What if?

[maugorn]

Here's something to ponder today, an election day, the day after 9/11 with all of it's bad memory. (I've been saying things like this commenting in other journals, and I think it's time it got put up here. It's also something that needs to go up elsewhere. So quote or steal the quote even, the issue is bigger than me)


Ok, what if...

We've got it all completely backwards?
What if the massive disagreements about the nature of God are not because somebody got it wrong, but because they are *all* right?

What if our race's varying beliefs about God tell us, not about God, but about US?

It's hard NOT to notice that different children, even within the same family, will need different methods and have different learning styles to master the exact same lessons?
They'll have different strengths, weakness, aptitudes, and they'll even grasp the same concept from different angles, and even the most gifted will never seem to master everything.
Each child, in the end turns out to be unique.
How could and why should Spirituality be any different?

What if God is big, really big, mindbogglingly big? So enormous in scope and complexity that it's impossible for A Human to fully understand God, because understanding God would require that human to utterly transcend not only their consciousness but their existence as well.
We're talking about a Force that could jump start an entire Universe after all.

In the face of something so Big, the best a single Human could ever hope to do, it seems, would be to grasp or understand a glimpse, a single facet, a portion, and that would ONLY be the portion that they're capable of understanding.

So what if our diverse beliefs about God come from this? What if it's NOT a mistake for someone to percieve God differently from you? What if your unique experience of God, that no one else can have because it's tailor fit for you, is not a mistake, but a Gift?

What if the purpose of YOUR personal message from God is there to help YOU?

And what if your personal message from God includes "Go out and tell other people"?
What if your personal message contradicts someone else's?
What are we supposed to do?

Fight?
We've all been there and done that. Has it ever worked? In all of our history, has fighting over Religion ever really achieved long term progress, happiness, prosperity, for the people involved?
How many fights is it gonna take before we realise that fighting doesn't work?

I ask again: What if our fights say alot more about us than about God?

What if we've all got it all wrong?

What if, instead of taking our different ideas and fighting with them and fighting for them, and fighting over them, we're supposed to share them, compare notes, see where they fit together- like a puzzle- a puzzle so big and so complex, and so grand and beautiful that it's impossible for any single person, any group, any sect, any creed, ANY subset of humanity to solve, grasp, understand?

What if the mystery of God is SO mindbogglingly transcendent of Us that it's going to take all of Us (and more?) to piece it together and possibly all of Time to understand it?

What if we decide to think and act THAT way, instead of the way we're acting now?
What would happen?
What if?

Comments

[sensualquills.livejournal.com]

AMEN. *Huuuuuuugs*

[revelrain.livejournal.com]

The analogy I've always liked to use is that the Divine is so bright, that our spiritual eyes cannot look upon it without some kind of filter. So we've all got our little spiritual sunglasses, so to speak, and they aren't all tinted in the same way. ;)

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

We'd...be exhibiting logic, intelligence, reason, good sense and kindness. In the name of religion.
The world would probably spontaneously implode. (But in a good way.)

Anyway, this is why I'm Unitarian Universalist as well as Pagan. Because this: "What if, instead of taking our different ideas and fighting with them and fighting for them, and fighting over them, we're supposed to share them, compare notes, see where they fit together- like a puzzle- a puzzle so big and so complex, and so grand and beautiful that it's impossible for any single person, any group, any sect, any creed, ANY subset of humanity to solve, grasp, understand?" is pretty much the goal of the UU faith as I see it. If you add the words, "over coffee and cake." (Or tea. Or juice. We're not dogmatic about the coffee.)

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

When the humans can manage THAT, thy will finally be done.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm something of an anomaly: grew up in a mostly Jewish town, Roman Catholic dad, Presbyterian mom; formal religious instruction from both parents' churches. In Catholic school in PA I got taught by priests who were effectively the children of Vatican II, and the general tone of the Church in the USA was more progressive than it's been since.

I went to college in a place where Catholics were a decided minority, yet because of the proliferation of Protestant sects the Catholic Student Association was the largest religious student group on campus. I went to InterVarsity meetings until somewhere in my junior year when the fundamentalist Pentecostals really got hold of the group and us Catholics (about a dozen of us then) found better places to spend their time.

The conclusion I came to from my decidedly mixed upbringing is that there are many paths, leading towards a far fewer number of destinations. And some of those destinations aren't what some folks think they are. But what works for *me* in my search for Divine Truth isn't necessarily going to work for somebody else -- so I'm generally content to let others practice their beliefs as long as [a] it actually works for them, [b] nobody tries to tell me that my beliefs are wrong, and [c] their beliefs don't result in harm to unwilling or unwitting innocents. Over the years I have worked out that there is a very fine line between people trying to come up with ways to comprehend God, and people placing limits on God. Too many people cross over that line to the bad side. I make a conscious effort *not* to cross that line -- for to cross it is to betray the way I was brought up.