Immaculate White Smoke

Hi again.  This is Lew duffey.  Ted and I posted similar articles almost simultaneously on AuthorsDen.com.  I wanted to share this and invite you to visit his site at:

Ted L Glines MSW

Ted and I have started another site here at freewebs.com.  It is called WAKINGMUSE.  Click on the name to visit it.  We are inviting other writers to join in this site.  If you are a writer visit our guestbook.  Sign it and tell us how to contact you.

                                      Visit his site and enjoy!

If "God is a jealous God," then we may have gotten it all wrong, and maybe the "Big Bang" was a hissy fit ...

God Loves Chocolate
by Ted L Glines

See there! I knew that title would get your attention.

But, if you insist on humanizing God, then your God would have to crave chocolate. If God dropped in for dinner, you might want to have strawberry shortcake for dessert (God is not on Weight Watchers), and serve it with a chilled glass of original vintage Amontillado.

In our Sunday School version, we have an image of God being a white-bearded old man in a flowing white robe, sitting on a cloud and browsing what He likes to call His Coffee Table Book of Idiots, and He looks a lot like Zeus. He loves you. There is a chapter with your name on it in His book, and He is writing something new in it today (oh oh). Das ist nicht gut!

Atheists do not believe in God. No God. No image. No fun at all. Of course, “There is no God,” is a statement which cannot be proved. It is a statement whose time is wasted in the saying, as well as wasting our time in the hearing.

Agnostics escape the issue with a careful “I do not know.” That is safe, but it is not any fun, either. Boring. But the agnostic statement is (at least) truthy. We have been informed, by writings and preachings, that there is a God. But, as far as personal knowledge ...

In many of the ancient beliefs, there does not seem to be any one central and all-powerful God. The Egyptians had many gods like Set, Bubastis, Anubis, etc., each one having a specific set of powers and duties, departmentalized like Godly managers, but quite colorful and ghastly. My favorite was Anubis, the dog with the pointy nose and tall ears, who was their Guardian of the Underworld (that is where you go after you die, and Anubis will see that you behave). The same was true of the Mayans, Celts, Picts, Goths, and the ancient beliefs in tribal Africa and the South Sea islands. Very powerful and colorful demi-gods who might destroy you in life as well as in the after-life.  Mostly, these Gods were not cheerful nor uplifting, and a good day was a day when one of them did not drop in for a chat.

But these old belief systems seem to have lacked a central God. This lack was cured by Abraham, patriarch in common for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Abraham brought forth a highly humanized central God, a God of love and compassion and jealousy Who was said to be especially interested in the moral welfare of humans. For His sake, we slaughtered pagan infidels where ever we found them, even though this new and better God said “Thou shalt not kill.” There is no truth to the rumor that humans are overly bright.

The origin of Satan is unclear, murky, seeming to have arisen with the Christians since no other religion claims to deify Satan. Even the “Satanists” do not worship Satan. As a demi-god, Satan seems to harken back to some of the elder Egyptian demons. And some of the Angels link to Greek images. Religions such as the recent Wiccan beliefs also have deities (Diana, etc.) which appear Grecian in origin, somewhat akin to the Christian Angels, which are a watered-down version of their Greek counterparts. Perhaps it was Moses who came up with the concept of Satan. Or maybe it was Jerry Fallwell.

We see humanization in Hindu deities even though some of them have heads of animals, somewhat like we see in Egyptian demi-gods, except that the Egyptians made no attempt to saddle their deities with human feelings. American Indian demi-gods are animalized (wolf, bear, coyote, etc.) but are given extreme human traits (coyote is the wily trickster). Viking, Roman, and Greek deities, humanized, tended to be dramatically warlike. They had attitude issues. If we cloned Odin and His Valkyries, we could send Him to settle matters in the Middle East (and bring our troops home).

One of my favorite stories is about Arjuna, the warrior who sits at the right hand of the Hindu god, which is told in the Bhagavad Gita - as it is. Arjuna was directed to be victorious in a war where his brothers and uncles were on the opposing side. Arjuna struggled with the idea of having to slaughter his own relatives. This story shows Arjuna finally realizing that his own human priorities had nothing in common with those of God. Interesting. Enlightening, and this drama plays in direct contrast to God as portrayed by Christians.

It strikes me that humanizing God creates a vat full of human misconceptions. On the one hand, you have an all-powerful and omniscient deity, and on the other hand, you weaken Him with all of your human priorities, and you end up with the old white-bearded Zeus-guy sitting on that cloud, making new book-chapters about each of your 6.4 billion earth-neighbors. I guess that works if you wish to think of God as being your personal biographer.

Somehow, this reminds me of a cartoon from many years ago. These eight or ten grinning angels were lined up along the edge of a cloud, looking down and waving, and one of them says, “Say goodbye to southern California!” Think about it.

“God is a jealous God.” Try to imagine God throwing a hissy-fit! Jealousy is one of the worst of human weaknesses. Period. Why would our all-powerful and omniscient God ever have a cause to be jealous of anything? But that is what some people say; the folks who would humanize God.

Maybe I should send this article along to God, to see if He has anything to add or change. Hey, if He can be your biographer, then He can be my editor. Meanwhile, the next time He visits, I will make sure that He gets His chocolate. Wonder if He likes catfish and green tomato relish ...