Our Father

With tears streaking down our faces, my brother and I ponderously walked through the front door of our home in London. My Mom ran to hold us and investigate what had caused this most dramatic of entrances. Not deferring from the usual, Dad was calmly watching the news, not really taking much notice as we began to describe the screaming gang of older boys who had picked a fight with us. Naturally, my mother was saddened to hear this but above all, grateful that we were OK. This reaction did not surprise either of us in the least. Dad's reaction, however, did. He immediately rose from his slumber state of meditation and said he was going to the park to fix this. I pleaded with him to stay home as the three of us where scared of what might transpire between the gruesome gang of loitering teens and my Father. Stubborn as ever, he told me to stop crying and take care of my mom and brother as he left the house. Half an hour later he returned; calm and cool as ever taking his throne and continuing his afternoon perusal of the daily news. When we asked what had happened he didn't tell us any details but assured us we would no longer face problems while playing at the park. I am a peaceful character at heart, but how could a kid not feel satisfied at his Dad kicking the butts of some bullies? With a fair amount of certainty I can confirm for both my brother and I that we had never felt more protected, safe and comforted than on that day.

We come into the world as very dependent beings, in constant need to be loved and nurtured. It is my personal belief that this necessity sticks with us forever as human beings while we go about looking for safe and secure situations to dwell in. The person we see after the stork drops us off is our mother; caring and loving enough not be turned away by the piles of poop she will inevitably wipe away. The second being we come to know is the man of the house. We look to our fathers for support and a type of love that is very different than that of our mothers. Whether you're a guy or a girl, you will always look to your dad to take care of things and, more importantly, to look out for you and be your crutch in a world where injuries are aplenty. Those of us unfortunate enough not to have our fathers around will instinctively look for an ample substitute. In some cases, a single mom takes on the arduous task of completing the duties of a father. In others, a child will look to older friends as role models or ideals of what a man should be. And this is the most important thing a father does for his little girl or boy. He shows his daughter how a woman is to be treated by the opposite sex; with respect, equality and, above all, love. On the flip side, it is also his duty to show his son how to treat a woman and be "a real man". In extreme cases, our need for a father figure drives us to gangs. The family feel of a "band of brothers" attempts to fill the gaping hole of a missing father. Sadly, it fails. Judging by human history and religion in particular, we have taken our search for a Daddy and, somehow, found God.....

Many religious people I know have answered that having God has gotten them through the tough times in life and, in some cases, even saved them. The notion I presented in the previous post about us possibly creating God in our image is bolstered by this glaring fact that we have taken the attributes normally used to describe our fathers and, after adding a good dose of Omni, decided that God is also that way. Our naturally human need to be comforted and consoled, coupled together with our impatience and need for answers, has led us to find the nearest thesaurus and begin professing to the world about how God is.

What I've found rather ironic while reading about different religion and their ideas of God's nature is that they all glorify him in saying that he is "indescribable" or "too big for a human to comprehend", yet have all arrived to the conclusion that God is the proud owner of a penis (and well endowed, I imagine)! One thing that bothers me greatly is why humans have decided God has to be male. I mean, why can't "he" be a female? We all come out of one, so it logically follows that the first human would as well. Or, screw that, why does God, the creator of everything we can see or touch, have to be a man or a women? It makes no sense to me at all. The only conclusion I have been able to arrive to is that our male dominated and chauvinistic society decided to create God in their image. Just look at when all three of the world religion today were born; Islam has been around since the year 600 ad, Christianity since the a couple decades after the death of Christ and Judaism since, well, a really, really long time ago. Think about how only recently women have been granted equality, on paper anyway, and how it must have been nearly two millennia ago! I mean, women had nearly zero rights. After scrutinizing the Old Testament you can find a wealth of passages that display the inferiority of women in the bible. The New Testament is less notorious about this and the most diabolical breach of women’s rights I could find was Paul telling the females to "please just shut up" (see 1 Timothy 2: 11-12). I don't mean to pick on the Bible here as the rights of women are terribly toyed with by all three of these religions. This, to me, also goes along with how we created God in our image, and heavily relied upon the culture and tradition at the time of "conception". Sadly, with these religions being heavily outdated, women as second class citizens were just part of such traditions. How unfortunate.

It may seem trivial, but the idea of God as a father is a very important one. I believe it highlights the fact that the need to be loved and comforted drove us to create such patriarchal and bigoted ideas of our creator without being humble enough to accept that maybe "he" is really indescribable. As for the rest of this lovely blog, I will (and this pains me greatly to say) conform to what society has unanimously decided in that God will be referred to as he. In no way, however, do I actually believe God is an old man with a white bread who hails in the skies and doesn’t really like women. I certainly do, and I believe I was created in his image so he must love the ladies. It is sad to retort but, in a world where fathers are fast disappearing, God has had to “take the high road” and serve as an ample substitute. I really don't think our one creator would be happy with having to act in place of the flawed humans he created. He's just too awesome for that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gNYVia2rg

Creator or Created?

We all live life looking for stability. Even adrenaline junkies who move from place to place and seem anything but stable are in constant pursuit of that. In reaching this safe haven of surety we go about our daily lives looking to make enough money to get by, surround ourselves with people we perceive love us and, above all, have the answers to absolutely everything. This need-to-know complexity is a driving force that determines our passions, life works and who we are. God, like with most other things, tops this list. We just need to know this guy! Egyptians went to a polytheistic approach when contending that over 2000 different gods existed and became apparent to us in the form of animals. Yes, dogs were a lot more than a "man's best friend" back then; they were gods. The Greeks also had a many gods but were clear that Zeus, the "crème de la crème" of their belief system, was above all and hailed in mount Olympus. The Vikings followed up this trend by saying that there were many gods who concerned themselves with different aspects of life, such as war, travel and home. Thor, the god of thunder, is the most popular today and is even depicted in children's cartoons. Yes, our need for answers has driven us in many varying directions concerning God. This raises the question though: How could they all be right and what do they really tell about human nature and, dare I say, God's nature?

The first possibility that comes to mind is God, whoever he or they are, created us in such a way that we would naturally look to him and seek him out. The Bible rather audaciously claims that if we seek we shall find Him. By Him of course I mean the Christian depiction of God. If we peruse this concept without too much consideration it makes perfect sense and fits in well with what God would do. He would undoubtedly want for us to find and love him and, even though he could make us do it, prefers it to be our own choice. So, creating us with a need-to-know concept of life is perfectly reasonable and just makes sense. Unfortunately, a deeper scrutiny of our history depicts a very different story. We live in a world where ideas about God, his origin and characteristics nearly outnumber the number of people even created to inhabit His creation! Of course, this is a mild exaggeration but the point I'm trying to make is that if the one true God did decided to go about winning our hearts, planting this idea in our minds doesn't seem to have worked. In fact, it seems to have been destined to fail. It's created a world torn and divided with wars fought and lives taken in the name of God. I really don't see the "big guy in the sky" electing this route.

I'm current in the process of reading a book by Christian author Donald Miller called "Searching for God knows what". In one of the earlier chapters in the book he cites the workings of Abraham Maslow and, in particular, his compilation of the "Hierarchy of needs". This idea is that we are all looking to reach self-actualization by getting everything we need from life step by step. It is in the form of a pyramid with the more basic things such as sleep, food and water at the bottom and the complexities of life such as friendship, self esteem and morality at the top. Maslow stated that a need for a higher being, someone who looks out for us and protects us, is one of the crucial steps humans have sub-consciously devised to reach self actualization.

The second possibility to explain where this trait of human nature originated lies with Abraham Maslow's theory. We need to be loved. From a very early age we look to be nurtured and taken care of and, even though the precious years of adolescence provide a certain rebellious nature that leads us to break free from this and look for independence, I believe it sticks with us throughout life. So when we're older and can't really rely on mommy and daddy to get us through the daily struggles of the world, we looked to the white bearded man who loves us all equally. No, not Santa. God. When a lack of answers presented itself, particularly in the times of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians when science was merely a speck of dust in comparison to today's advancement, we decided to go ahead and describe what we would like God to be. This, to me, is the far more plausible possibility. It describes why there have been, and still are, so many different ideas of our creator. So many religions dominate our spheres of life today that, if you're on the outside looking in, it's hard to decide which makes sense and easy to conclude that they are all just a reflection of tradition and culture founded in a particular time and place by mere humans who created God how they saw fit.

Another very interesting thing I've discovered while inspecting the different world religions that are apparent today is, although they are exceedingly different in some ways, in others they are terribly consistent. For one, their Gods are all loving in ways we cannot comprehend. They are all powerful, of course, and could whoop any other god's butt if they wanted. I know it goes without saying, but their certain way of believing is right while every other is wrong and an act of evil that will be punished with eternal damnation in hell, yet another thing they have in common. Yes, it is ironic that a God with an abundance of love would condemn his creation with an eternal punishment for eternal sins but, I digress. The last and possibly most interesting point is that most, if not all, depict God as a father figure. What better comparison could there be. I mean, and pardon my possible blasphemous nature here, but couldn't a child describe his father with literally all the things we attribute to God? Maybe.....

To me, it's a very real possibility that we by-passed any form of true searching while looking for God and went straight to what we wanted him to be like. It's definitely far easier and satisfies all of our worldly needs to be loved and taken care of. Who knows, maybe Adam created God in his image and not the other way around.

Argumentum ad Populum

I remember spending a greater part of my childhood wanting to conform. This sub-conscious trait that is embedded in all of us somehow shone through with a particular ferocity in me. Maybe it was because I was an Albanian immigrant from Kosovo attending a predominately white English primary school? Now, I don't want to create a false impression of complete unacceptance by my peers and social class in London, but the voice that uttered the words convincing me I was odd, or a misfit, always spoke to me.

We would go clothes shopping with whatever money we had saved and I would always be the one skimming through the stores looking for apparel that somewhat resembled that of the majority at school. My parents, the ever loving pair that only wanted the best for me, naturally granted my wishes. They knew, of course, the maze I was in but figured it's something everyone goes through at some point or other. It probably is. *fingers crossed*

Where I'm going with this is that, as humans, we build self-esteem and create those feelings of worth by comparing ourselves to others. Even in the most confidant, out-going of individuals, all it takes is a careful look and the trait becomes apparent. We will do anything to climb the social ladder and come ever closer to a goal of ultimate self-love, something that is unfortunately unreachable. We will always want more.

This notion controls the masses like sheep being tended to by a Shepard, or cattle being directed by a farmer. It is ever more obvious in politics, social behaviors and, my personal favorite, religion. "Argumentum ad Populum" is an argument that concludes a certain proposition to be true because many or all believe it to be so. It contends that "if many believe so, it IS so".

If you recall my previous post, this was a very strong reason for my research binge over the past year. I would think to myself, "There must be SOMETHING in this whole thing if some 30% of the world believes in it." I simply couldn't shake the feeling that they had some piece of information I didn't, some formula I had missed out on in school during my years of attempting to fit in or some secret truth I would only discover if I looked hard enough. So, I looked.....

Upon looking I found, as well as a vast expanse of facts and figures, that just because all my friends where wearing the new and trendy soccer shoes on a rainy day, maybe this wasn't the best idea. Maybe a billion people were wrong about something, lets say their idea of God, and only a handful were right. Maybe.

Now, this is NO way led me to believe what I believe. It served no other purpose in my spiritual journey than freeing me from the shackles of social acceptance and conformity. It served as a liberating force detaching me from something that plagued my mind into following my peers much like sardines do theirs.

To indirectly quote Bill Maher, "Eat shit people! 20 million flies do it. Why not!?"

Isn't it Enough!?

I always spent my younger years detached from religion and the idea of "a creator". This wasn't because my parents tried to influence me or protect me; it just never really had any importance in our family home. Jehovah's witnesses would come knocking on our door in London and we'd politely turn them away and say we weren't interested. And that's what I never really understood. Why!? Isn't it enough that YOU already have "the ultimate truth"? Why would you waste time going around pestering people with your ideas of this and that.....

I never really got that till this past year when I decided to begin my semi-spiritual journey. I say that because I approached the matter with much trepidation and a fear of the unknown. This was all very new to me and I confess I was afraid of "missing out" at many times. I still am.

So I started reading. A lot. I guess my main reason for kick starting this endeavor was the abundance of Christian friends and missionaries I had forged relationships with over the past year or two in my high school. I wanted to better understand them and their faith. It is also worth mentioning that I was intrigued by religion, and the Bible in particular, because SO many people considered it Holy and God's word. I mean, if a greater percentage of Earth's population believes something to be true, then surely it has to be? Right?

This period of scrutinizing scripture and popular opinion continued for a few months and slowly I began to create my own perception of what was going on. I finally began talking to people about what I believed. I found compelled to share MY version of "the ultimate truth" with friends and family. Needless to say, with all the theist friends I have, this caused a lot of "heated debates". But it's ironic, I thought those Jehovah's witnesses were crazy and out of place, but I had turned into one of them. I wanted people to hear MY interpretation of things. So, to answer the title, it was not, and never will be, enough for me to know or believe. We all have a voice (or fingers for those of us who are into blogging :D ) and it would be a damn shame if we didn't use it. Diversity is something that has made the human race like no other. To me, thats probably the only good thing religion has done for humans (thats not including all the wars that have been fought in the name of God and all the lives that have been taken because we felt our creator commanded us of this, but, I digress).

To summarize, "In The Image Of" is simply a collection of essay's on topics that I have (and still am) contemplated over this past year. I felt it was time to organize my thoughts and hopefully reach a broader range of audience. For any of you who are wondering what I actually believe; I'm not telling! I'm sure you will be able to decipher my convictions while reading my pieces.

One more thing: I reserve the right to be mistaken. I also reserve the right to make a fool of myself by not believing in something or believing in something else. I will never be closed to a one dimensional realm of belief, much like religion tries to make us do, but will be open to everything. Who knows, in a few months I might be blogging about how foolish I was the past two years and accept Christ as my Saviour. Or Allah. Maybe even Buddha.....