The word "god" represents so many different things to many different people. It's like the word "love" ... cannot be defined. Whatever heals your soul...
MY RESPONSE:
Unfortunately,
you're right. God or gods always have been in the eye of the beholder ... which
is not the solution but the problem. The god with which blameless children are
brow-beaten into guilty submission, the god under which slavery was sanctioned,
males kept ascendant, and women denied their reproductive rights, the god under
which women are closeted away and beaten for any perceived infraction, the god
by which genital mutilation is practiced, the god under which children are
denied basic, and sometimes life-saving, medical attention, the god that calls
for young men to strap bombs to themselves and murder innocents ... yes, may
not be the god of love or cosmic spirituality. But where's the distinction?
If you allow
one person's "benign" beliefs - on the continuum from flower children
to those who atrociously behead "infidels" - where do you draw the
line? Who draws the line? Could not an almighty god - creator of the universe,
keeper of naughty or nice lists, and grantor of eternal life - done a better
job at defining exactly what's wanted of his/her/its creations? If a bee
sipping a flower's nectar or the touch of a lover's fingertips or a blazing
sunset or the smile of an infant "heels the soul," lovely, but why
not just call it what it is? Nature or human nature. Why confuse these grand
feelings by trying to make them grander than they already are? Neither the term
nor the idea of a god is necessary.
By the way, I
wish I could agree with you, because I know you to be a warm and caring person,
but the terms "god" and "love" most certainly can be
defined. They're in the dictionary. The precise meanings of god and love (yes,
in various forms) only become vague and subjective when it suits the agenda of
the person speaking those words to be elusive, obfuscating, and expansive to
the point of meaninglessness.
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