Talking About Divinity 1

More about divinity, less about politics.

The only reason I wrote so much about politics is the present group in power. The future of our country will be played out as a battle between those who will lead by compulsion and those who will lead by attraction. The knifes are being sharpened as I write. Ah...society and politics has sneaked in again. Gotcha ! Now, a few words from our sponsor.
I met a fellow as I was involved in a part-time job. He was of a religious bent and talk naturally turned to divinity. He asked if I believed in God. I said yes, of course I did. Then he apparently decided this was not quite enough, so he asked if I had accepted Jesus as my savior. Trying to be as polite as possible, I indicated that I do not respond to such questions...usually.
Going back to the original query: ' are you a believer? ', I actually find this to be an odd question and more along the lines of something you would hear from the mentally challenged. Instead of answering yes, I should have patted him on the head and handed him a sweet. It is a mistake to think that an infinite number of questions deserves a response from me, for I shall not answer them. I really do not care whether you think I am this or that. Nor do I care whether our beliefs are the same, for I am not searching for a group or forum or political party of similarly-minded individuals to get together and use power over others. Ya-da ya-da ya-da...time drags on...lips move...ears ache...bladders do what bladders do when the mind is bored and desires to mediate upon the clepsydrical nature of a Bladder...

He said that he often thought of God's love as that of a father for his children...loving, yet firm...a metaphor for the entire universe, no doubt. So I told him that God is the big, ugly, scarey guy. My friend's eyes went wide with astonishment. God is the big, ugly, scarey guy that drags us to a desolate pinnacle and shows us the emptiness of the universe. Then, when we have been reduced to hopelessness, laughs loudly and slaps us on the back so hard we almost lose our balance ( and fall from yonder pinnacle ), saying He was just kidding... just like He did with Job. God the awe-inspiring and God the awful or filled with awe. There is the coming together and the running away.
What is the fear of God? What is the love of God? Fear is a state of being that God used for the preservation of man, causing a flight FROM an evil. Love is a state of being that God used for the preservation of man, causing a flight TOWARDS a good. Both fear and love are mindless fevers that fill the soul. Fly towards. Fly away from.

When my friend describes what he called a father's love, he was not describing love. He was describing responsibility, duty, filling a role. He was describing what the good soldier Schweik must do to live his life and be loved, honored, and respected. None of this applies to God.
To be Humble is to learn that God has no role to live up to; He is writing the rules and the roles as things seem to unfold to us. To have faith, then, is to be humble and trust. It is in no way asking a number of inane questions to a hapless individual. It is not to try to respond to the infinite number of things which may be asked as questions.
I told him that if he must ask questions, ask impossible things...ask the outrageous things. He clearly could not make head nor tail of this odd statement of mine. "There," I said. "That is what God is like. How does it feel? You look for a furtive certainty by asking questions and affirming your answers." I paused. "But God cannot be grasped so easily, He cannot be chased down a burrow and trapped by the jaws of your logic." I lost this friend...just as I lost all my other friends. (Sometimes I used to wonder: Freund oder Feind ...?)
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