OF MATTERS RELIGIOUS
May 28, 2004
I grew up (as probably most people did) in a religious family, actually (more properly speaking), a fundamentalist one. I've since left the so-called "faith," and I muse occasionally on the circumstances that initially prompted my departure.
My doubts began whenever I pondered the nature of heaven and hell (which was quite often). It started with heaven.
One day I started wondering what exactly we would do there. No one had ever elaborated on it; they had just talked about going, not a word about doing. I remember even asking my mother about it. She didn't have much of an answer. To be honest, I can't remember precisely what she said, but I think it had something to do with praising God. Needless to say, I wasn't at all satisfied with it. If I had been, I'd have stopped wondering. But I didn't. I kept right on wondering about it till the day I left home and joined the Air Force.
During my enlistment I had a lot of time to study, which I did. My reading of St. Thomas Aquinas probably steered me onto the path that eventually led me completely away from traditional beliefs, especially what he had to say about the character of God, stuff that I had never quite thought of before, like for example the fact that God has no requirements; I mean, none, nada. He wouldn't be God if he did. Get it? One of the requirements that he specifically mentioned was praise. God has no need to be praised. The fact that we think so is...well, the fact that we think so. If God needed praise, He wouldn't be God. God, the true God, needs absolutely nothing. He is, instead, absolute in His completeness. He doesn't need our company, our thanks, our prayers or praise. So much for my mother's ideas about our heavenly activities.
Now I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. If God has no need to be praised, then He certainly has no need to exact judgement and condemnation on anyone either. We may have some perverse need to see others punished for their actions, but God certainly doesn't. Again, these are simply our thoughts, not in anyway proceedings from the mind of God. Yes, we have indeed created God in our image, then turned around and claimed just the opposite, that He created us in His. One of the biggest problems I have with hell is its management. If you will pardon a pun, who in the hell is going to run the place? And what the hell for? Does he get stock options or what?
Somehow, throwing sin into the equation doesn't seem to balance it. God couldn't care less about sin. We are the ones doing all the caring about it, and we do so because we are small and petty little creatures. God is just the opposite, big, very big. He's like the Dude.
I guess you can tell that I don't believe in the God of the Bible. I do believe in God; as a matter of fact, quite profoundly. The God of the Bible is just too small (talk about somebody who needs to get over himself). The true God would have nothing whatsoever to do with it. I have a book about to be published (in August 2004 if all goes well), entitled, Scripture, in which I go into much more detail on the subject. For now, I'll close by saying that we're all looking for God, but the Bible is the last place we're going to find Him.