One of the most common questions I hear when I tell people
I’m a pagan is ‘Do you believe in God?’ My answer is that I do believe in God,
I just don’t believe in God the same way as most people. Confused? That’s the
reaction I get from most people. Let me explain.
God is usually depicted as this all knowing, all powerful,
ever present being who is kind, loving, compassionate, and basically has the
persona of an idealized father figure. It’s also said that God made us in his
image. That basically suggests that God not only looks like us (or, if you
prefer, the other way around) but also that he thinks like us minus the doubt,
anger, and other aspects of human nature more commonly attributed to the Devil
(who I also believe in but I’ll get to that later). This creates an image of a
being that is at once both the same and greater than us. A being who we can
understand, but who can do things far beyond our abilities and understanding.
With me so far?
Now, I believe that people’s perception of God is half right.
That the idea is there, but some of the concepts are a little off due to God
being humanized. This humanization is a result of mankind attempting to create
something they can understand and relate to. It makes sense for mankind to do
this because not only is it human nature to fear what we can’t understand, but
it’s also easier for us to trust what we can relate to. You can see this in out
everyday relationships as well as how we interact with the world around us.
It’s my belief that God, as most people understand him, is
in reality the personification of what is, at its core, a primal elemental
force of nature. I’ve heard that comparing God to a primal elemental force
lessens and devalues God. I disagree. See, most people don’t quite understand
what a primal elemental force of nature is. In order to understand, let’s start
with something most people can understand; a basic force of nature.
When people talk about a force of nature, they usually refer
to things most people have at least seen if not experienced; tornados,
hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, forest fires, blizzards, tidal waves,
lightning storms, and things along those lines. Now, comparing a primal
elemental force of nature to a regular force of nature would be like comparing
a forest fire to a camp fire. There are enough similarities between the two
that you can see the relation, but one is so far beyond the other that there
really is no comparison.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that a primal elemental
force of nature is some sort of ultra powerful, mindless destructive force. In
fact, I don’t think it’s mindless at all. I believe that it’s actually
sentient. However, the way its mind works, the way it thinks, is as far beyond
our understanding as the way we think is beyond its understanding. This means
that while we may be able to understand the effects of its actions, we’ll never
understand the reason behind those actions. Because we can’t understand the
reasons, we believe that there is no reason; and sense we believe there is no
reason, that gives it the illusion of being out of control.
Like I mentioned before, it’s human nature to fear what we
don’t understand. In addition, it’s also human nature to want to be in control
of our environment. Such control makes us feel safe. In fact, the two things
are related. We want to control things so that we can understand them better and
we want to understand things to that we can control them better. It’s circular.
One leads to the other which leads back to the first.
Due to our desire to understand and control things, the idea
of a primal elemental force of nature is terrifying to us. Something that’s not
only so immensely powerful but also so completely alien to us that we can
neither understand nor control it makes us feel weak and insignificant. I mean
how could we stand against such a powerful force? Here’s the thing, we don’t
have to and we never will.
A primal elemental force of nature is intangible. While we
can both see and feel it’s influence, it’s simply unable to directly affect us
or the world around us. So even though we can’t understand or control it, we
can understand its affects and control how we react to it. Besides, the whole
control thing is pretty much a human trait anyway.
Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that it’s a primal
elemental force of nature. The way of the universe is balance. Light and dark.
Hot and cold. Up and down. Yin and yang. If an imbalance occurs, the universe
corrects it, usually forcefully and dramatically. This correction will either
equal out the balance or simply remove whatever is causing the imbalance. This
occurs because if the universe becomes unbalanced, even a little, things become
unstable. This causes things to become more unbalanced, which in turn causes
more instability. If the universe doesn’t bring things back into balance, thus
correcting the instability, it will literally pull itself apart.
To help maintain this balance, every elemental force or
universal energy will either create its own balance (such as the positive and
negative poles of a magnetic field) or have an opposing force. In this case,
the opposing forces are good and evil.
The primal elemental force of good is personified by the
concepts of God. This force, which I refer to as the Divine Light, is what
allows for things such as compassion, kindness, joy, and love. It’s the little
voice in the back of your mind that tells you the right thing to do and makes
you feel guilty when you do something wrong. It’s what drives soldiers, cops, and
firefighters to risk their lives for people they don’t even know. It’s the
reason a man who has never had kids of his own will willingly open his home and
his heart to children in need of a dad. We can see it in the beauty of a
sunrise. Smell it in the sent of a flower. Feel it in the power of birth. Hear
it in the laughter of children. Taste it on the lips of our lover. It’s all
around us. It’s a part of us. All we have to do is open ourselves up to it.
On the other end of things is the primal elemental force of
evil, which is personified by the Devil. It’s what drives people to take whatever
they want, to hurt others for no reason, to ignore those in need, and to do
things with out thinking of the consequences. Fear, hate, greed, and sorrow are
all aspects of this force. Just like with good, people can choose how they
react to the influences of evil; but while most of us would choose to resist
these influences, all too often people give in to them. This usually happens
because people either don’t realize what they’re doing, believe they have no
choice, or simply want the gratification it brings despite the fact such
gratification is fleeting. Regrettably, there are people who honestly enjoy
such things. Thankfully however, such people are rare.
I can go on about the concepts of good and evil but that is
a long and complicated subject and not the topic of this post. The point of
this post is to explain what I think God is, and that can be summed up simply.
Both God and the Devil are personifications of two primal
elemental forces of nature. The first one good, the second evil. These
personifications were created by humanity so that they could explain beings
that they knew existed but couldn’t understand and, because of their inability
to understand these beings, also feared. However, I feel that while we can’t
understand these beings themselves, we can understand how they influence our
lives, and that this understanding can guide us along the path of our life.
