Understanding God

People say that the only dumb question is the one that is not asked. That is true, especially if the question is about something of vital importance. However, there are genuinely dumb questions, even though they must be asked (because unless they hit the light of day the stupid and often dangerous premises of the question aren't known and can't be addressed and refuted).

Carl over at the Ignatius Press blog ponders a truly dumb (and very narcissistic) question, put forth by the navel gazing sector of fuzzy brained and often heretical Christians. He's referring to "exercises" like gazing in a mirror to "see" that "God is within 'me'" (says the puffed up gazer) and pondering such "deep" questions as "If God didn't know he was God would he still be God?" So rather than let this one go I decided to use that as one of my "faith and reasoning" case studies here on the blog.

For example, when one is a child, asking questions, even if they are silly, is the only way a child can learn. Children can ask in all innocence questions about God that they might ask about anyone else-let’s say, for example, astronauts. So children might wonder what God eats, if God ever sleeps, does God go to the bathroom, does God really see what everyone is doing, etc. This is normal and very sweet.

When adults ask this type of question, however, there is snark, sarcasm and at the very least a wise cracking agenda based on lukewarm or no belief. These are, then, dumb questions, and they certainly are not age appropriate questions. I mean, adults really ought to have some more maturity than the average inquisitive five year old. But even if the person is being a smart alec or, worse, asking these types of questions in order to shake and sabotage the faith of others, it is important to answer them. At least it is important for me to answer them because of the cultist tendency to think that silence on my behalf is confusion. It’s usually being dog vomit tired and disgusted with the whole thing, but if my gorge isn’t rising too much I don’t mind answering even the smart ass “questions.” Carl is right that if you have to ask that kind of question, that’s not so good and it is obvious what is going on. I agree and I think Catholics in particular should never feel the need to take the bait. My approach though is to figure out what is behind the snark, the agenda or the heresy and then address that via answering the “question.”

So, to answer the question, the situation would never arise where God “doesn’t know who he is,” since God is the self aware totality of everything that ever existed, exists now and will exist. As the creator and the only one to have eternal existence, God of course knows who he is at all times. Now, we know there are two background “reasons” and agendas behind this question. To be kind, we can say there are two confusions that at are the base of even asking such a cheeky, silly and disrespectful question. So these are what I will try to correct in the minds of those who are confused. People who might think about or even ask this type of question tend to be led to wondering about this question because they have taken one of these two (or even both) paths of erroneous thinking process.

The first is that some people have come to think that God is not really a personage, but some sort of “force” or life energy in the universe. So in their mistaken thinking, they might think of God as being something akin in nature to gravity, electricity, etc, where it is a natural law or phenomenon but obviously inert as far as self awareness. So, for example, just as gravity “does not know it is gravity,” these New Age addled unbelievers think that there is a natural life cycle of some sort that is what our dumb ancestors imagined was a personage called “God.” So when someone like that asks that sort of question, like “If God doesn’t know he is God is he still God?” that is a snarky way for them to hint to you that in their superior sophistication and “enlightenment” that they are “helping you” to “contemplate” whether “God is just a natural force, an inevitable one, but one with no identity or self awareness.” This is very typical of this stage in humanity where there is pride and hubris all around, and people find “reasonable explanations” (including some of the craziest beliefs you can imagine) for everything, including encounters with God. For example, they would not recognize a genuine communication from God if they heard one and they certainly would not recognize a good smiting by God when it happens. This is because this generation is so smarty pants that they think that “aliens,” for example, would actually be a more “scientific” and “reasonable” explanation for something beside God. Despite the total silence of the supposedly life filled galaxy around them, they will make up all sorts of theories about aliens, “the force,” natural phenomenon, so called past lives and reincarnation and so forth, rather than believe that their ancestors have spoken and observed God directly over thousands of years and documented their consistent encounters with God throughout sacred monotheistic literature such as the Bible and the Qur’an. So their “question” is actually a statement of disbelief, and the “opening musical overture” to whatever crazy belief they have made up in their heads or adopted from other “visionaries” to “explain” how the universe “really works.”

So you get crackpots like Scientologists who believe in some moronic space opera with evil alien souls, all taking place millions of years ago on earth at certain volcanoes, never bothering to notice that those land masses, say nothing of the volcanoes, did not even exist then. They don’t believe clean and sober religious people who didn’t puff on peyote or eat magic mushrooms, who tilled the fields, herded animals, had honorable marriages and children and oh, by the way, had an ongoing relationship with the one God from generation to generation from the very beginning of self aware humanity through to today. So they don’t believe the Bible or the Qur’an, yet they will believe anything that an egomaniac schizophrenic drunk will tell them “really happened,” even if the most fundamental fact checking would show it to be impossible. So whether it is the new age moon calf type of loon, or the cynical and manipulative evil cult, you have the same “reasoning” behind that question, which is willful disbelief in humanity’s encounter with God and the holy scriptures that document it through all the centuries and millennia.

The second motivation behind that type of question is a little more understandable, though it still comes from an incredible lack of faith in God, coupled with inordinate faith in one’s own imaginative and scholarly powers. These are the Christians who have a very fundamental stumbling block and inability (or unwillingness) to understand the nature of God and Jesus Christ. Now, I know that the Trinity is very difficult to comprehend, and obviously God and his ways are beyond any human’s understanding. And I am sympathetic because like I said, the only way to learn is to ask questions and study scripture, and the writings of those genuinely saintly people who discerned these questions before you. However, again, there is a smart alec assumption behind the scenes of this question among many Christians, and it is very dangerous and annoying. It comes about because in this generation’s arrogance there is a feeling that God can be thought about and contemplated using human logic, human rules and human limitations.
So where these people get in trouble is trying to reconcile “maybe” believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ, but then putting the entire label of “God” onto the human nature of Jesus. In other words, these people tend to think of “God” as being like a force or spirit that can be put in a zip lock bag and inserted into Jesus. Now, this is foolish to the extreme if you challenge them on even the most basic contradiction to their assumption that God can be “stuffed” inside of Jesus (and thus they think, ah ha, Jesus as a small child “probably did not know he was God” and if he “didn’t know he was God,” then God “doesn’t know he is God,” and therefore God is, what, “asleep at the wheel,” as Aztec Two Step would say?)

Here’s the problem. If God “zipped himself” up inside a forgetful Jesus for part of his earthly existence, um, who were the rest of the world praying to? I mean, do these fine new agers and scholars think that no body was home upstairs for the entire world? So prayers of the faithful around the world, regardless of their faith and creed were unheard in heaven because God was busy forgetting he was God zipped inside of Jesus? I mean, how stupid and “intolerant” is THAT belief if you think about it. These “world view” Christians try to tell you how wonderful everyone is, with equal rights and equal “validity” of “belief,” yet they figure that God would have made himself forgetfully inaccessible to everyone in the world while he is “forgetting he is God while in the ‘unaware’ Jesus?” Um, that is stupid beyond belief. If that was true, why wasn’t Satan totally running wild on earth, instituting his realm while God “forgot who he was?” And who did the guardian angels (who everyone believes in, if for no other reason than to claim they speak to them and/or to sell angel merchandise and books) report to while God was “forgetting he was God?” Obviously a cretin would realize that God did not fold up his entire identity, insert himself into Jesus and then “forget” who he was for a while. As I pointed out before, God is the entire sum totality of the ability to exist eternally (even the angels cannot live except within God’s life sustaining will) and so God cannot be taken in sum total from one place to another because God IS everything that exists, both in the material universe and in the unseeable heavenly realm that is not comprised of matter, energy or time span.

So even if “Jesus didn’t know who he was” for part of his life (and that is not true; Jesus knew full well who he was) it is a metaphysical impossibility for God to reside within any person or object in a contained way. The Holy Spirit can and does touch a human’s soul but the Holy Spirit himself does not exist within anything or any span of time. That type of mindset is pagan throwback and idolatry, where there is the belief that any part of the divine can be captured inside of the body of the flesh or any other human made container. That is obviously not true. I try not to be discouraged, but the incredible fat egos with absolutely no cause for pride that lie behind these types of “questions” and beliefs are scarier for the future of humanity than any ancient Assyrian despot or lead pipe polluted water drinking Roman emperor and that is a fact. Something very terrible has gone wrong with the minds and sanity of many, many people today, and that kind of thinking is a symptom that is dire in its dimensions.

The Bible clearly states how Jesus at the age of twelve years old taught in the Temple, asking and answering questions, and telling his parents, Mary and Joseph, that he is doing “his Father’s” work. Jesus didn’t say, “Oooh, I woke up one morning and realized I am God!” Jesus has been in constant communication with God, who he knew to be his Father, from the earliest age. Jesus and God are separate personages, since God is the totality of the Godhead, the one God who is everything everywhere for all eternity. Jesus demonstrated clear prayer dialogue with God the Father and never once gave anyone any reason to accuse him of having “God residing within him in totality” (forgotten or aware!) And we have further attestation to this from a source that is, according to human logic, the place that is the most unlikely to find it, which is the Qur’an. The Qur’an attests that Jesus knew his identity and spoke for himself from the moment of birth. Now, why would the Qur’an have such powerful “pro Jesus” witnessing? I mean, if you are trying to “market” Islam, why would you have such graceful and beautiful attestation that Jesus spoke for himself as a newborn infant? Because it is the truth, and it was provided by one who would know, being the archangel Gabriel. Far from being hostile to Jesus the Qur’an is filled with respectful love and awe for Jesus and Mary (something certain Christians could learn from, by the way). It is even more evidence that the faith that believes that Jesus was “the one,” the Messianic prophet, but not literally the Son of God, would nonetheless attest to his prophetic self awareness from the first moment of infancy. Who would have “expected” that? So there is no cynical human reason that the Prophet (PBUH) would have engineered putting such material in that would be totally amazing and unthinkable in the context of his beliefs and societal setting in the first place!

I hate to even write blog postings like this because I have to put into words what to me is so repugnant about what humans are thinking. But I have to do it to prove to you that I read your minds and I know your thoughts and your agendas, including the chaotic, profane and defiant ones. It is the only way to refute and hopefully correct and maybe even someday heal the mess that you all have made of comprehending life outside of your scripts, agendas and video games. I mean, people who no longer know how to build a house and grow their own food (and find life so depressing they need drugs and drink) are actually sitting there theorizing about the nature of Jesus Christ and God??? You can’t even remember your own human natures; you have become so estranged from them. Yet you think you are more “enlightened” and “sophisticated” than the very priestly people who stood in the presence of God and who wrote down all that transpired each time it happened? So I hate writing what I know you think (or, hopefully, used to think in the past as you grasp your way back to the light and the sanity). Decent people shudder at the thought of heresy and hubris, and we hate putting it on our lips in even the most essential teaching circumstances of the direst nature. I am very prayerful and have recourse to the protective and cleansing power of the Holy Spirit when I write something like this post, where I have to insert dialogue from the profane in order to address and refute it. I have a healthy fear of the Lord, which you should too.