Gary's Corner

[phyllo]

But maybe my expectation for a God are too high. Perhaps I should settle for a hum drum ordinary conscious being (albeit one that is the scientist par excellence if it can create a universe).

Depends on what you want to get out this expedition that you are on.

[Immanuel Can]

If God is anything like my father, an overbearing and impatient male, then I'm not all that interested in knowing him.

Well, thank you for your honesty, Gary. To explain your own feelings and experiences, particularly painful ones, is a courageous act. I am conscious of the trust that places in me, and shall not betray it.

But may I say this? That the above statement is so common among those who are angry with God that it can almost be predicted. So many of the famous Atheists had fathers who were neglectful, absent, cruel or otherwise unhelpful in their lives that it's wildly disproportionate. I could list the famous names whose biographies contain that detail, from Freud to Marx to Christopher Hitchens, and so on. There's even a book, titled "Faith of the Fatherless," that is about the great Atheists and their dysfunction with fathers.

This, and your experience, points to a sobering fact: that children tend to take their imagination of God from their relationship with their fathers. I think that's a reliable psychological principle -- not 100% reliable, but highly predictive. So you're not alone in your disposition against God, and there are perhaps natural causes for it. How else do we explain that when questioned on your antipathy to God, you immediately told me instead about your father?

But here's the countering fact: that our fathers are not God. We may shape our imagination from them, but our imagination will be distorted, if our fathers were unreliable, unloving or unfaithful. And God Himself has no obligation to conform Himself to the mistakes of our fathers, and to become like them: He is the One who provides the true and accurate pattern of fathering, not the subject of the pattern cast by our fallible fathers. He's the one we're actually missing when our own fathers failed. Their job was to point us to Him; and when they failed, our imagination also failed.

When God shows me that he is divinely good and worth knowing, then maybe I'll be interested in having a relationship with him.

I suggest that He has already done this, and in abundance. But there are no gifts which God can give which you also cannot simply choose to attribute to other agencies, or deny to be real goods at all. For example, He gave you life, which says He wanted there to be a Gary; but you can say He forced you to live, and interpret that as a cruelty. He has given you a body; but you can say you hate the one He gave you, and curse him for handing it to you. He gave you a mind; but you can say it's diseased and miserable, and blame Him for that. And He gave you the means of having a loving relationship with Him, but you can call Him a fraud and a delusion, and live instead in alienation from Him. He gave you moral light, to lead you through life; but you can call that moral tyranny and slavery, and curse and resist. In Christ, He came and lived and died for you, leaving you the ultimate token of His love and kind intentions toward you; and you can call it a myth.

If you're already determined to interpret God as hateful, mean and distant, there is literally nothing greater He can do to convince you otherwise than He has already done. And you can believe what your experience with your own father tells you, rather than the evidence of what God has done for you. But it will be a lie and a self-deception, and will leave you miserable and angry. And who pays the price for that?

But from what I see in his world, there is a lot of needless suffering out there.

Indeed there is. But that is because this world is not in sync with God. And anything that is out of sync with the ultimate Source of all goodness is bound to suffer.

In a way, it's good that that is the case, too: for if godlessness were emotionally or physically satisfying, what would be our reason for seeking God? But godlessness is dark, angry, painful and futile. And because it is, we are driven to seek God, and to find our happiness in Him. That is the only real and final happiness there is, in fact; all others are ultimately shallow and deceptive. Life will let us down every time, if we are not in sync with God.

And we can find happiness in Him. If we will. But because He's done all He can do, short of forcing us into Heaven (as Locke put it), it's up to us to decide whether we want to live with the real God as our father, or with the false imagination of our earthly fathers as the picture of God we carry in our heads. And it's up to us whether or not we want to establish any relationship with this good Father, because unlike some abusive fathers, He does not force us into a relationship. (There are, of course, names we have for forced relationships; but none of them, I think, are good -- "slavery," "rape," "brainwashing," "drugging," "kidnapping," "grooming"...and so on.) Would we really expect God, if He is as loving as He says, to subdue us abusively in one of these sorts of ways, or to leave us free to choose as we wish, even if we often make the wrong choice?

So it's up to you what relationship you wish to establish with God: he's not what your father has led you to believe, even if, given your experience, that's the most intuitive thing to you. All I ask is that you consider the possibility that your father was never God.

[Gary Childress]

If God is anything like my father, an overbearing and impatient male, then I'm not all that interested in knowing him.

Well, thank you for your honesty, Gary. To explain your own feelings and experiences, particularly painful ones, is a courageous act. I am conscious of the trust that places in me, and shall not betray it.

But may I say this? That the above statement is so common among those who are angry with God that it can almost be predicted. So many of the famous Atheists had fathers who were neglectful, absent, cruel or otherwise unhelpful in their lives that it's wildly disproportionate. I could list the famous names whose biographies contain that detail, from Freud to Marx to Christopher Hitchens, and so on. There's even a book, titled "Faith of the Fatherless," that is about the great Atheists and their dysfunction with fathers.

This, and your experience, points to a sobering fact: that children tend to take their imagination of God from their relationship with their fathers. I think that's a reliable psychological principle -- not 100% reliable, but highly predictive. So you're not alone in your disposition against God, and there are perhaps natural causes for it. How else do we explain that when questioned on your antipathy to God, you immediately told me instead about your father?

But here's the countering fact: that our fathers are not God. We may shape our imagination from them, but our imagination will be distorted, if our fathers were unreliable, unloving or unfaithful. And God Himself has no obligation to conform Himself to the mistakes of our fathers, and to become like them: He is the One who provides the true and accurate pattern of fathering, not the subject of the pattern cast by our fallible fathers. He's the one we're actually missing when our own fathers failed. Their job was to point us to Him; and when they failed, our imagination also failed.

When God shows me that he is divinely good and worth knowing, then maybe I'll be interested in having a relationship with him.

I suggest that He has already done this, and in abundance. But there are no gifts which God can give which you also cannot simply choose to attribute to other agencies, or deny to be real goods at all. For example, He gave you life, which says He wanted there to be a Gary; but you can say He forced you to live, and interpret that as a cruelty. He has given you a body; but you can say you hate the one He gave you, and curse him for handing it to you. He gave you a mind; but you can say it's diseased and miserable, and blame Him for that. And He gave you the means of having a loving relationship with Him, but you can call Him a fraud and a delusion, and live instead in alienation from Him. He gave you moral light, to lead you through life; but you can call that moral tyranny and slavery, and curse and resist. In Christ, He came and lived and died for you, leaving you the ultimate token of His love and kind intentions toward you; and you can call it a myth.

If you're already determined to interpret God as hateful, mean and distant, there is literally nothing greater He can do to convince you otherwise than He has already done. And you can believe what your experience with your own father tells you, rather than the evidence of what God has done for you. But it will be a lie and a self-deception, and will leave you miserable and angry. And who pays the price for that?

But from what I see in his world, there is a lot of needless suffering out there.

Indeed there is. But that is because this world is not in sync with God. And anything that is out of sync with the ultimate Source of all goodness is bound to suffer.

In a way, it's good that that is the case, too: for if godlessness were emotionally or physically satisfying, what would be our reason for seeking God? But godlessness is dark, angry, painful and futile. And because it is, we are driven to seek God, and to find our happiness in Him. That is the only real and final happiness there is, in fact; all others are ultimately shallow and deceptive. Life will let us down every time, if we are not in sync with God.

And we can find happiness in Him. If we will. But because He's done all He can do, short of forcing us into Heaven (as Locke put it), it's up to us to decide whether we want to live with the real God as our father, or with the false imagination of our earthly fathers as the picture of God we carry in our heads. And it's up to us whether or not we want to establish any relationship with this good Father, because unlike some abusive fathers, He does not force us into a relationship. (There are, of course, names we have for forced relationships; but none of them, I think, are good -- "slavery," "rape," "brainwashing," "drugging," "kidnapping," "grooming"...and so on.) Would we really expect God, if He is as loving as He says, to subdue us abusively in one of these sorts of ways, or to leave us free to choose as we wish, even if we often make the wrong choice?

So it's up to you what relationship you wish to establish with God: he's not what your father has led you to believe, even if, given your experience, that's the most intuitive thing to you. All I ask is that you consider the possibility that your father was never God.

My point with my reference to my father is that God as a "father", according to the Bible, was not a very good "father". My dad was never physically violent, didn't drown me or had I had children I'm pretty sure he wouldn't egg me on to sacrifice them just to "test" me. I seriously doubt the Bible is anything but a human fabrication of the divine, based on fallible human beings of 2000+ years ago writing their interpretation of what God must be like, based on their own understanding of the world at the time. Some points are good and worthwhile, however, much of the book is antiquated and out of touch with contemporary issues. It's basically just one particular tribe's interpretation of the divine.

[Immanuel Can]

My point with my reference to my father is that God as a "father", according to the Bible, was not a very good "father".

On the contrary: He's the best Father.

But are you His son?

[Gary Childress]

My point with my reference to my father is that God as a "father", according to the Bible, was not a very good "father".

On the contrary: He's the best Father.

But are you His son?

Never mind. I think the Bible is a bunch of hogwash, a lot of which has been muddled by its authors and transcribers. If you don't respect my view, then that's fine. I don't respect yours that the Bible is accurate toward the divine either.

[Gary Childress]

But are you His son?

According to the Bible, yes. But I think the Bible is a heavily flawed account of the divine. If there is a God, then God is the creator of all that is.

But I don't think God is human any more than God is an insect. Calling God our "father" is like calling a computer that I built from parts my "son". It's not a serious nor accurate assessment of the situation.

[Immanuel Can]

But are you His son?

According to the Bible, yes.

Actually, according to the Bible, the answer would be "no."

It's not automatic, that just because one was created by God one stands in a proper relationship to Him. As the book of John says, in its opening chapter, "He came to those who were his own, and they did not receive Him; but to as many as did receive Him, to those he gave the right to be called the children of God."

[Gary Childress]

But are you His son?

According to the Bible, yes.

Actually, according to the Bible, the answer would be "no."

It's not automatic, that just because one was created by God one stands in a proper relationship to Him. As the book of John says, in its opening chapter, "He came to those who were his own, and they did not receive Him; but to as many as did receive Him, to those he gave the right to be called the children of God."

If you say so, then it must be true. So you don't consider people who don't believe in the Bible to be accepted by God. Is that correct? Do you think the Bible is the true words of the creator of all that is, or do you think the Bible has many errors in it and is therefore not a reliable source for knowledge of the divine?

[Immanuel Can]

According to the Bible, yes.

Actually, according to the Bible, the answer would be "no."

It's not automatic, that just because one was created by God one stands in a proper relationship to Him. As the book of John says, in its opening chapter, "He came to those who were his own, and they did not receive Him; but to as many as did receive Him, to those he gave the right to be called the children of God."

If you say so, then it must be true.

Not me. The Bible says it.

As for the knowledge of God, let me ask you this: how do you think we can have it? What resources would you point to, in order to decide who God is, or what He wants? Or is your position that we have no such thing, and thus we cannot possibly have knowledge of God?

This isn't an idle question. I'm asking what you would regard as decisive.

[Gary Childress]

Actually, according to the Bible, the answer would be "no."

It's not automatic, that just because one was created by God one stands in a proper relationship to Him. As the book of John says, in its opening chapter, "He came to those who were his own, and they did not receive Him; but to as many as did receive Him, to those he gave the right to be called the children of God."

If you say so, then it must be true.

Not me. The Bible says it.

As for the knowledge of God, let me ask you this: how do you think we can have it? What resources would you point to, in order to decide who God is, or what He wants? Or is your position that we have no such thing, and thus we cannot possibly have knowledge of God?

This isn't an idle question. I'm asking what you would regard as decisive.

If there is a God, then I don't think we have knowledge of God, outside of what is speculated or what various people have claimed in conflicting accounts of alleged encounters with God.

[Immanuel Can]

If you say so, then it must be true.

Not me. The Bible says it.

As for the knowledge of God, let me ask you this: how do you think we can have it? What resources would you point to, in order to decide who God is, or what He wants? Or is your position that we have no such thing, and thus we cannot possibly have knowledge of God?

This isn't an idle question. I'm asking what you would regard as decisive.

If there is a God, then I don't think we have knowledge of God, outside of what is speculated or what various people have claimed in conflicting accounts of alleged encounters with God.

Well, which "speculations" or "allegations" do you accept? Or none?

[Gary Childress]

Not me. The Bible says it.

As for the knowledge of God, let me ask you this: how do you think we can have it? What resources would you point to, in order to decide who God is, or what He wants? Or is your position that we have no such thing, and thus we cannot possibly have knowledge of God?

This isn't an idle question. I'm asking what you would regard as decisive.

If there is a God, then I don't think we have knowledge of God, outside of what is speculated or what various people have claimed in conflicting accounts of alleged encounters with God.

Well, which "speculations" or "allegations" do you accept? Or none?

I don't know which to "accept" as true.

[Immanuel Can]

If there is a God, then I don't think we have knowledge of God, outside of what is speculated or what various people have claimed in conflicting accounts of alleged encounters with God.

Well, which "speculations" or "allegations" do you accept? Or none?

I don't know which to "accept" as true.

Well, why should we accept any, then? Wouldn't your conclusion then have to be that nobody has any way of knowing God? Or would you suppose that maybe some might, but you don't know who they'd be?

[Gary Childress]

Well, which "speculations" or "allegations" do you accept? Or none?

I don't know which to "accept" as true.

Wouldn't your conclusion then have to be that nobody has any way of knowing God? Or would you suppose that maybe some might, but you don't know who they'd be?

That's exactly my position.

And here's another thing. I don't know if Jesus was God incarnate. I'm not interested in reading the Bible. I'm not interested in praying. I'm not interested in going to church. I'm not interested in begging for forgiveness from a being who demands those things of me. And I'm not going to pretend I love a being who is going to demand those things of me or else threaten to send me to hell if I don't.

If God doesn't approve of that and is going to send me to hell for those things, then I guess I'm screwed. But at the very least I didn't try to con God into thinking I'm someone or something I'm not. If God can read minds, then God knows already that I'm not going to do those things. If he's not OK with that, then there's nothing I can do except try to lie and cheat him into thinking otherwise.

[Iwannaplato]

I don't know which to "accept" as true.

Wouldn't your conclusion then have to be that nobody has any way of knowing God? Or would you suppose that maybe some might, but you don't know who they'd be?

That's exactly my position.

And here's another thing. I don't know if Jesus was God incarnate. I'm not interested in reading the Bible. I'm not interested in praying. I'm not interested in going to church. I'm not interested in begging for forgiveness from a being who demands those things of me. And I'm not going to pretend I love a being who is going to demand those things of me or else threaten to send me to hell if I don't.

If God doesn't approve of that and is going to send me to hell for those things, then I guess I'm screwed. But at the very least I didn't try to con God into thinking I'm someone or something I'm not. If God can read minds, then God knows already that I'm not going to do those things. If he's not OK with that, then there's nothing I can do except try to lie and cheat him into thinking otherwise.

We do our best. But imagine if this view of the punishing jealous God is something invented from limited knowledge based on, for example, trauma. Then we go on for centuries believing in what is essentially a tyrannical God, just to be safe. That would be painting ourselves into a corner.