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Thursday, December 04, 2008

God's architecture - Part VI

I believe 'God' is beyond the 'all' that we as humans can understand or comprehend or can touch or even imagine, for of course we are the stuff of this universe that is where we find ourselves encapsulated within and are defined by. 'God' is the 'placeholder' term that we humans use for that which is beyond, beyond not in a time/space sense, but beyond in an intellectual sense. As such, each human defines the meaning of this term --'God' -- and as such, this term defines that which we humans try so hard to do, to use words to define, to describe, to make real through our utterances. So I think 'God' (the word we create in order to have something to grasp on to) is within each of us as a strange longing for that which created us ('created' -- another human word that falls far short of something that happened beyond time/space/matter -- a paradox since 'happened' requires the dimension of time). And so 'religion' is the human means to make this strange longing real, something that can be understandable in this time/space/matter world. In Christianity this longing is made human by our story of Jesus, perhaps a 'placeholder' for that which is beyond us -- God. To understand God in human terms, we need a human vocabulary, and Jesus is that vocabulary. For me this story is not something that can or needs to be proven, for it isn't about solitary facts, but it is about community, it is the story that we again and again seek to understand in our quest to live our lives with others, with community, living a life that is defined by love -- loving our neighbor as thyself. And yes, that is right behind 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.' Proof? "Every event has a cause. Trace a sequence of events backwards in time and one must eventually arrive at an uncaused causal agency. That agency is God." Yes, that the 'first cause argument' and yes, that isn't proof. But I think a nice thought, perhaps a thought that reaches the limit of human deductive reasoning. What a place deductive reasoning to stop at, the instant of the Big Bang, the birth of time/space/matter, all before escape the best tool we have, the human mind.

1 comment:

jzr said...

Oh so beautifully put!!