Theology

Feb. 20, 2016, by jrl:

Here are my latest thoughts about what's important, and what, if anything, is God:

First, there is a context:

1.  One finds oneself in a life.

That's the context.

2.  The life is worth something to the person living it.

3.  There are various significances in a life.  One could care only about pleasure and pain in crude simple selfish thoughtless ways.  One may think more deeply about the things that happen in the life; one may call that being spiritual.

4.  Distilling the deep thoughts into some essence, one may call that essence God.

5.  By experience I found that God exists as much as you or I or anything exists.  I don't understand why or how that is.  I don't even want to understand it.  My experience was fairly isolated.

6.  God does not require that we think about God.  However, the value of a life is related to thoughtful values such as kindness to others; and thoughtfulness and values are like God.

7.  Human society has produced religions, which can be an aid to thoughtfulness and values.  Unfortunately, religions can also lead to great wrongs.  So, being religious is insufficient for knowing right from wrong.  One has to be thoughtful and discerning.  An ingredient of the thoughtfulness is humbleness*:  the realization that oneself may be wrong, and that helpful ideas may come from unexpected or even antagonistic directions.  You can find hints in religions for all such ideas.

*( I don't like the word humility, which sounds too much like humiliation, whereas the meaning I'm after is more like being humble.  So I made up the word humbleness to use instead of humility.)

8.  God allows, and does not punish, reason.  God allows, and does not punish, sincerity.  God allows, and does not punish, kindness.

9.  I do not absolutely know much about God, and I don't think anybody else does either.

10.  For me, the most practically useful, and the most rational, way to think about God is to think of ideals as God.  In this way, God is imaginary, but real in the imagination.  And, God is an ideal or ideals.  God is other things too:  God is love.  But love is hard to describe well.  Love is caring.  Kindness is a kind of love.  Also:  God is an entity that exists whether we think so or not.  But that real God is hard to think about, and hard to describe well.  God (or at least the God I'm thinking about) is a friend.

11.  Just as we can live without some friend, we can live without God.  What matters most is that we have love.  For me, God is the ideal love.  The ideal love is more important than the objective existence of a real God.  Like this:  whatever is the essence of God (perhaps it is love), that essence (or, that spirit) is more important than whatever objectively-existing entity is associated with that essence.  So, if it is possible to have love without God, then that would be good enough.  The existence of God is not the most important thing, except that God were just the name we assign to the most important thing.  It is important to have good behavior toward other feeling beings, and that's probably more important than whether God exists.

12.  I have some beefs (that is, objections or complaints) about religion.  My religious heritage is Christian, so my beef is about Christianity.  But don't take that personally.  If my religious heritage were some other religion, I'm sure I'd have a beef about that one instead.  One thing I notice about Christianity is its exclusivity, as in "the only way to God is this way".  I don't think like that.  I think it is better to allow that there may be other ways to God.

13.  I think God agrees with me.  I mean, assuming that God exists and is paying attention here, then God does not object and allows me to follow this path, and does not demerit me for it; and moreover I think God would actually agree with me if God's paying attention here.

-jrl, Feb. 20, 2016