Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The Great and Powerful Oz

It has been a little while since I last posted, but here I am again. Another great piece of opinion. Hope you like it.

This is a little talk about God. First let me say for the record that I believe in God and my God is the punitive God of the Hebrew Bible. Recently I fell into conversation as to how I imagine God. Is He all-powerful? Is He all-good? I found myself slightly conflicted and can see that my beliefs in God are very vaguely defined. It seems impossible to me to see God as being all-good. If He were why wouldn't He intervene and stop the evils occurring throughout the world. It seems that He lets a bunch of crap happen in His name and does nothing to correct the people doing it. This makes me think He can't be all-good. The response to something like this could be about God granting us free-will. While I have great faith in humanity, I know people commit evils. Yet, if someone does something great, people have a horrible tendency to attribute greatness to God, while evils are free will. It can't be both. Make your decision is God making the evils happen or just allowing them to go on.
Now for the all-powerful part. This will go back to intervention. When was the last real miracle? Why aren't true miracles happening every day? I mean miracles, I mean things that are impossible happening, like a person getting hit by a speeding train and walking away without a scratch, miracles. Stuff that couldn't physically happen. The stuff that scientists would have to ignore or otherwise lose all hope of discovering the mysteries of the universe. I'll tell you why this doesn't happen, God can't do it. He is not that powerful. It takes Him a bunch of energy to do something like that and since He can't stop all atrocities he just picks and chooses and quite frankly, he hasn't chosen for a while.
So really what is God? I figure He is a moderately powerful spiritual being that stopped giving a shit about humanity, if He ever cared in the first place. I mean love Him and all, but this Guy isn't that great. It seems more like Oz the Great and Terrible, than the perfect father figure we are told to imagine. God tells us to praise Him and obey Him. He tells us if we praise someone else we are bad. When man tried to raise ourselves to His position, He decided that we must lose our abilities to cooperate, else He lose standing.
Want to know how I view God. God is a feeble being that once spent His time tormenting mankind to ensure He received His praise. After He was satiated He abandoned humanity. There is nothing more than that. His greatness, now, is the hope he represents to people. God gives humanity something that lets us endure. Praise be to Him. Just remember He isn't listening any more, just recording for review.