DISCLAIMER: This title and post didn’t start out as what it is now, so apologies if the continuity is off. I left it cuz I figured life’s continuity is very often off, and if the Greatest Artist ever left it like that, why can’t I? That’s mostly BS but this disclaimer is now super long….
On with the post 👇
When I was young(er), I remember reading that the more educated people became, the more they doubted the existence of God. I remember reading that more knowledgeable people are often more miserable.
At the time I couldn’t understand it. I had, well, I have this unwavering desire for knowledge at my core that denied me understanding. So I couldn’t understand how/why knowledge could do something negative to a person. Nothing annoys me more than persons who hide themselves from certain knowledge because it challenges some of their beliefs. Well, perhaps only one thing annoys me more: hypocrisy.
But as I was writing this, I think I realised that I’ve been indulging in those two annoyances in my current pursuit of spirituality: where I am with God now. This was supposed to be a blog about how paying attention to what’s happening in the world can make you miserable, and how you should take breaks to recharge, but how you should pay attention anyway because the misery is a call to action.
But two years ago, more or less, I wrote about society’s fight or flight struggle with finding God (Here: https://yfitz.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/finding-god-societys-fight-or-flight-struggle-with-theism/ ) and how I would do neither. I am not in that totally oblivious and confused place, where I even played with atheism, anymore.
I know that there is a God and I know he is a God of love, but there is still a substantial more for me to find. I have the same feeling that I have when I know I’m missing something in a logical stream of connections. It’s as if you’re inside a room looking around, and it looks pretty fine, but you somehow feel there’s a door that leads to a so much larger, more resplendent room.
So that’s where I am. I have friends who are good for a spiritual discussion every now and then, but whenever they invite me to their church, I decline. I don’t like the Church. It’s filled with a lot of people who I view as idiots, that assuage themselves in a feeling of security (Big Brother, if you get that reference) rather than a pursuit of truth, or quest to make the world better. They therefore become slaves to texts who become judgmental while defending themselves in the shroud of a ‘god of love’. (The book reference to 1984 and Big Brother, where ministry’s were named the opposite of what they actually were, is starting to feel a whole lot more appropriate – I also acknowledge the double meaning of ministry.)
So I haven’t been to church, but hypocritically I haven’t taken up any strong pursuit of reading the various religious texts either. So it’s almost as if I’m hiding myself from certain knowledge which might shake my current beliefs and also tell me how to find the door the resplendent room. That’s both hypocritical and stupid.
I’ve also found that religious people seem a whole lot more miserable that nonreligious ones. I wonder, now, if that’s a bit like what this post was originally supposed to be about – paying attention to world affairs. Are they more miserable because they – like people who know about human beings in the Middle East suffering while most of the world remain ignorant or uncaring – know about some unseen spiritual suffering? I digress. That is an article for a future, more enlightened version of myself.
So this is where I am with God:
I know He exists.
I know He is patient and loving.
I believe He is forgiving and just wants us all to live in harmony.
I believe He is a big picture guy who gave us free will because He knew love without an active choice to love is less pure. He therefore doesn’t sweat the small transgressions we commit with our free will.
I believe He is more a sentient state of fairness and harmony than a person who cares about the name by which He is called. I say ‘He’, and ‘God’ because they are the customs with which I was raised to acknowledge that state. This makes me no more right, or more deserving of Grace than someone who says Jah, Allah, or She, or refers to the state as various different beings.
I believe there is more for me to learn of Him.
Embrasse l’Aurore ✌
Yakum
Odyssey of an Oligomaniac 