Yet Another God

I’ve encountered many gods invented by human imagination. Gods whose actions mirror their followers’s beliefs. Those with an existence relying on a curated set of Bible verses.

When pressed about my belief in God, the best answer I have is “I don’t know.”

The phrases “I know” or “I don’t know” are sneaky because “know” is another way to say “feel certain.”

As someone who is yet unsure of cosmic absolutes, I can still know with certainty that I don’t believe in Zeus, Baal, or Shiva.

Certainty is a feeling. I’m quite certain that most gods I’ve heard of don’t exist.

I encountered yet another god last week.

He is a god that requires evil for good to exist.
He is a god of correct belief and tight arguments.
He is a god that invented suffering to have authentic relationships.
He is a god that paradoxically requires human freedom of choice and human submission.
He is a god that punishes mistakes.
He is a god of emotional baggage.
He is a god of trauma.
He is a god that celebrates your moral compass if it condemns you.
He is a god that forbids your moral compass if it condemns your pastor.
He is a god that causes suffering of others to prove his point.
He is a god that requires human sacrifice.
He is a god that insists on “He/Him” while his followers mock the use of pronouns in bios.
He is a god of gaslighting and double thinking.
He is a god that gives us choices that aren’t choices.
He is a god of patriarchy and controlling women’s bodies.
He is a god that bans books and keeps secrets.
He is a god of guns and fear.
He is a god of abuse.

He is a god espoused by individuals and invented by a collective. He is a god of the system. He is a god with the moral relativism of a dictator.

If he wills something, no matter how much suffering it causes, his subjects must call it good.

He is the god of my youth.

Consider for a moment this god that damns the majority to eternal torture while also blaming them for it.

A god who invented punishment and presides over horrors he could stop at any time.

If we look at his work through the lens of self evident morality, his essence becomes clear.

He is a god of everlasting pain.
He is a god of eternal death.
He is a god of unlimited hell.

This god is peculiar because in exchange for his toxic, self centered, jealous, moral relativism, the highest benefit he offers his followers is a feeling of certainty.

Once I understood that certainty is a feeling this god no longer had an advantage.

If this is the god I’m asked to weigh in on, then I’m certain about him.

He is yet another god in which I don’t believe.

Why?

I spent last week in my home state because my mom is dying. Watching someone fade away slowly and in pain is a horrendous experience of suffering.

But it’s not the horror of my mom’s process of death that gives me certainty about this specific god.

It’s the problem of good.

If the god of hell existed there wouldn’t be good people. Good people like my mom.

People that include those excluded.
People that hurt with those that hurt.
People love others more than their own god is capable of.

For the god of hell to exist as a force of good, most people must be, at their core, evil.

But that’s not reality.

We live in a reality where a minority of bad actors and natural events cause the majority of suffering.
We live in a world that, in the context of centuries, is trending towards longer life and health.
We live in a reality of complexity and nuance, one without easy answers to most big questions.
We live in a world where people of varying beliefs can agree to do good together.

It is true that evils like war and famine still exist. It is also true that over the most recent dozens of decades smaller percentages of people have died in war and we’re getting better at producing food.

Growing up, I felt I had unique, profound, insight into world events because I knew the apocalypse was near. I had hope because my god would return soon so we could all go to my heaven.

But now I know how common that thought is across belief systems. The idea that we’re close to the end is as bland as it is ubiquitous.

The thought that now fills me with hope is that we humans are at the beginning of our story.

When we look at our paths in the context of millennia, as a human race, we are making progress towards better lives, better health, better understanding of each other, and less suffering.

The human experience is expanding to include accomplishments that two centuries ago seemed impossible.

If the god of hell existed there wouldn’t be families that still love each other even though we believe different things. There wouldn’t be good people in “other” religions.

There wouldn’t be a morality written on our hearts.

If the fragile, petulant, god of hell, the one sold with plastic smiles and apologetics, was the one true God, we wouldn’t have this much good in our lives.

We would be forced to live in fear of not being right.

Fear of making mistakes.
Fear of punishment.
Fear of anger.
Fear of god.

Fear that, if the ones we love don’t believe the correct things or make the right choices, they will be tortured for eternity.

I choose to live in hope. Hope for more than just myself. Hope for people who believe differently than me. This type of hope is incompatible with the god of my modern evangelical Christianity.

If God exists, they are a God of hope.
If God exists, they are a God of grace.
If God exists they are a God of love.

If there is such a thing as a quantifiable one true God that exists they are a God that has written morality on the heart of humanity.

I don’t know the answers to the ultimate questions, I don’t know which heaven is real, I can’t solve the unlimited string of whys that exist in times of pain, but I know this.

Good is real and the god of my childhood is yet another god that doesn’t exist.

In memory of Norma Evans (March 30, 1941 - March 13, 2023)