The question is not ‘Is there a God?’
The question is ‘What is God?’
The former can’t be answered without the latter.
Contrary to arguments held against religion, I think that one of the most corrosive qualities of the human race has not been the belief in God, but rather the belief that God is some supreme figure that exists outside of ourselves, often (but not always) in the form of a white man, exerting his/its will onto us, and us being sheep-like pawns in some hierarchal design.
Of course, it never appears that way to the subjugated. If it did, they’d immediately shake off rose-tinted glasses to emerge into a sobering reality that elicits an agonizing process of disillusionment. Makes you wonder who came up with this patriarchal portrayal, and who benefits from it the most…
The religious follower cries “Look at how blessed we are after following all of God’s rules. There must be a God, and we will spread the word so that the rest of humanity is not punished.”
The atheist cries “Look at all this pain and suffering! How could there possibly be a God?”
It appears that both sides, in this case atheism and religion, are not willing to entertain the possibility that God is simply painfully neutral.
When you apply God through the filter of the human ego, which is that of duality consciousness, God is always taking a side. We can never see God for what they are/it is, we can only see it as we are.
But why is neutrality painful to the human race? In our primitive nature, we can’t seem to swallow the pill that God might not be on our side, which assumes they are in simultaneous opposition to our adversary. This is tribalism. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, everyone wants to believe that they are righteous, that they are supreme, and that their vision will win. This is not an opinion, this is the reality of human nature. We see it in chimps, with their genocidal tendencies and their behaviors that are fundamentally violent. This is why I’ve always seen religion more aligned with cultism, and less with spirituality and the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
So many, in their pursuit to connect with what we call God, feel he is on their side and not the guy down the street. We take the thing that we claim is meant to free us from suffering, and weaponize it. Humans, as they do with everything, have used God as a weapon, and it has made the subject of faith a very confusing, very distressing, very deadly experience.
It’s at this point in the internal conversation I am having with said hypothetical God where we are both scratching our heads at the murder monkeys with their murder toys and all their reasons for continuing the suffering they say they want to be saved from.
Make no mistake, I’m guilty of everything I’ve explained too. I am salty about the fact that the world is run by soulless creatures, misanthropic money whores that know how to uphold the unjust paradigm in their favor throughout millennia. I also wish said God was on my side in that fight.
Me pointing at the marketplace planet: “Can we fuckin not, maybe?”
Hypothetical God: “Listen I’m also pretty unsettled about it but like, there have been a lot of alternatives for everyone to choose from and according to this paperwork, you’ve signed up for the free will package.”
Me: “What?”
God: “Yea so there are other packages but with this one I can’t simply just go and withhold the free will of select individuals, even if it would change a lot of things for a lot of people, but with the free will package you can for sure do some things about it- hence the free will part * winks *. Especially if ya’ll work unanimously. Some guy parading as a hero from a mushroom kingdom has taken it upon himself already but he was working alone, and severing off the sick parts of our collective body is only a short term solution if you catch my drift.”
Me: “You wont even send help?”
God: “Oh I do, like every day almost. They are everywhere and we send the helpers with different backgrounds and angles just to see what happens, kind of just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks at this point. This doesn’t typically go so well. Ya’ll nailed one of the popular ones to a stick for trying to introduce some of this stuff you like to write about, like love, empowerment and equality, and the people who had him murdered wrote a lot of weird books about it and made a bunch of weird cults around the whole thing.
Me, shaking my head: “Jesus Christ.”
God: “Yup! That was him.”
Many people will hate hearing this, will hate me personally for it despite not knowing me - but it’s all God.
The thing that pushes you off the cliff and the thing that heals your broken bones, the pedophiles and the rapists, the firefighters and the nurses. The storm and the calm, the starving child and the food bank.
They’re not separate. God doesn’t choose sides.
It’s all up to us, but I have found that humans would rather give their power away, to remain unconscious, or do anything at all really, than accept this responsibility. Understanding faith, real faith, the kind that no one has a monopoly on, can’t be done without overcoming the human ego.
After several lifetimes, I eventually go into this topic in Metanoia, which I’ve been serializing here:
But where does that leave me? What do I believe in?
My church has always been nature.
In the natural world, which is the real world, neutrality is not painful. When the lizard is captured by the snake, it’s not all for nothing. The sacrifice the lizard made means the snake can go on and be the best snake it can be. It will continue to play a part in the ecosystem until it itself is a means for something else to go on existing. The sacrifice wasn’t made in vain. It was not done so that the snake can go on to build a lizard-enslaving empire until the balance of all things is disrupted and inevitably collapses. It was done so that it can make a contribution to the eternal evolution of it all. To me, this is God.
I am having a crisis in faith, but it’s not with God that I have lost faith in.
It’s humanity.
And I will spend the rest of my life navigating this.
My favorite writers are those who exude authenticity.
Well done, again.
New to substack and you are the first person Ive read! I loved it and followed everything. Thanks for writing.