the prodigal god
dark empathy
Registrant
Disclaimer!
Here I will be discussing god in a rather irreverant and perhaps flippent manner, possibly even with a degree of sarcasm, and certainly with a questioning attitude. If you are one of those Christians who believe implicitely that every word of the bible is true, that Jesus was absolutely the son of god and have a faith in god which is not compatible with critical, harsh and probably not exactly nice questioning, then you might not want to read this post.
The problem is simply this. The worse my recovery got, the more distant god was. I had a couple of direct religious experiences, and I always used to be able to summon the memory of them, or at least a little spark, but as shadow grew, so those memories receeded. I meditatted, I followed the old patterns, but the divinity, the god I thought I knew was gone.
I do not blaime god directly for my abuse, or indeed my disability or anything else, but this abandonment when I needed god most, when I knelt and asked! for god to be with me, this I could not forgive god for (and yes, I've read the bloody footsteps poem and it didn't help).
I became an agnostic, no longer really sure that god gave a rat's arse about anyone who was not in direct contact with god already. I believed god a natural force only, like a river running through a desert, if your beside the river that's good for you, if your dragged out into the desert, ---- well the river ain't going to come to you and even if your dying of thurst the river will roll on regardless.
This was my god, a god who I'd known once but who no longer had any relevance to me because she he or it had abandoned me at the very point I needed god most, indeed I felt I could not forgive god.
I have heard all the christian propergander (which is uniquely christian), about "god sent his son" but where is this son? Two thousand years ago in the middle of Israil? What point has that to me. some ever translated words in an old book quarreled and fought and debated over? Some supposed divine retribution for my believed sins paid for by the nasty execution of a jewish fellow? What has that to do with me or my pain. After all Jesus reputedly had quite a nice life, he got 32 years of doing exactly what he wanted, being accepted by his friends and those around him, he got to preach gods word, or maybe he was gods word, either way he got to do it and heck the man certainly got his message out there, aside from all the free fish sandwiches, unlimited boose and savings on boat travel he might or might not have had into the bargain. There are even some historical scholars of that age who believe Jesus was married.
So, of course then one of his friends rats him out to the romans and he comes a cropper with a cross. Well, so I won't argue that crucifiction is about as nasty a way to die as it's possible to conceive, ---- it was so painful the romans had to make up a new word for just how painful it was.However, does a good beating up and six hours of quite literally excruciating pain mean that Jesus has a right to say he "suffered for all humanity?" did Jesus suffer more than I did for years, did Jesus ever know what it was to be ignored and treated as though he wasn't human? was he told he was diseased so often that he believed it, was he forced to feel loneliness like a drill through the chest for year after year, heck I'd have swaped him for the spear in the ribs any day.
Oh and the kicker of course, depending upon how you read it, all the crucifiction didn't really bother jesus that much anyway because he got to ascend into heaven to sit at the right hand of the father etc etc.
Oh yes, my sins are forgiven because of that gory death, or at least that is christian ttheology, but I don't care! about my sins, it's not my! sins that have done this to me, sorry god but your prescription obviously wasn't for the disease I had.
Even if we leav christian theology and look at other faiths, we run into the same essential problem. A muslim I had a long discussion with told me that Ala's will is beyond understanding and that humans have to honour god by the way they respect each other, ---- well sorry but what of those who don't! honour god.
In Jewish writings I do find something closest, sinse a lot of Jewish writers tend to want to argue with god, but even then how do I trust in "king of the universe" when this king has had me justly imprisoned.
I have tried buhdist meditation, getting in touch with the divine itself through extinguishing desire, but this just plane doesn't work, because there is too much of a well of loneliness inside me, there is something that needed another person, needs intimacy, needs that simple golden humanity that everyone else takes for granted.
all of this are things I've said before, albeit likely not in quite this way, however there is now another chapter to this saga.
L, my star, my rose, who pretty much has filled that empty void just by being there is a christian, she even believes in the existance of angels.
What I have with L is so right, so perfect, so everything I've always wanted that it tempts me to start believing again, indeed I've freely told her that one insite I had the other day is that if angels are indeed messengers of god, the only angel I've ever met is L herself.
During a very serious concert L was giving in germany, one she was rather worried about, I offered to say a prayer for L.
I don't think there are many prayers that begin with the words "Okay then! You don't like me and I don't like you!" but that is how I started.
Suddenly however something strange happened. I found myself repeating the words "Please let her be happy!" over and over again, tears running down my face, and for the first time in years there! was the reminder of the divine I'd wanted, there was the god I remembered, the god I used to have faith was always there.
I was reminded stronglly of the final line of the trio from Les Miserables:
"Remember the truth that once was spoken, to love another person is to see the face of god"
So, all this should be right, and I should start healing and thanking god for sending me such an angel, for finally answering my prayers, for being there.
However, how do I forgive god?
If god is indeed "god the father" what would we say to a father who repeatedly disappoints his son, who is never there when his son needs him most, who abandons his son so completely the son begins to feel that the father he remembers doesn't even exist.
Suppose that father then turned up years later and gave the son a trip to disney land, or a million pounds, or a house of his own or some other great and extravagant gift, something the son had always wanted and could never have gotten on his own. Would such a present make up for the years of neglect? I don't think so.
Is God indeed what I used to call god, god of the happy people, god of lovers, god of the normals and the connected people. where is the god of the outcasts, the god of the diseased, the god who actually sticks by his children, this good shepherd who's supposed to wander around valleys of the shadow of death. INdeed while death holds no terror for me, where is the god who confronts Shadow, (who is ultimately myself).
And now I've found an echoe of that god, that thing I once knew, that ineffable colour, how do I accept it.
One ironic thing (like much of the love L and I have), is that she equally believes me to be an angel. Yet if I am an angel, surely I'm a fallen one, ---- after all my name means light, and so does lucifer and old white beerd certainly had great fun casting me into the abyss didn't he?
Yet what now?
If I find god in the love of others, then that proves exactly what I've always thought, god is not there for the unloved. Yet if I no longer seak for god, what strange and dark paths of twisted logic could I walk, sinse even if I have fallen from the grace of god, I certainly don't want to bring L down with me.
I've never understood faith, not faith in that simple, uncomplicated optimism of the child, the belief that I admired so much in my muslim friend, that trust in god, that willingness to throw ones self of the mercy of often a divinity without word or perception and just assume that things will be alright in the end. I can't trust god, god abandoned me for such a long time.
It would be easy to call this my failing, to give the voice of Shadow a decidedly priestly cast, so that I wasn't just worthless and diseased and alone, but also humble before the lord. to confess my sins like a catholic and glory in my own base sinfulness.
Yet, haven't I spent years trying to silence the voice of shadow, trying to use my rationality to pick apart the messages of worhtlessness, to at least act! as though I am not diseased?
Why should Shadow (who is of course myself), be wrong about everything else but right about my own inadequacy before god?
Oh yes, god is perfect, god is omni this and omni that and creator of the universe, and single and divine and bla bla bla!
Well here is a news flash god, if god indeed did create the universe he did a pretty crappy job, indeed if we're going to play the all mighty creator game then the universe has a fare few holes, problem of evil, sin, general bad stuff etc.
even on a personal level, if I am supposed to believe all of this is "god's divine plan that passeth all understanding", then why should I let god off the hook for the bad stuff? If god did indeed send L as his angel, then were the girls who abused me his angels as well:? Was that also "His divine plan", after all why does this faculty of faith so easily let people give god so much credit for good things, for the worlds' beauty and mystery, and absolve him her or it of all the bad things.
Is all the missing out I did in the biological lottery something else I can lay at gods oh so ineffable feet?
I used to believe profoundly in process theology and the philosophy of people like Spinosa. That God did not create the universe in 7 or so days, or even in one huge cosmic big bang 15 billion years ago, that God is continually creating and improving the universe, that we, the human race and all of creation itself is evolving slowly throughout some great timeless divine mechanism into one perfect dance of eternal, unknowable bliss, (this also explains why I always gained so much knolidge of the mystery of the divine through the study of physics, cosmology, biology, evolution and the sciences generally).
Yet, if that is indeed the case, if humanity is indeed, (as was wonderful quote has it), where "the falling angel meets the rising ape"
then what sort of bastard does that make God?
Is any great dance, any euphoric transcendence at the end of time itself worth everything I went through?
Are we just the ants god crushes benieth his monster truck wheels on the way to his final creation? Oh yes, the creation might be beautiful, but that hardly makes the ant's situation anythemore bareable, after all it was Imanual Kant who famously said to always treat people as ends in themselves, not as means to another end, and if god is love, love should not make such unthinking sacrifices.
Of course, it is tempting to really posset the existance of an adversary at this point, to say the good things belong to god, the bad things were sent by his alter ego. In that case however, why am I worshipping god? Wouldn't it make more sense to pray to this other side, this dark side not! to be quite such a scuzbag? Indeed, on the balance of my life I'd probably have to say if there is something dark, a being of anti love in this universe, then I'm probably closer related to that force.
Then again, while I've had experiences of the divine, I've never had an experience of the enfurnal, and according to occam's rasa, multiplying entities is a bad thing, plus of course then there are all the consequent questions of blame and responsability and general confusion, not to mention that I've always found the idea of an adversary a pretty unlikely one myself for all the darkness I've seen (humans are definitely more than capable of being bad enough on their own without inventing other beings to contribute to the situation).
So this is where I find myself. A person with a great deal of learning, too much experience yet not enough of those experiences which could perhaps confirm me in spirit.
I'm not sure whether to hate or love god, whether to seak god in the love of others, and to forgive the god I find if indeed I find some form of god there. That L and what we share is unquestionably right and possibly even devine I don't doubt, but is this a credit to god, or just to her and possibly even to me as well.
I don't know where to go with this, indeed me, the one with all the learning and the philosophy and the knolidge doesn't know where to go with this or how to resolve this quandry. Indeed from at least being an agnostic with a boarderline dislike, perhaps even hatred for the god I once knew, I now don't even know what to think.
I don't know if anyone has any thoughts on this, but I appreciate getting it out, and I appologise for the rather abrasive tone of some of this, I just needed to talk this to myself, including the irreverant attitude sinse there are things I've been wanting to say about god for a long time.
As I said, if anyone has any thoughts, feel free to chip in, though I'm afraid the siple "have faith and trust god because he sent his son etc etc" probably won't be helpful at this stage, because frankly I don't have any faith at all, and indeed don't particularly trust god , unless the very search for faith could be called a form of faith in itself.
Luke.
Here I will be discussing god in a rather irreverant and perhaps flippent manner, possibly even with a degree of sarcasm, and certainly with a questioning attitude. If you are one of those Christians who believe implicitely that every word of the bible is true, that Jesus was absolutely the son of god and have a faith in god which is not compatible with critical, harsh and probably not exactly nice questioning, then you might not want to read this post.
The problem is simply this. The worse my recovery got, the more distant god was. I had a couple of direct religious experiences, and I always used to be able to summon the memory of them, or at least a little spark, but as shadow grew, so those memories receeded. I meditatted, I followed the old patterns, but the divinity, the god I thought I knew was gone.
I do not blaime god directly for my abuse, or indeed my disability or anything else, but this abandonment when I needed god most, when I knelt and asked! for god to be with me, this I could not forgive god for (and yes, I've read the bloody footsteps poem and it didn't help).
I became an agnostic, no longer really sure that god gave a rat's arse about anyone who was not in direct contact with god already. I believed god a natural force only, like a river running through a desert, if your beside the river that's good for you, if your dragged out into the desert, ---- well the river ain't going to come to you and even if your dying of thurst the river will roll on regardless.
This was my god, a god who I'd known once but who no longer had any relevance to me because she he or it had abandoned me at the very point I needed god most, indeed I felt I could not forgive god.
I have heard all the christian propergander (which is uniquely christian), about "god sent his son" but where is this son? Two thousand years ago in the middle of Israil? What point has that to me. some ever translated words in an old book quarreled and fought and debated over? Some supposed divine retribution for my believed sins paid for by the nasty execution of a jewish fellow? What has that to do with me or my pain. After all Jesus reputedly had quite a nice life, he got 32 years of doing exactly what he wanted, being accepted by his friends and those around him, he got to preach gods word, or maybe he was gods word, either way he got to do it and heck the man certainly got his message out there, aside from all the free fish sandwiches, unlimited boose and savings on boat travel he might or might not have had into the bargain. There are even some historical scholars of that age who believe Jesus was married.
So, of course then one of his friends rats him out to the romans and he comes a cropper with a cross. Well, so I won't argue that crucifiction is about as nasty a way to die as it's possible to conceive, ---- it was so painful the romans had to make up a new word for just how painful it was.However, does a good beating up and six hours of quite literally excruciating pain mean that Jesus has a right to say he "suffered for all humanity?" did Jesus suffer more than I did for years, did Jesus ever know what it was to be ignored and treated as though he wasn't human? was he told he was diseased so often that he believed it, was he forced to feel loneliness like a drill through the chest for year after year, heck I'd have swaped him for the spear in the ribs any day.
Oh and the kicker of course, depending upon how you read it, all the crucifiction didn't really bother jesus that much anyway because he got to ascend into heaven to sit at the right hand of the father etc etc.
Oh yes, my sins are forgiven because of that gory death, or at least that is christian ttheology, but I don't care! about my sins, it's not my! sins that have done this to me, sorry god but your prescription obviously wasn't for the disease I had.
Even if we leav christian theology and look at other faiths, we run into the same essential problem. A muslim I had a long discussion with told me that Ala's will is beyond understanding and that humans have to honour god by the way they respect each other, ---- well sorry but what of those who don't! honour god.
In Jewish writings I do find something closest, sinse a lot of Jewish writers tend to want to argue with god, but even then how do I trust in "king of the universe" when this king has had me justly imprisoned.
I have tried buhdist meditation, getting in touch with the divine itself through extinguishing desire, but this just plane doesn't work, because there is too much of a well of loneliness inside me, there is something that needed another person, needs intimacy, needs that simple golden humanity that everyone else takes for granted.
all of this are things I've said before, albeit likely not in quite this way, however there is now another chapter to this saga.
L, my star, my rose, who pretty much has filled that empty void just by being there is a christian, she even believes in the existance of angels.
What I have with L is so right, so perfect, so everything I've always wanted that it tempts me to start believing again, indeed I've freely told her that one insite I had the other day is that if angels are indeed messengers of god, the only angel I've ever met is L herself.
During a very serious concert L was giving in germany, one she was rather worried about, I offered to say a prayer for L.
I don't think there are many prayers that begin with the words "Okay then! You don't like me and I don't like you!" but that is how I started.
Suddenly however something strange happened. I found myself repeating the words "Please let her be happy!" over and over again, tears running down my face, and for the first time in years there! was the reminder of the divine I'd wanted, there was the god I remembered, the god I used to have faith was always there.
I was reminded stronglly of the final line of the trio from Les Miserables:
"Remember the truth that once was spoken, to love another person is to see the face of god"
So, all this should be right, and I should start healing and thanking god for sending me such an angel, for finally answering my prayers, for being there.
However, how do I forgive god?
If god is indeed "god the father" what would we say to a father who repeatedly disappoints his son, who is never there when his son needs him most, who abandons his son so completely the son begins to feel that the father he remembers doesn't even exist.
Suppose that father then turned up years later and gave the son a trip to disney land, or a million pounds, or a house of his own or some other great and extravagant gift, something the son had always wanted and could never have gotten on his own. Would such a present make up for the years of neglect? I don't think so.
Is God indeed what I used to call god, god of the happy people, god of lovers, god of the normals and the connected people. where is the god of the outcasts, the god of the diseased, the god who actually sticks by his children, this good shepherd who's supposed to wander around valleys of the shadow of death. INdeed while death holds no terror for me, where is the god who confronts Shadow, (who is ultimately myself).
And now I've found an echoe of that god, that thing I once knew, that ineffable colour, how do I accept it.
One ironic thing (like much of the love L and I have), is that she equally believes me to be an angel. Yet if I am an angel, surely I'm a fallen one, ---- after all my name means light, and so does lucifer and old white beerd certainly had great fun casting me into the abyss didn't he?
Yet what now?
If I find god in the love of others, then that proves exactly what I've always thought, god is not there for the unloved. Yet if I no longer seak for god, what strange and dark paths of twisted logic could I walk, sinse even if I have fallen from the grace of god, I certainly don't want to bring L down with me.
I've never understood faith, not faith in that simple, uncomplicated optimism of the child, the belief that I admired so much in my muslim friend, that trust in god, that willingness to throw ones self of the mercy of often a divinity without word or perception and just assume that things will be alright in the end. I can't trust god, god abandoned me for such a long time.
It would be easy to call this my failing, to give the voice of Shadow a decidedly priestly cast, so that I wasn't just worthless and diseased and alone, but also humble before the lord. to confess my sins like a catholic and glory in my own base sinfulness.
Yet, haven't I spent years trying to silence the voice of shadow, trying to use my rationality to pick apart the messages of worhtlessness, to at least act! as though I am not diseased?
Why should Shadow (who is of course myself), be wrong about everything else but right about my own inadequacy before god?
Oh yes, god is perfect, god is omni this and omni that and creator of the universe, and single and divine and bla bla bla!
Well here is a news flash god, if god indeed did create the universe he did a pretty crappy job, indeed if we're going to play the all mighty creator game then the universe has a fare few holes, problem of evil, sin, general bad stuff etc.
even on a personal level, if I am supposed to believe all of this is "god's divine plan that passeth all understanding", then why should I let god off the hook for the bad stuff? If god did indeed send L as his angel, then were the girls who abused me his angels as well:? Was that also "His divine plan", after all why does this faculty of faith so easily let people give god so much credit for good things, for the worlds' beauty and mystery, and absolve him her or it of all the bad things.
Is all the missing out I did in the biological lottery something else I can lay at gods oh so ineffable feet?
I used to believe profoundly in process theology and the philosophy of people like Spinosa. That God did not create the universe in 7 or so days, or even in one huge cosmic big bang 15 billion years ago, that God is continually creating and improving the universe, that we, the human race and all of creation itself is evolving slowly throughout some great timeless divine mechanism into one perfect dance of eternal, unknowable bliss, (this also explains why I always gained so much knolidge of the mystery of the divine through the study of physics, cosmology, biology, evolution and the sciences generally).
Yet, if that is indeed the case, if humanity is indeed, (as was wonderful quote has it), where "the falling angel meets the rising ape"
then what sort of bastard does that make God?
Is any great dance, any euphoric transcendence at the end of time itself worth everything I went through?
Are we just the ants god crushes benieth his monster truck wheels on the way to his final creation? Oh yes, the creation might be beautiful, but that hardly makes the ant's situation anythemore bareable, after all it was Imanual Kant who famously said to always treat people as ends in themselves, not as means to another end, and if god is love, love should not make such unthinking sacrifices.
Of course, it is tempting to really posset the existance of an adversary at this point, to say the good things belong to god, the bad things were sent by his alter ego. In that case however, why am I worshipping god? Wouldn't it make more sense to pray to this other side, this dark side not! to be quite such a scuzbag? Indeed, on the balance of my life I'd probably have to say if there is something dark, a being of anti love in this universe, then I'm probably closer related to that force.
Then again, while I've had experiences of the divine, I've never had an experience of the enfurnal, and according to occam's rasa, multiplying entities is a bad thing, plus of course then there are all the consequent questions of blame and responsability and general confusion, not to mention that I've always found the idea of an adversary a pretty unlikely one myself for all the darkness I've seen (humans are definitely more than capable of being bad enough on their own without inventing other beings to contribute to the situation).
So this is where I find myself. A person with a great deal of learning, too much experience yet not enough of those experiences which could perhaps confirm me in spirit.
I'm not sure whether to hate or love god, whether to seak god in the love of others, and to forgive the god I find if indeed I find some form of god there. That L and what we share is unquestionably right and possibly even devine I don't doubt, but is this a credit to god, or just to her and possibly even to me as well.
I don't know where to go with this, indeed me, the one with all the learning and the philosophy and the knolidge doesn't know where to go with this or how to resolve this quandry. Indeed from at least being an agnostic with a boarderline dislike, perhaps even hatred for the god I once knew, I now don't even know what to think.
I don't know if anyone has any thoughts on this, but I appreciate getting it out, and I appologise for the rather abrasive tone of some of this, I just needed to talk this to myself, including the irreverant attitude sinse there are things I've been wanting to say about god for a long time.
As I said, if anyone has any thoughts, feel free to chip in, though I'm afraid the siple "have faith and trust god because he sent his son etc etc" probably won't be helpful at this stage, because frankly I don't have any faith at all, and indeed don't particularly trust god , unless the very search for faith could be called a form of faith in itself.
Luke.
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