The most difficult part of understanding the nature of God is to come to terms with what God actually is, and is not. We will start with an assumption: God is. He exists. These statements are good as far as they go, but at least we ought to be able to go beyond existence and say that God can not be human. He is timeless, unlimited, and eternal from our human viewpoint. More we ought to be able to say that a frail human body could not be a sufficient container for God. If this is true, then nothing living that we know of on Earth can be God. Yet, we are assured that God is a living God by many religions. So, we will look for a non-human God-like symbol. Still humans have made many representations of Gods in the past for different reasons. A big ball of hot gas ninety-three million miles away from Earth does not strike me as very God-like, but the Egyptians worshipped Ra, the sun God. Many other cultures have also worshipped the sun. Our choices for a living God-like symbol are disappearing rapidly. Now we’ll turn to the esoteric. God is. He exists. He is not human. He must be of another family, order, species and genera, if He is living. Nearly all religions agree that God is living. God is not dead. Maybe He is from an entirely different Family of Life? God, then, must be exceedingly different from humans. He simply has to be very different to be timeless. At this point, we are at the boundary of the imagination of our species and our intellectual concepts. In the past, this is where humans have recognized the futility of continuing to try to explain God, recognized that He is mysterious, and simply decided to pile on additional mysterious concepts, to add more layers to the onion. We can’t explain God with terms that are understandable. We might as well add a few more layers of mystery to really confuse the issue. Terms like all-knowing, all pervasive, all-powerful were added. When this was not enough, even more mysterious terms like omniscient and omnipotent. It actually reminds me of tax “simplification”. Human languages do not allow us to clearly express what we really mean when we talk about the concepts of God. The best we can do is use the tools of simile, metaphor and analogy. He looks like a burning bush. He is a hurricane of power. He is kind and gentle and reminds me of a lamb. He is Spider, the Trickster. He inspires me to awe. He scares me. He is Holy. Thunder and lightning, a thick cloud, voice of the trumpet exceedingly loud. (Exodus 19:16-18) Now we’ve added the layers of Big, Powerful, and Kind, Gentle, and Tricky. When we start to use simile, metaphor and analogy, we are simply making choices, Each choice made is an attempt to be clear on an attribute of God, or to clarify an earlier choice. A choice is a choice. Different people will choose differently. No wonder we humans have so many Gods. Let us not give up. We are making progress in trying to determine the nature of God. We want to know and understand God. Let me emphasize again that God is not human. He doesn’t look like us. He is not male. She is not female. God is sexless. So what do we use as a simile? God is like a ______something living_______ . To where do we turn? We turn to something that indicates the remoteness, strangeness, omniscient, omnipotent, and great distance from the human condition that is God. These last qualities emphasize the differentness of God. When I studied biology, we started with “uncomplicated” one celled animals, but let us jump all the way up to consider only “really complicated” arthropods, then fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and at last hoppity, skippity to the king of the animal pile, mammals. Man, the dominant, is a mammal. Our females usually have two easily visible mammary glands on the front of their thorax to indicate sex. What animal is furthest away, most distant, from mammals? Answer: the arthropods. The arthropods have no spinal cords unlike all the rest of the groups. Arthropods have a tough, leathery, flexible outer shell of chitin instead of interior bones. They have multiple arms and feeding apparatus, multiple vision equipment units, and multiple sensory systems. We’ll skip the ocean based arthropods and just consider the land based. It is just too hard to think about a God who is all wet. Insects and arachnids and a few odd others are land-based. If the description fits? Being the most distant, the animals most different from mammals, the concept of an arachnid God is at the very least an emphasis of the strangeness of God and His Actions. Well, haven’t we said that God acts in strange ways? God acts in incomprehensible ways. God is mysterious and not easily understood. The decisions, actions, and motives of a spider-like God has got to be as far away from human decisions, actions, and motives as you can get. It may make His incomprehensibility more understandable as you would be less likely to attribute or expect human motives and actions of Him. Think about spider reproduction. Spiders spew out huge quantities of little life packets called eggs. Beyond silk egg cases, they offer little protection and care of the eggs, little or no protection of the newborn spiderlings. Once they leave home, they don’t come back except to be food. Add to that, determining the sex of spiders was rather difficult for early peoples without microscopes. That spiders could have an apparent generation of new life without sex had to be Mysterious and Powerful. No wonder that more than a few human cultures had a Spider God. He, or She, exhibits the desired characteristics and Her Godly behaviors fit the observable facts as they are, not as we humans might wish them to be. An Insect Alternative The ancient Egyptians came up with a reasonable alternative among the insects. The beautiful jewel-like scarab beetle caught their eye, but it was their less colorful relative, the dung beetle that really got their attention because as its name suggests, it has an affinity for dung, fresh manure. Dung beetles collect round balls of fresh animal and human dung in which to put their eggs. Once the ball is formed, the beetles roll it about until they find an appropriate spot to their liking, then they dig down under the ball until it goes underground. The manure balls also contain plant seeds. The Egyptians observed that somehow the beetles and their dung balls were connected to new life. From the site of the disappearing dung ball came new plants from seeds, renewal, and obvious fertility. Plus, the Egyptians noted as well, the relationships of the ball to the sun, because the ball of dung was round like the sun and went down into darkness like the sun. Taking no chances of overlooking a God who despite small size, might be very powerful, and Gods are tricky that way, they made a God of beetles and named Him, Khepri. The scarabaeids became sacred symbols of the soul.
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
Article Source: http://www.writerspenarticledirectory.com
Please Rate this Article
5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
Powered by Article Dashboard
Sign Up
