Dan Thinks God Is Big. Really Big. Big Like Your Mom.

Part one of two.  (Just one part wasn't big enough for your mom.)

 

We can’t really talk about this subject without talking about words, and how we use them.  Somebody I respect very much recently expressed sincere frustration to me about how insufficient words are in communicating concepts.  I understand her point; I even sympathize with it.  I just don’t agree.

                                

I find myself in constant awe that I have a vehicle, however imperfect, to bridge a gap that exists entirely in human consciousness.  Hell, let’s talk about that: consciousness.  Our modern definition of what consciousness is wasn’t popularized until John Locke used it in 1690 to describe “The perception of what passes in a man's own mind."  Locke was using the word to describe a very personal thing – an individual thing.

 

The Latin root of the word, conscious, had the exact opposite meaning; it meant knowing together. It referred specifically to group or shared knowledge.  The Latin conscious is not, by the way, also the root of concept.  That would be conceptum – something conceived.  As in to become pregnant.

 

Words, man.

 

Why bother talking about these definitions?  Well, in order for me to make your mind preggers with my thought-babies, we have to share some definitions.  We need some common ground.

 

And so on to the God stuff.

 

Lao Tzu said that the Tao, the way and essence and flow of the universe, was one with the source of the ten thousand things.  It was a living whole, a perfect creative oneness.  The ten thousand things referred to the totality of all existence, and its source, well – that’s God.  So completely big that the word big is painfully, excruciatingly insufficient in its descriptive powers.  But it’s the word I have so I’ll use it, and glory in its implications.

 

I find that many modern Christians think of God much like an uncle they remember from childhood.  He only came to the house two or three times a year, maybe on special holidays.  A big, barrel-chested sumbitch, with hairy forearms and a hard gut.  He smelled a little strange, and he would act strangely, too.  Sometimes he’d have a little too much to drink, although you didn’t understand that at the time, and behave in a way that would make your dad angry.  Your mother would soothe, “He’s family.  It’s just for today.”  But then Uncle God would pick you up and toss you in the air and he seemed impossibly big and strong and also inaccessibly foreign, so you were left unsure whether to be afraid of him, or absolutely infatuated with him.  Maybe a measure of both.

 

God wants the Israelites to slaughter entire races of people, man woman child ox and ass?  Well, you know, He’s God.  Sometimes you’ve just got to put up with his crazy shit.  And you know, there was that one time we were hard up and he floated us a few thousand bucks so we could get through to payday.

 

How big is your God?

 

Let’s put aside crazy Uncle God for the moment and talk about Source of the Ten Thousand Things God.  Tao God.  The creator and sustainer of the quantum engine.

 

How small do your cultural, political, religious concerns look now?  Uncle God is willing to shout about Obamacare all damn night – He might even drop an N-bomb to keep things interesting and your dad’s blood pressure up. 

 

Do you expect the same from Tao God?  Why do we want to make the magnificent, immense, immeasurable quantum engineer not only human, but a really shitty human?

 

Do you want to saddle the Creator of all existence as you will ever experience it with your petty biases? 

 

(Answer: of course you do.  I know I do.)

 

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