Is it because we believe God to be powerful - by far the most powerful, infinitely powerful?
Is that why we should affiliate with God?
Is it instead (or as well) because we believe there is nothing-else-but God (and divine creation) - so that it is insane and irrational not to affiliate, because there is literally nothing-else?
These are reasons that some people have, or give, for affiliating with God (as such people understand God).
But it seems to me that the Christian reason for affiliating with God, by-far and essentially the main reason:
Is that - from the depth of our being, insofar as we know it - we approve of God.
Because we know and love God's loving nature.
Because we desire to join and ally our-selves with God's hopes, and plans, and methods.
Thus, for a Christian we ally with the creator not because of his power or oneness or totality; all of which are uncertain and debateable - but instead from our own love of who God is and what God is doing and aiming-at - and the desire to join our efforts, join our selves, with that nature and purpose.
The motivation to align with God the Creator because of his power or his totality is the expression and acceptance of a sort of ontologicial totalitarianism.
ReplyDeleteIt is the willing acceptance to view God as an all-powerful dictator who rules over an intrinsically and necessarily totalitarian system. People are "free" to reject God's power and rule within such a system in mortal life, but such a choice will ultimately come at the cost of eternal punishment.
Within such a framework, obedience and submission to power and totality are the only viable and rational choices an individual can make. Seen from this perspective, the choice to align with God is hardly what I would term heroic or loving.
On the contrary, the choice may stem from fear more than it does from anything else, and I have a difficult time accepting that God the Creator would set Creation up in such a way.
Jesus's primary mission was the Second Creation of Heaven, but among his secondary aims was the dispelling assumptions about God the Creator as dictator.
Put another way, Jesus's mission was a direct challenge to assumptions of ontological totalitrianism. I sense that a big part of Jesus's mission involved changing the way people thought about and understood God the Creator. Part of his mission involved shifting consciousness away from ontologically totalitarian assumptions.
Most Christians appear to have missed this entirely, at least as far as I can tell.
@Frank - My attitude is that there will probably always be people whose affiliation to God is of the nature of "my god is more powerful than your god" - and that this desire was what was being fed (for a particular kind of person) by the philosophers who devised creation from nothing, and the omni-God. Some desire to rule on behalf of a supremely powerful god while others desire to serve such a god.
ReplyDeleteIf that is what some people want, then so be it. A loving god will presumably give these people (pretty much) what they want - at least at the level of what they experience.
What concerns me is that those whose deepest yearnings are for what Jesus offered, are not so often (and so effectively) put-off and diverted by the various "totalitarian package" presentations of "Christianity" presented by the churches.
For historical reasons, it is hard for people to grasp and believe that All the churches are wrong -- *and* Christianity is true, real and attainable.
As you say; we just-are free to do this, every one of us - but most prefer to deny or avoid this freedom.