Essay
God Is Not On My Side. Or Yours
Roger Rosenblatt on whether God takes sides
BY ROGER ROSENBLATT
Monday, Dec. 17, 2001
This is the season when one tends to think about God (if one thinks about
God at
all), and I would like to offer the opinion that God is not thinking about us. Or if
he is (I'll stay with he), one has no way of knowing that--unless, of course, one
is like Mohamed Atta, who had a pathological view of faith, or Jerry Falwell,
whose mind is Taliban minus the bloodlust. This week the Taliban leader,
Mohammed Omar, may be wondering how tight he is with God, after all. In
September he was certain that God rooted for our extinction. Now, with the
surrender of Kandahar, the mullah may be shopping for a more competent
deity.
"A fanatic," said Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley, "is a man that does what
he
thinks th' Lord wud do if He knew th' facts in th' case." On the other hand,
there
are folks like me who are fanatically uncertain about what God is thinking. I
believe in him, all right. But I do not believe that he is on our, or any, side in
wars
or that he oversouls his way through the trees or that he presides over my
bowling game.
The essential act of faith, it seems to me, is wonder--a sort of involuntary
fascination in awe. By awe, I do not mean the act of seeking, either--the quest
one hears a lot these days in the affectionate recollection of George
Harrison's
My Sweet Lord. I don't believe in seeking, and I don't believe in finding.
Most religions make awe difficult, because they are concerned with ideology,
uniformity, loyalty and favoritism--not the most useful tools for those who
choose to live in mystery. One says that he respects someone else's religion,
but
it is like saying he thinks someone else's children wonderful.
Similarly, if one prays for gifts and protections, one must naturally assume that
God micromanages the universe for the advantage of particular believers. If,
however, one sees prayer as what theologian Paul Tillich called "the great
deep
sigh," prayer becomes an act of unconscious adoration. Religion becomes
more
generous and modest. Even the Gospels were written "according to," which
was
a way of saying "as I see it."
One would like to think that God is on our side against the terrorists, because
the
terrorists are wrong and we are in the right, and any deity worth his salt would
be able to discern that objective truth. But this is simply good-hearted
arrogance
cloaked in morality--the same kind of thinking that makes people decide that
God
created humans in his own image. (See the old New Yorker cartoon that
shows
a giraffe in a field, thinking "And God made giraffe in his own image.") The
God
worth worshiping is the one who pays us the compliment of self-regulation,
and
we might return it by minding our own business.
So indefinite is my idea of God that I do not even connect it to morality. It is
pleasant to believe that God wants us to behave well, and that if we do, we
may
be making those choices that he hoped for when he let us alone. Then again,
we
may not. What if God is who James Joyce said he is in Portrait of the Artist
as a
Young Man, one who sits back after creation "paring his fingernails"? The
idea
is hard to swallow, which is what makes faith equally confounding and thrilling.
In practical terms, it might be quite upsetting to learn God's opinion on such
issues as human cloning, abortion, school prayer, capital punishment,
conservation, nuclear weapons, starvation, disease and an excessive number
of
Krispy Kremes. Where has God been since 1973 regarding the New York
Knicks? I'd like to know. If one wants proof that God does not side with
someone who merely invokes his name frequently, take point guard Charlie
Ward (please).
This whole business of knowing God's devices is particularly nettling to us
modern scientific Americans, who have assured ourselves that we are
capable
of knowing everything. But it is always interesting to see how knowledge, no
matter how fundamental or revolutionary, discloses as many mysteries as it
unravels.
Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer made his way to America from Nazi Germany
at the outbreak of World War II but then decided to return to his country to join
the Resistance. He participated in a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, and
was
caught, jailed and hanged. Bonhoeffer addressed this question of knowing
with
the example of a rose. He said that science allows us to grasp nearly
everything
about the composition of a rose because we have learned so much about
pollination, photosynthesis and so forth. And yet, he said, once we have done
all
that analysis, we still ask, What is a rose?
Hitler had a different question. "Who says," he asked, "that I am not under the
special protection of God?" |
