Confessions of a Heretic

If we choose to believe a text, a human product as that which ‘God' has given, precisely as it is, we are believing a text, not 'God’. We are believing that the extant text, literally, is what ‘God’ has given and is distinct from that which the text contains, or says, or signifies. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, or in Christian terms, the “Old Testament”, was seen as miraculous, as having been the result of seventy independent translators who then each translated the “original” text precisely and exactly the same. Believing such, is believing a text. It is not believing what that text says. It is believing in the revelation of the text, not in the revelation of what the text contains. Believing a text as being ‘God’s’ revelation is not the same as believing in ‘God’. It is making a text, a human product, even if produced by divine inspiration, a divine product itself. It is asserting that the text itself is the incarnation of ‘God’. One may believe that believing that the entire universe is only some six thousand years old is a belief in divine revelation, but that cannot be proven and the substance of that asserted revelation contradicts all the available evidence, even if it is theoretically possible, if one believes in ‘God’ and that ‘God’ is ‘God’. But such a belief denies the revelation of creation itself, and opposes ‘God’s’ revelation of a divinely created text to ‘God’s’ revelation in ‘God’s’ creation of all that is. That is not rational. It is an irrational belief, for it is asserting that ‘God’ contradicts ‘God’, even as ‘God’ does contradict God. ‘God’ cannot be limited to or confined by human reason. But if ‘God’ is ‘God’ and if ‘God’ has created human beings, then human reason is part of ‘God’s’ creation, and to oppose creation to creation is irrational. My point here is that reason is either a substitute for ‘God’, which then yields analogous problems to the question of ‘God’ itself, or is based on belief and faith in ‘God’. The problem is that faith or belief cannot be proved by reason, and reason cannot be proved by faith, even as faith or belief and reason are interdependent, and when faith is taken as reason or when reason is taken as faith there are problems. Reason can defend faith, and faith can defend reason, providing that the faith is rational, for faith that is irrational is illusion or delusion, especially when it is asserted as reason. Belief in ‘God’ or not-‘God’, belief in an afterlife or belief in no afterlife, are both reasonable, because neither can be disproven by reason and by that which is. The problem is when belief is belief in that which is irrational, belief in that which contradicts reason, then that belief is irrational, and consequently is illusion and/or delusion. Such a delusional, irrational, belief is that ‘God’ makes everything o.k., that ‘God’ will help us with regard to the help we want, if we just pray enough, that ‘God’ helps us find parking spaces or score touchdowns (even though, as will be argued below, ‘God’ is the cause of us finding parking spaces and scoring touchdowns). Such beliefs are irrational because ‘God’ clearly does not always do so. ‘God’ does not always “provide” a parking space when we pray for one. ‘God’ does not always make us score a touchdown—figuratively or literally—when we ask. In The Sound of Music, Maria says that when God closes a door, He always opens a window. Yet that is not always the case. ‘God’ sometimes not only closes the door, but slams and locks all windows—that is, all windows that we can see and/or recognize as windows, or the window that ‘God’ opens appears to be one onto that which is even worse than where we were before, leaving no escape. As I will argue below, ‘God’ may very well “answer our prayers”, but it is not because we ask; it is not because we pray; it is not because we deserve it. If ‘God’ is ‘God’, ‘God’ does not dicker. So often our God is a human, all too human God. God is what we want God to be, and when ‘God’ is not that, we question, and suffer and “lose faith”. The problem here is not with ‘God’, but with our understanding and conception of God. If we believe in a God that we create according to our own thoughts, conceptions, hopes and dreams, we are simply creating an idol, the benevolent divine grandpa, or even father, or the great divine genie, who is there to do our bidding, even when we think that our bidding is God’s, making our own wishes, desires, and plans those of the eternal, atemporal God. ‘God’ does not conform to our finite minds, our limited minds, our self-centered minds, and any and every attempt to assert that we know the mind of ‘God’ is simply appealing to divine authority for our own desires; it is simply an attempt to claim God for ourselves, to claim that God is on our side; to claim that we can speak for God. It is to ignore the Scriptural assertion: My thoughts are not your thoughts (Is. 55:8), which is perhaps as certain a statement of revelation as there can be, if ‘God’ is and if ‘God’ is ‘God’.