Understanding God (2 of a series)

Hi again. This post will be something of a repeat and amplification of the previous post. This is because that exercise that I described in 1 of the series is so crucial to both accurate understanding of God and restoring balanced faith and reasoning capabilities that I need to help all of you build upon it through repetition and further understanding.

I have pointed out that one must truly understanding what is meant by the attribute of God, which is his all-knowing-ness. Being all knowing does not mean that you know a couple of things that a human is up to at one time or another. God is not "Santa Claus" as in the song lyrics, "He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!" Obviously God knows everything, including all the deeds (or activities and their relative badness or goodness) of all living beings. But God is, as all knowing, far, far beyond a list of pieces of knowledge. However, to help you all best understand God, I described one "piece of knowledge" that God "has" so that you can understand that God's knowledge and power are un-understandably vast and include all that could possibly be known, in reality or in theory.

So I invited you to realize that God "knows," for example, the status of every subatomic particle that exists, ever was, or every will be. God, for example, knows everything there is to know about the subatomic particles that make up the "dot" in this letter: i. Look at that dot on top of the i. God knows every subatomic particle that makes up the appearance of the "." on a computer screen and every subatomic particle that allows your eyeballs to see it, and also every particle in your eyes, in your skin, in your brain. God knows where all those subatomic particles came from, back to the beginning of time and matter when they first came into being. Of course God also knows what exactly he did to create time and matter in the first place. Further, God knows the status of the subatomic particles in this "." as you gaze on it, what happens to them next, what happens to them next, and so on, right into the future until the end of time and matter (and then he knows what happens to matter and time after they end).

So look again at an "." The way that a "." appears on the screen involves matter and energy, made up of millions or billions of subatomic particles. Pick just one particle. God knows where that particle "came from" throughout its entire existence, and also all that will happen to it, until time and matter ends. At some point while reading this you blinked your eyes. Some small amount of the fluid coating your eye evaporated. That evaporated water from your eye also has millions of subatomic particles. Select one for consideration. God knows where that particle is now floating in the air around your head, where it will settle, or move outside your room when you open the door or window, or turn on the air conditioner, and where that particle will go, and what it will "do" (combine with other particles to perform an action, perhaps being a droplet of dew, or rain) and what will happen to that subatomic particle in a water molecule of your eye for all of the future until time and matter end.

Do you now begin to understand the difference between God and even his beloved son, Jesus Christ? Do you now begin to understand the difference between God and even the most holy and saintly prophets? Do you begin to understand the difference between God and even the most lofty and noble "idealistic" "values" of humans? How can anyone compare God to a good idea about good behavior of humans, who cannot even observe their own backs without the aid of a mirror?

Think again about that subatomic particle that was emitted by the "." on the computer screen. Suppose God, with his almighty power, decided not to let that subatomic particle move as it would have naturally, and takes the particle and moves it a few feet further away than it would have moved on its own energy. God, of course, knows any change in any substance or event that such an intervention on his part would cause. He does not typically do that kind of thing, and I'll explain why in future posts on this subject. But God of course instantly and in advance knows what would be the resulting actions and changes, if any, of moving any subatomic particle that ever existed, exists now, and exists in the future.

So for those of you who like "alternate future" science fiction and fantasy, consider that carefully and you will appreciate what I am saying. God does not move subatomic particles around, although he obviously could, because God has already established things the way he likes it through his creation of natural law, the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, geology and so forth. But if you were in conversation with God, and asked him, "What if that subatomic particle from my eye water evaporating circled around the world and dropped in someone's soup in Poland?" God could tell you exactly what would happen in that theoretical case. Odds are nothing would change, of course, since that is exactly what happens every day in natural law, as particles and energy move according to scientific and mathematical principles.

But consider this. Suppose that you know a person who perished from lung cancer. God could tell you, in this example, what tobacco leaves hundreds of years ago were planted that had subatomic particles that were passed on to subsequent tobacco crops, and which rays from the sun fell on which leaves, and which hands picked the leaf, and so on until the smoke was created that years later and far away a person breathed, accumulated in their lungs, and formed the illness. You humans admire "CSI" and other autopsy and forensic types of entertainment. God could look at the body of your friend or relative and tell you where each subatomic particle in him or her "came from," from the very beginning of time and matter, and where they will go, to the end of time and matter. God always "knows" all of this information for everyone and everything at all time, through all of time and space. And so, in theory, God could tell you, "Did you know that the particle of smoke that tipped the balance and caused the cancer to grow came from a leaf rolled in such and such a place, at such and such a time? And it tipped the balance because she had a genetic predisposition to cancer that comes from such and such subatomic particles placed in these genetic locations?" And God could tell you every ray of the sun that ever fell on your loved one during her life.

So God certainly does not "direct" smoke particles to "go get" a particular person and "give" him or her cancer. But God knows where all of it comes from and where all of it will go. That is the difference between God being "all knowing" and having a human trait such as manipulation or being "mean." That is the difference between God being "in control" (as God created the natural laws that then are consistent for all people in all times, and all of matter, both living and inanimate) and "how can God allow bad things to happen to 'good people.'" If God were sitting and having tea with your friend or relative's great, great, great, great ancestor, and they were chatting, God could have said, "In five generations you will have a descendant who will have a lung cancer and, sadly, she will demise of it." That does not mean that God moved around some particles to make a "bad thing" happen to a "good person," and it does not mean it was her bestowed "destiny." It means that God is, as advertised, "all knowing." God knows everything that has happened and will happen, and for intellectual purpose, he could, if you asked, tell you what would happen if, for example, he temporarily canceled natural law, and moved some subatomic particles around.

Who now wants to tell me that God is some amorphous force of "good will" whereby humans "realize" that they are "all one?" How can any human idea, no matter how worthy, compare to the all knowing Creator of all, who is God? The attempt to reduce God to definition based on codes of behavior for humans is pointless, dangerous, counterproductive, arrogant, ignorant and has dire consequences due to the giving of humans a false understanding of not only God but of life itself that they must cope with, and hope to have in some form eternally.

Consider this example. Suppose God allowed you to exist and "look over his shoulder" as God created matter out of the void, and you were there during the Big Bang, which is the birth of the universe. What if you could see all the subatomic particles created in the first moments after the Big Bang and said to God, "That one! Tell me what happens to that subatomic particle!" God could tell you every step that the particular subatomic particle you selected will take throughout its billions of years of existence, what matter it joined with, or what energy it manifested, and what objects or living beings joined with that subatomic particle for how long, and what effect that it had, and where it goes next, all the way to the demise of that particle when time and matter ends. That is the all knowing-ness of God, the same God who spoke to the prophets, who sent Jesus Christ, and to whom you of those who believe pray.

So I suggest this exercise. For a while, whenever you read scripture, whether the Bible or the Qur'an, and whenever you pray, when you first encounter during that session mention of God, pause for a moment and remember that God is the all knowing as I have described him just now. Just about every human I know takes God for granted, and that must change, trust me. One way you can change that is to once a day, when you invoke God in prayer, or while reading scripture, pause for a second at that moment and remember that this is the all knowing God who knows every subatomic particle in every moment of time throughout all that exists, existed and ever could exist. Christians, remember this is the "Father" to whom Jesus Christ refers to in prayer, so if you are saying the "Our Father," you can pause and think of God's true nature right in the beginning of the prayer. It is helpful for all humans to remember the proper identity of the God to whom you pray.

I hope that you have found this tutorial helpful.