God (Again)

[poliphilo]

Most people make religions last a lifetime. I wear them out in a decade. I was a Christian for ten years, then I was a Witch for ten years. Right now I'm nothing in particular.

I think (but I'm not predicting what will happen tomorrow) that I've worn out religion altogether. And I mean every religion, all possible religions. I no longer see the point of getting together with other people to commune with A Mutual Friend who isn't actually there. I'm not saying there isn't a value in this for others, or that I didn't derive benefit from it in the past, but right now, at this particular point in my earthly pilgrimage- no.

For much of my life I was crazy for it. I left Christianity because I was desperate for something sharper and bubblier. But when I eased myself out of Wicca it was because the whole enterprise had gone flat. If I'm still interested in religion (and I am or I wouldn't be writing this) it's as an outsider- almost as an anthropologist.

But I still believe in God. Though "believe" isn't really the right word. It implies that God is there and we're here and there's a gulf between us across which messages may or may not be sent. That's not how I see it. Ask me how I do see it and I find myself lapsing into the kind of mystical twittering that has come to seem stale to me. So I'm not going to try. Any God I can verbalise, even if it's in the woolliest terms- "ineffable, inexpressible, unknowable"- becomes a presumption that stands in the way of the true God taking me by surprise.

I know what She isn't and that's enough.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I've spent my life as an outsider to religion with an interest in it. I rather wish that God is, but what I believe is still pretty undefined. Still, for me it's been a long process of deciding what God definitely isn't. Perhaps eventually, what's left might be God.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the universe is too huge and stange for us to entertain anything other than the most tentative beliefs about it. The human intellect just isn't up to the business of defining God.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

The human intellect just isn't up to the business of defining God. We will keep trying, though. Which is a fine and interesting exercise, except when the process fewmets fossilize into dogma. Still, useful conclusions sometimes eventuate. I do particularly appreciate the Christian suggestion that forgiveness is useful and powerful and ought to be something we work on.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Maybe we'll get to understand it all some day.

I believe that we humans are still at a very early stage in our evolution.