support both sides in battle -- can "He?" I've experienced what appear to be interventions, and so have countless others I've met who've told me convincing stories that they have, too. Still, a truly loving God, by self-distancing definition (never mind the outrageous juggling act that would be required of God when dealing with billions of souls on this planet alone at any given moment), cannot be the source for these incidents. Therefore, the arguments over the validity of miracles themselves should have less immediacy for us than determining Who else (or Unseen What) is responsible for them. Why they occurred to those of us who've experienced such interventions is clear: these were overt acts of love, and of loving support. Sometimes they're even acts of "tough love:" as when what we thought we wanted didn't pan out -- and didn't pan out, against all odds -- yet, in retrospect, proved to be what we would have hoped-for from the outset, had we just known the end results. It's that old "be-careful-what-you-pray-for" notion in play. What spiritually oriented person on this planet doesn't understand such a concept? On the other hand: "Ontological leaps" occur when we humans believe we hold compelling evidence that something extraordinary has just taken place in our lives -- yet no immediate tenable (much less factual) commentary is even remotely up to the task of explaining it. So, we put two and two together … and often come up with something like 117. We've made a judgmental leap, in such an instance, way beyond our ken. Then a slew of other folks arrive, we tell them what had happened, and they say they resonate, yelping, yes! yes! -- and suddenly our judgmental leap begins to take on a life of its own: generation after generation, as often as not. When dealing with leap issues of our consciousnesses-in-relation-to-the-nature-of-reality, then, the metaphysical sub-set of ontology is tapped -- thus, we make ontological leaps in these situations. Believing, then, that God, specifically, interferes or intervenes in our lives is one such gigantic leap. It might be the truth -- but as we've striven to argue here, it just can't be. How did we land in that induction, to begin with? Well, for starters, we didn't really try all that hard to come up with a particularly sound alternate explanation -- did we? No. Let's get real here: We didn't. Our desire, and hence motivation, for seeking deepest truth was missing, as well. Instead, we may have grabbed ahold, for instance, of a few proof-texted Biblical passages (or whatever our religious source material may be), and while our two and two didn't add up to 117 -- nothing so nutty as that! -- it had gone as high as, say, 34, a couple of times. And we need to admit that. Analogously, our "34" (or "19" -- or even, say, "5") answers are still incorrect: two plus two equals four. Theoretically, then, we just didn't stretch ourselves as far as we might have in order to reach our (alas, all-too-glib) conclusion(s). And given that it's now Showtime in our world -- almost everything around us appears to be headed toward Hell in a handbasket (emphasis on "appears," perhaps) -- it's time to at least try to stretch ever closer toward some correct answers. As we've been insisting all along, one such answer that's figuratively screaming for an alternative conclusion is the ontological leap that God -- however "God" is ultimately defined or dismissed (the latter absolutely is never my first instinct) -- …the ontological leap that God actually does interfere in our lives. …Or, worse, that God opts not to (!) -- when God's ability to do so was there, all along. Neither scenario makes any sense. Not in a loving, off-the-charts-complex and intimately designed universe as ours is … which is just so-o apparent. The overwhelming evidence for Intelligent Design, which we would have to be blind to in order to sidestep (although many of us still manage to), is really all the evidence that's necessary to tenably argue in favor of a intelligent Creative Source, or God. Last time I looked, "random" had no idea what it was doing. And if one shuts off CNN or Fox News for a reasonable amount of time, and just let's life be life, with all of its wonder, and open displays of the human capacity and desire to accomplish an ever-lasting good, the evidence for a loving universe bursts forth. I don't believe in cynicism -- in fact, I detest it. I have come to believe in God. Only I don't believe in God, the hit man. And I've never believed in God, the inept and irresponsible. How about that person or persons who marched into your neighborhood school or church or foreign battlefield, guns a-blazing, and saw to it that worthy lives you had once deeply loved were apparently unjustly and prematurely snuffed out? Where was God then? It's not only okay to ask that question -- it's time we did! The only obvious reason for God's apparent absence in such egregious incidents is because God opted, from the outset, to never get involved in our activities -- no matter what. And keep in mind, as stated in previous treatises: ours is likely an illusory, secondary construct reality -- also the only conclusion possible when defending a loving, caring universe as a notion. There should be little question we survive our physical deaths, at this stage -- even though such doubts remain. So where is God, if God cares, but never gets involved in our actions or desires? Probably waiting, with God's Representatives, on the alternate side of our reality, ready to receive us, embrace us, and welcome us after our (purported) deaths -- and ready to assure us that what we had just experienced -- a violent death, in this example -- was just an isolated, ugly moment within the parameters of the Great Illusion. Ugliness and pain, by design, are okay within the Great Illusion -- but they're not reflective of our greater reality(ies). And while there's no proof to support such a thesis, that scenario continues to remain tenable within quantum musings, and is also an extrapolation from millennia of anecdotal (which is to say, experiential) reports -- as are compellingly similar speculations spanning disparate cultures. So, then, is the following figurative Immediate Afterlife Experience really so far-fetched?: Everything is really okay, we're assured after we cross over -- as we finally break down and cry, and perhaps cry a little more. (Or, maybe less dramatically, yawn.) It's all as it should be, we're told. We're safe, and we're loved, They insist. We are. And we're back in the Real World, They gently add, oozing communal warmth -- this God and this God's Representatives, whoever "They" actually turn out to be. Then, finally, after a breathlessly silent pause, there comes this:
Welcome home, sweetie, God whispers -- in our real ears.
After his military tour, for which he received an honorable discharge, he pursued his lifelong interest in the study of metaphysics/ontology, and finally received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Maine-Orono in 1992. He later attended graduate studies at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana and in the M.F.A. creative writing program at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has written an unproduced 3-act play, "Revelations at Mount Rushmore," which remains on file at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach, California. He is also more than halfway through completing his first novel. Visit his MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/donaldcroftbrickner |
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Religion Resource Center Main Page |
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Donald
Croft Brickner has lived in roughly half of the
states in America, working countless jobs in a
variety of occupations. Prior to serving as an
enlisted journalist in the U.S. Navy during the
Vietnam era, he majored in music theory in college
and later received an associate's degree in music
education.
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