Theological Argument
God is a spark that you feel inside of you. It is not an anthropomorphic being, taller than the highest peak imaginable, residing in the clouds, his long and silvery flowing beard matched only by the magnificence of his long and silvery flowing gown, which unfurls into the clouds as if one with them, or the source of them, surrounded by angels and archangels and possibly adorable puppies, occasionally deigning to speak to the lesser mortals, either through telepathic communication or some kind of metaphorical message from on high, whose touch of divinity is present at the very core of all that has been created in the universe from the moment of the Big Bang.
If this were true, it would assume that God has the kind of power to will Himself into being. In this instance, would it really take an action as catastrophically violent as a bang, ensuing from which occurred eons upon eons of turbulent, unlivable chaos before there was any sign of civilized life, all for the sake of (as far as we know) one remote planet that was seemingly cursed with the luck of being just close enough to and far enough away from its main source of power to sustain—barely sustain, mind you—all manner of folks with enough creative ingenuity to infer that there must be a kind of higher power dictating the course of time within space. Supposing this God figure does exist, he most certainly wouldn’t be as omnipotent and omniscient as we’d like to imagine, considering that He, too, like his mortal minions, was confined by time to wait for a race of intelligent life to be worshipped by and devoted to. And this race of intelligent life cannot even come to terms over how to do the worshipping and the devoting.
Therein lies the most fatal of flaws condemning the possible existence of a deity figure. Let’s assume that there has been no scientific evidence about the course of evolution both throughout the universe and on our little, insignificant Earth. After all we do have a very limited understanding of the way the world works. We can’t even account for 98% of the matter in the known universe. There could be something just beyond the limit of our empirical reach, or perhaps millions of light-years away, that discredits what scientists have been trying to prove for centuries, or that lends credence to the existence of an almighty being. What’s most damning is that, across the relatively miniscule expanse of land that we inhabit, there cannot be reached a consensus that would tie us together, bonding us through love, peace and understanding.
Examining almost all of the modern conceptions of the divine being yields a similar result—a (mostly) benevolent entity overseeing and protecting its most cherished of creations, the human race. And yet, throughout the entire history of human civilization, God has been used to spark incessant holy wars, oppression of innocent races, and at the very least interpersonal breakdown. I remain vague because I wish not to appear as a tired broken record of points long already been made as a means of spitting in the face of God. Though the points remain worthy of being made (one simple word, ‘Crusades’, at this point resonates dramatically enough), this is not being done in hopes of destroying the notion of God. Instead, this in hopes of redesigning God.
God is real, and the proof for existence has appeared throughout history via living examples—the only examples truly worth acknowledging. Jesus Christ had God within him. Muhammad had within him. Moses, while assuredly not speaking directly to an ethereal voice from on high atop Mt. Sinai, was surely inspired by the God within him to articulate the basic notions of peaceful, loving coexistence, regardless of how misguided some of them may have been. Of note in recent history, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King Jr. had God within them. These are all just examples, and not necessarily exceptions to the rule, either.
John Lennon once wrote that “God is a concept”. He tended to focus on the negative backlash with which this concept was associated, particularly with the sundering of people whom otherwise should find their very existence to be enough of a common bond on which to build togetherness and cooperation. Lennon was a prescribed and shameless atheist, disheartened by this supposedly insurmountable rift between peoples. In an event of which must have been ironic and sad validation, Lennon’s life was claimed by this very rift, when a confused fan perceived Lennon’s message of deconstructing religion in the song ‘Imagine’ as one of negativity which would lead to the breakdown of humanity. But of course Lennon’s message was one of hope, quixotically daydreaming of a world wherein the hundreds of organized religions did not exist to bar people off from one another, allowing for all to ‘Come Together’. Lennon’s later works, in fact, all seemed to share this element of a dream of a friendlier world—his advocacy of nonviolent resistance in ‘Revolution’, his metaphysical appreciation of ‘Across the Universe’ and his self-explanatory ‘Give Peace a Chance’. Even if he may not have been aware of it, truly Lennon had a bit of God in him as well.
God is not in the tenets of organized religion, which exist to permeate uniformity—the same goal of any institution. God is a spark for the individual to feel inside of them. Please don’t interpret this as a message that churchgoers mustn’t have God inside of them. I believe that many, if not all of them, do, and seek to find a refuge and a place for cosmic answers. But I also believe that these folks may be misguided by the rigid structures designed by fellow men, many of them archaic, in hopes of finding the simplest of answers somewhere. But there aren’t any simple answers. The world is complicated in its beauty and, as a small part of that, we are not meant to understand the whole but instead to engage with each other—the only part of the world that we have any hope of understanding. All organized religions, regardless of their public statements, aim to create a simpler world not by understanding the proverbial “other”, but by altogether eliminating the need for the “other”. It is the reason why homosexuality is so systematically condemned by the church. Anyone who is different represents one more piece of the puzzle that an outdated “we” may struggle to fit in.
God is the spark inside of us that hopes to understand, appreciate and love all fellow travelers of this weary existence. Yes, it’s true, and in reality the simplest of all possible solutions. Because, more than anything I have already described him not to be, God is not an element of prejudice, xenophobia or disruption; God is not exclusionary, jingoistic or monolithic; God is the thought inside all of us to be happy, to love and be loved, to be at peace. The very thought that should tie us all together, not tear us apart.
It is in this spirit that I have undertaken to establish a unique method of worship and of dutifully spiritual living; not through the tenets of an institution but rather through the acceptance, appreciation and love of each other, to be undertaken on an individual and unregulated basis. I invite all with whom these messages have resonated to join me on a path of spiritual harmony.
-Reverend Matthew von Richards
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Email: mrtheratking@gmail.com
