Again, the most difficult part of understanding the nature of God is to come to terms with what God actually is, and is not. We begin with the assumption: God is. He exists. Part I delt with some history and difficulties in understanding the nature of God. In this Part II, we will continue to try 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. In biology, students start with “uncomplicated” one celled animals. We will jump all the way up the ladder of life to “really complicated” arthropods (crabs, shrimp, insects and spiders), 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. Arthropods have a tough, leathery, flexible outer shell of chitin instead of interior bones. They have multiple arms and feeding apparatus. Arthropods have multiple vision equipment units. Arthropods have 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. 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. Determining the sex of spiders was difficult for people 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. 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. Today, the point is that we humans find a symbol for God useful. The symbol should help us, not confuse us, nor hinder our thinking clearly. The use of an image of a human being as God is misleading at best, and detrimental at worst.
(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
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