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Make me a god…in my own image
by Martin Foreman
| Assuming there is a God, what is he like? |
We agree about most things around us. That's blue; this tastes of orange; there's a senator over there and it's raining. That consensus covers indirect experience. I've never seen a live whale, but I'm sure they exist. George Washington was a real man. There is a planet called Neptune. |
It gets more complicated when we consider the abstract. What is beauty? Can we define happiness? How about love? That four-letter word covers emotions from adoration to hatred, lust to pity. Because we all experience it differently, there's no objective standard. The closest we can get is measuring heartbeats and hormones. |
We have the same problem with God. There is no proof that he exists, what sex (if any) he is, or what he is like. We have only the claims of believers, which cannot be proved, and scriptures, which are full contradictions. |
This should be bad news for the faithful. How can they devote their lives to something they cannot describe and which may not exist? In fact, lack of proof helps more than it hinders. Because there is no objective description of God, we can all create our own personal deity. |
You want a loving God? Jesus in the New Testament feeds the five thousand and preaches forgiveness. A vindictive God? Yahweh in the Old Testament is fond of mass murder, including abortion, for those who step out of line. |
How about several gods? Catholicism supplements the trinity with a major goddess and hundreds of minor deities, known as saints. Hinduism offers hundreds of fighting and fornicating gods. |
We can theoretically choose any god, but we are so strongly influenced by our upbringing that we seldom stray from it. That means we become Christian not because Christ is God but because our parents and communities are Christian. Still, there is plenty of choice within those limited horizons. |
If we are loving and forgiving, so is our God. Wrongdoers may spend time in Hell, but in the end the God we worship will deny no-one entry to heaven. If we are aggressive and insecure, our God is equally unpleasant. His love is highly conditional. Those who don't obey the strict rules will burn forever while the righteous watch with a self-satisfied smile. |
Whether loving or threatening, each of us is convinced that our image of God is accurate and exists independently of us. We are wrong, of course. God does not create us in his own image; we create him in ours. |
When Pat Robertson talks about God, we learn much more about Pat Robertson than we do about the deity. The same is true for every believer, from slick televangelist to hesitant teenager. |
But while most believers are content with the gods they make, Falwell and others go further, claiming to be God's messenger or even God himself. |
Havoc is wreaked by those who claim to know God's will. Millions have died over the centuries, and they continue to die today in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon. |
The blame for these deaths does not lie with a nonexistent deity. It lies with those who create Gods to justify violence. And it lies with every individual who argues, against all evidence, that faith brings blessings, not pain, to humankind. |
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