So many people have dismissed God as irrelevant, and the violence and immorality in our world increases almost daily. We’ve become complacent about greed and graft and developed an addiction to violence in our films, TV and video games . . . no God and a diet of violence . . . how is there not an awareness of a correlation? Psychology tells us that what we are exposed to regularly becomes a lived part of our consciousness and invades our unconscious, defining who and what we are.
In my youth there were not mass shootings or angry people driving vehicles into crowds of pedestrians—now it happens on a regular basis. Graft and corruption in government was believed to be what happened in ‘uncivilized’ countries—now it is everywhere.
It used to be that awareness of God and goodness was regularly called to mind so God was in the forefront of our thinking, but it was mixed too much with rules and regulations of specific religious imperatives that emphasized sin and death. We have so misunderstood and mis-explained God that many people came to dismiss all consideration of God. It was our interpretation of God, not God that was wrong. The fact is we need a concept of goodness and rightness to define for us who and what we can be.
I cannot understand who or what is that life force which we call ‘God’ but I know God IS and wish to call the life-force something; I would call it ‘Thou’ because I know it has a presence but no material form. It is not a ‘he’; it is in no way vengeful. It is the source of all good and is somehow present in all creation; it is sometimes named as 'Love', 'Truth', ‘Consciousness’, . . . qualities which Thou has shared with us; we posses consciousness, seek truth and are capable of love.
In humanity there is a seeking for rightness, which can be countered because we also have free will. Morality is inherent in humans; it may be ignored and/or denied, may be distorted and even badly twisted, but our consciousness brings with it the desire for ‘rightness’ (Love, Truth, Mercy, Justice, Compassion) and that is the nature of God. Unless the Will is distorted by that which is evil, we long for indestructible rightness.
I quote from The New Cosmic Story by John Haught: “Rightness . . . does not come cheaply and hence cannot be taken for granted. It cannot be owned but only anticipated. Its full reception requires not only patient waiting but also thankful appreciation . . . to an eternally generous and resourceful ‘Thou’.”
As a species we are not yet ‘finished’. The patient waiting he refers to is our recognizing the long evolutionary struggle that ultimately brought forth our planet, then life, and then humanity. The next evolutionary step is our struggle to bring forth the longed for indistructable rightness.
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