Let’s Take It and Run With It

It is Sunday again, so it is time for another religion post! Steve

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Christian theologians insist that human beings were created by their god. Let’s, for the sake of argument, accept this and see where it leads.

The question to be addressed here is “Why?” This god is claimed to be all-knowing, all-powerful, all-American, all-everything, etc. It is perfect, complete, needing nothing. So, why would it create human beings? According to the creation story in Genesis 2, Adam was created to tend Yahweh’s garden, the so-called Garden of Eden. So, he was created as a gardener and as an animal wrangler of some sort since it was not just the plants he was to tend. (For those of you who claim the other creation story, in Genesis 1, doesn’t mention this reason, well if you get to “pick and choose” from scripture, so do I.)

Modern Christians insist that their god wants a “personal relationship” with his created human beings. Is this why we were created? I mean the Garden thing didn’t work out and, according to the story, we were shipped off and told to populate the Earth. Maybe we were created to hold up our end in these personal relationships.

So, consider the dynamics of the people in this relationship. Yahweh already knows everything you are going to say and do, so spontaneity is not involved. You can’t provide any ideas not already known to Yahweh, so creativity is not involved. In fact, Yahweh’s abilities are so far beyond yours that the relationship is woefully and massively lopsided.

If you are a pet owner, consider the relationship between you and, say, your pet cat. You are closer to your cat than God is to you, so how would you feel if your cat started to show obvious signs of worshipping you. At first you would not believe it, but when it repeated the signs over and over you would have to accept it. What would your cat’s worship mean to you? I am sure you would suspect that they were doing it for the kibble or whatever you provide to feed the beastie. Would you be flattered? I don’t think so. I think you would be embarrassed, and unwilling to tell your friends about your cat’s strange behavior . . . unless it was to ridicule it.

Now, imagine you had a pet lizard or snake. We still aren’t even getting close to the difference between you and this god, but those pets would be closer than a cat would be to representing that distance.

So, what kind of relationship can there be between this all-everything god and a human being? It seems that being a pet is the very best that could be expected. Expecting some sort of fulfilling relationship is bizarre as what do you have to offer to even hold up your end of any conversation? Nothing novel, nothing new, nothing that isn’t already known, no surprises, etc.

How good of a friend can you be? In fact, how good of a pet can you be?

Now that you see that a personal relationship between you, an ordinary human being, and an all-knowing, etc. god is impossible, ask yourself: Why did this god create us? Possibly a clue is in the Book of Isaiah: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7 KJV). Maybe Yahweh created human beings as his instrument to create evil. Why should He have to do all the heavy lifting? Some of us create evil, others good, some do both, and Yahweh keeps His word.

You gotta a better idea?