I struggle with an Omni-god.
Not a god that reads a defunct Sci-Fi magazine; or one that
drives around in a vintage 70s Dodge automobile. My problem is with a god who is
Omnipotent. I think that I can embrace a
god who embraces all possibility and novelty; who is “already there” in the
reality that my decisions create (already there in the alternatives, too)- but still leaves the decisions to me, making
me a co-creator in reality. Perhaps that
is a kind of Omniscience – all knowing… but it is in my choices; and choices of
the others that the knowledge becomes evident and/or relevant. God simply knows everything, because that is
God’s nature. Big Deal.
I suppose that’s more of an Omnipresence. God is already “there”; always “there”… there
is no “there” without God. Again, it would
seem to be a feature of God’s nature; or the nature of reality… so, again: Big
Deal.
But, when I get to Omnipotent, I get into trouble. Not simply because I am become very
disappointed in a god who hasn’t fixed the things that vex me; hurt the world;
make lives tragic. But because the
construct creates an untenable reality.
In trying to come to grips with the God that inspires “awe”
and wanting this “awe” to be extreme, we decided that God was the smartest,
lovingest, bestest, fastest, strongest thing in reality (for brevity let’s go with the acronym SLBFS). In fact, God is not a thing (as a thing exist
within something else), but God IS reality.
And we live in God. Except that
we don’t, because we can sin and wander away from God… so, how can we wander
away from that in which we live… so, as
a working hypothesis, God is IN reality, but is the smartest, lovingest,
bestest, fastest, strongest for all time
(which doesn’t exist for God either).
Cross our hearts and hope to die.
(which can’t happen to God either).
Do you see how hard this all becomes??? So we settle for an Onmipotent
God. At least that we can
understand. The strongest that there can
ever be! No matter what you think the
ultimate power may be – God is bigger and more powerful.
So, living with this God who is so powerful and all-knowing…
when bad things happen, it must be part of God’s plan. When thousands die in an earthquake, it must
be God’s plan. Surely, God could have
save them… but as God did not, there must be a reason. God is not cruel… (refer back to the SLBFS
god), God knows it all, sees it all, controls it all… So, those that perished
did so because they either deserved to die or because their deaths provided a
greater benefit to the rest of us.
Sucks to be an object lesson.
With this god, there is no chaos in the universe; no random occurrence;
no “real” novelty (already known by God)… but, instead, a whole lot of
seemingly wanton and capricious acts of cruelty.
And along comes Jesus and reminds his disciples that the
blind man is not the result of his parents’ sin; that those who died when the
towers fell were no different than those who survived or lived nowhere near… in
other words, Jesus would seem to indicate that there is a random element in the
universe: Shit does happen. And there
is God.
God who is revealed in Love, not in power. The great thing about Love is that it will
out… love always find a way. Strength and
power fade, it is in their nature; but Love need never fade… We can be
distracted from love, waylaid and pre-occupied, but when we return, when we
discover the limits of power, love comes back to life. Again and again… and will do so always.
I don’t know… my thoughts are half baked, as I emerge from
the cocoon of my bed… there may be an Easter sermon here… at the very least
there is a sense, for me, that Jesus struggled with an Omnipotent god, too –
which is why he always seems to point to a different God, one of compassion and
love.
