good god faith and hope
"They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse." -- Emily DickinsonI was reading an article how people are praying to God that their own particular candidate will win. The prayers are from both sides of the election battlefield. God must be confused trying to answer both sides prayers with a sense of positivism. There can only be on winner just as there can only be one god, ultimately.
Perhaps God should hold a re-election for Himself. It's been a long time. Some may argue He hasn't actively campaigned for votes since He put His son down among us some 2,000 years ago. People forget a lot of things in 2,000 years, especially since so many of them rely on second hand information from His son. We all know how information gets turned around the more it gets passed from person-to-person, generation-to-generation... Imagine how 2,000 years has twisted the Word around - the division amongst Christian religions, the split in Muslim religion.. I guess we could include the division even in Buddhism, although good Christian countries would be very suspicious of that claim. After all God gave his only son to bring Christianity to the world.
I wonder why this reclusive God would bring about a new twist to His way of thinking? Things were probably going along pretty good for the Pagan and the Jews, but then Jesus was born and grew up talking about things that neither the Pagans nor the Jews fully embraced.
I guess once a recluse always a recluse. Social manners are pretty meaningless to God, I reckon. Maybe I should ask some of these folks that speak to God and are convinced that God speaks back. It's peculiar how we allow some people to prattle on about what God told them to do... as long as it doesn't scare us. If someone tells us that God told them to kill so-and-so, we immediately know that the person is crazy... God would never tell anyone to murder someone. That may be refuted in some Bible stories, if I remember correctly. But those Bible stories are tempered by adding that God only suggested 'murder' to test the listener. God the Tester. I guess there's something to that. Our lives could easily been seen as one test after another. Yin/Yang. Duality. Friction. The Rub.
If you're a recluse I think you'd need to play some games with yourself to maintain your sanity. You know, keep your mind fresh, your outlook new.
Even if people don't pray to God for political intervention in their favor, we humans certainly use hope one Hell of a lot. 'God, I hope [fill in the blank] wins." That's not a prayer in the prayerful sense, but hope. (hope is the desire that instinct is right). A hope or hope... there are several hopes in our lives so I imagine 'a hope' is better than none, or even a couple. It's good to have a lot of hope in reserve... our lives pretty much dictate the necessity to bring out hope in various situations.
So there is 'God' and there is 'hope'... next in line for our purposes would be 'faith.' Faith is a need we have that either 'I' or something bigger than 'I' will save us from ourselves. We cannot stand alone. It's not healthy. Sure we can live alone, but living in a room or a house alone is far different from living everyday of our lives without human contact. We humans require other human contact.. even one other human to converse with will do, but totally and completely isolated from any other human contact whatsoever is unhealthy if not deadly. Faith is important when we get to feeling alone.. really alone. Faith tells us that it won't last.. someone will come along, someone will contact us, someone will worry about us and find us... we have faith the it will happen. We won't have to live within ourselves forever.
God, hope and faith. Even if religion is not our cup of tea, especially formalized, organized religions, most of us, if not all of us, utilized two out of the three, i.e. hope and faith at various times and moments within our lives. We bypass God but hope and faith.. those two can be much more important at times than whether or not we believe in a God.
God is so spiritual that most take it for granted there is a God because our religion has a strong faith and hope there is one... they cannot offer any conclusive evidence that there is a God, only that when they read His words and practice His message that God does exist because those very words have improved their lives. A purely spiritual presence that speaks only to those that convey the believable versus speaking to those a troublesome or even dangerous message... that certainly cannot be God speaking! We have faith that our God doesn't go there... only to where good is, is where our God goes.
Can we conclude that our own feeling of 'good' is what defines our God? Good God. God is Good. If the message is good, the better the message, the better the God. If we had no idea what 'good' was chances are we wouldn't have any faith or hope in a God. Good could have preceded the concept of God... 'He's' been around way too long to know for sure. W enter into the realm of wondering if we try to answer "What came first - Good or God?" Not unlike the chicken or the egg question, we have faith and if faith is not so strong that day, we have hope that God came before Good.
If God really is as reclusive as He must be, we have no choice but to hope that He hears us and have faith that he heard us correctly. But if God is everywhere, i.e. omnipresent, then we needn't speak to Him because He can not only hear our words but He can read our thoughts. He's good at doing those things...
cecil
02 Nov 08
Picture of the Week:
bud
photo: cecil
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Well, K&D, other than what I wrote above here... I could add that yin/yang, to me, is more than a philosophy that began in China, more than likely with Taoism, but I see it as the only physical symbol that defines Truth... Truth in what we know and haven't yet learned of the universe... the totality of existence that works in a perfect harmony for without it there is no life. (sounds lofty, eh?) What I mean when I say "the only physical symbol that defines Truth" is it reveals so much more about life than, say, the Star of David or the Christian cross.. it shows more than any symbols that define a faith or religion... it stands alone beyond a religion, philosophy, mathematical equation, beyond the Nike symbol or any nation's flag as the universal understanding of life on all levels other than human. 
Gracias!!!!!!!!