The Free Radical

Once again, this week, we were left to choose our own topics. I decided to go with a topic which was a primary focus of my latest Newsletter from February 13th– a Newsletter which sought to wrap up Phase One of this journey and move us into the beginning of Phase Two. The topic is faith.

Faith… in All Reasonableness

Faith, along with worship, prayer and grace were peripheral words. I don’t think we ever used them in the house where I grew up. God and Jesus were reserved for exclamatory purposes only; say, if you accidentally hit your thumb with a hammer… but it didn’t quite warrant the extremity of “Fuck!”, you’d probably go with “Jesus Christ!” instead. That was really the extent of religion in our house.

We were atheists, and so were most of our friends. That was my normal.

Then one day, a little more than twenty years ago, I awoke after a bout of what I labeled at the time as conceptual dreaming. I awoke with the phrase “God is self-evident to an open mind” prying my eyes open to a whole new world. Oh dear, this wouldn’t do at all for a good little atheist!

In retrospect, I guess it all comes down to what I mean by an open mind. All of the superficial arguments about the existence of God and the ceaseless squabbles about how best to blow flowers up His omniscient ass– all valid arguments at the level of superficiality– but all of those arguments are resolved in the acceptance of one simple idea:

Everyone defines God in their own unique way.

Whether we should or we shouldn’t is irrelevant in light of the fact that we do. Let us first accept that we each have our own unique relationship to God. Even the atheist has a very similar relationship to God as he has with cousin Jeremy’s imaginary friend; it’s not particularly complex, but the relationship exists, uniquely… there is at least that much space in every mind.

Just by accepting that this is the way it is, the childish arguments lose their grip. How you define God and how you choose to enact your relationship to that definition is wholly (holy) your affair. What has that to do with me? And even if I accept someone else’s definition of God, I still have to find my own way to relate.

God is self-evident to such a simple thought.

Even a lifelong atheist was able to entertain the obviousness of God in such infinite context. And that set me upon a journey… that could be adequately described as my ever-morphing definition of God. A common signpost on that journey is the realization that if God is anywhere, then God is everywhere. You can’t escape God. And God cannot be sequestered, quarantined, or isolated. God can shun God all God wants… but it’s still God.

So the slippery slope begins with an acquiescence of the unique relationship every human has with God, but soon we find that everything is God. So each human being has a unique relationship to everything. Every human being’s unique relationship with God lands them in a unique universe all their own– but totally inclusive of everything. (On the relativistic plane, one seems to be exactly equal to infinity.)

To be in the physical universe is to be in relativity. Everything is defined by relations. The relationships between things in the world don’t exist ‘out there’ anywhere. (You can’t point at a relationship.) Relationships are internal experiences. Do you see? The objects of the world that God supposedly created don’t themselves exist, but the relationships between them do. And those relationships are precisely what we experience as reality.

When God is an object, there is no hope of ever finding such an object.

But as a subject, God demands faith in all that is transcendent of relativity.

This human experience simply cannot ever be reduced to a mathematical equation– no matter how elegant or complex. The greater portion of my being is not time-defined; it’s non-linear. My linear self cannot know in advance what the experience of stepping into that greater beingness might be like… and that is the precipice of faith.

Reason’s got my back when faith is all that’s left… to face.