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Thursday, November 13, 2008

God's Experience Of Man

Heraclitus says that the diving being is like a playing child. By this he means, I believe, that the deity does not "work" for a living, rather he plays..meaning that there is no such thing as a matter of life or death for the deity; he just does, and it is all rather like playing: if someone dies, raise them up and play again tomorrow. He also means that there is some incredible innocence with the deity which we find hard to understand. The innocence of the child, not corrupted by evil...yet, his actions not yet coerced into working by the sweat of one's brow...just filling one's day with play, is an image we cannot deal with. Heraclitus is saying that God may be aware of man's sinfulness, but He cannot "know" this sinfulness in the same sense that man is aware of it, and sorrowfully "knows" it. Since God cannot know evil in the same way man does: that is, He cannot carry it with Him as part of his individual history of life!!; it seems God cannot experience the good that man experiences, either. if God is so innocent, then He is the paradigm of the being in an ivory tower. If a man exhibited such non-involvement in humanity, we would shun him. Yet our God does, and we assume we know Him...intimately even, although He is remote in the sense that we do not know His mind. We do not. How could we? God himself strives to relate and understand being-in-the-world , because if He were to live in the world, He would be limited, circumscribed, and prone to death. Thus, He sent his Son. He spoke to the Prophets. He created man to meditate and gain his release. There is a book titled "Towing Jehovah", wherein God comes to Earth, dies, and thus forms a rather large corpse - about the size of Baffin Island - to be removed from shipping channels. God is always coming to Earth. He is always dieing... and we are always dragging the remnants of the divine off to some dump.

7 comments:

Reading the Signs said...

I don't know if this relates (brain easily scrambling etc) - but I have sometimes come across, or had the notion, of God as infinitely vulnerable and in need of us as much as we are in need of him.

This is very interesting, Montag.

Reading the Signs said...

- also to say I am linking to you in my sidebar.

Montag said...

Thank you for your thoughts.
Im my own approach to the notion of God's vulnerability, if God were vulnerable, then He should pray to me once and a while.

I mean, I'm not omnipotent or anything, but I have endured through the sufferings the universe has chosen to inflict upon me, so I could be of some help to Him.

Having written this, I find that it seems to be a bit less blasphemous than I thought: wonder at this...Prayer as a two-way street!

It certainly affects the flow of communication in the universe.
I think I am writing about something related to this somewhere already.
I shall steal your idea....just giving you fair warning.

Reading the Signs said...

Tenebrae (by Paul Celan)

Near are we, Lord,
near and graspable.

Grasped already, Lord,
clawed into each other, as if
each of our bodies were
your body, Lord.

Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
we are near.

Wind-skewed we went there,
went there to bend
over pit and crater.

Went to the water-trough, Lord.

It was blood, it was
what you shed, Lord.

It shined.

It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.
Eyes and mouth stand so open and void, Lord.
We have drunk, Lord.
The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.

Pray, Lord.
We are near.

Montag said...

Lord this poem frightens my peace of mind!

Reading the Signs said...

I am sorry - but knowing the context of when and by whom it was written will have opened it up a little. I posted this in response to your idea that God should pray to you once in a while.

I do love his poetry.

Montag said...

No need to be sorry.

The Holocaust and other evils have not entirely died.
Celan's imagery makes it so immediate, that it is frightening.

I truly fear those who are not poets, who are not artists, yet who feel the urge to create a symbolic of the Holocaust in their everyday thoughts and actions.