22/01/2021
GOD BLESS AMERICA?
Joe Biden’s invocation ‘God Bless America’ got me thinking. Mind you, so did his oath on the Bible! What about all the Americans who are not believers in ‘God’? Why are they not respected and included in this sacred ritual of inauguration? I thought the United States of America was a republic? Is it secretly a theocracy?
One thing is clear—whatever god or gods are out there (and I can accept that there is something mysterious beyond us)—they are not blessing America. And they won’t bless America by pleading with them! America, like the rest of the earth, is heading for the cliff. We have a climate and biodiversity emergency which is undermining and eradicating all life on this planet. That’s a fact.
Is ‘God’ a fact? No. We choose to believe in this god. We could equally choose to believe in other deities or not to believe in anything.
Life is mysterious for many of us. It leads us to think that there has to be a greater power. But to say that this greater power is a god is to jump to questionable conclusions. Most of us go much further and say that this god is a person, is male, and is the only one around. Is not this the height of arrogance and hubris, or is it just ignorance? We speak as if we know this god personally!
How could a child in the womb ever imagine accurately what the world is like outside the womb? Even if the child had a fully developed intelligence, how could it ever accurately imagine its mother? The child in the womb hears sounds, feels movement, may even experience light and darkness, but we cannot expect that child to imagine accurately what lies outside the womb. It is beyond its horizon.
We humans are in a womb within this great universe. Evolution has equipped us with 5 senses that help us navigate and survive life on this earth. Outside of that, we are not equipped. There is a horizon past which we cannot see or go, at least not in this life.
The universe is six thousand million, million, million, million times the size of the earth. It is three times the age of the earth. If we imagine the earth as 24 hours old, humans only appeared in the last second before midnight. It is time we humans stopped thinking we know everything. And it is certainly time we stopped thinking we know the meaning, purpose and source of everything.
Let’s look at this god most of us seem to believe in: ‘Our Father who art in heaven!’ I personally dislike what I see—a single, male, patriarchal, authoritarian god in the heavens; a god far removed from earth and from nature: not married, no woman in his life, no s*x life, no appreciation of intimate relationships, of family, of community.
This god lives a dysfunctional life. His way of living is a poor example for us. He is looking down at us from a global perspective. He is single, detached and alienated. From this position, he issues us with commandments, conveying his exclusive intolerance for other deities and other perspectives. My conclusion is that this god, as an image we have created, is toxic, dysfunctional and out-of-date.
Can we accept that this belief is a product of our own imagination? It is how we imagine things. It is not a fact or reality. Can we appreciate that, because we believe in this god, we have created our world in its likeness?
Because God takes a global, detached view, we take a global, detached view;
because God is intolerant, we are intolerant;
because God is not present in nature, we can exploit nature as a resource;
because God does not have a woman, we have given women a secondary place;
because God does not engage in s*x, we have a discordant and ambiguous relationship with s*x and everything to do with it;
Because God does not have a community, individualism is the norm for us.
I want to finish on a positive note and suggest a way forward. The Celtic monks of early medieval times steered clear of all controversy around the identity of god or gods. They may have been philosophers, but they were not theologians. They saw theological concepts as inadequate human attempts to imagine what was ultimately unimaginable. Instead, they focused their attention on their experience of life and its mysteries.
The Celtic monks were mystics who practiced the spirituality of experience. When you practice mysticism, you actively seek to experience in your daily life the mystery and wonder of it all. You exult in the exquisite sunrise, the beauty of a flower, the grace of a deer, the joy of children. That is enough for you. It nourishes you, satiates you, and lifts your spirits.
The god we have imagined is not our saviour; he is part of the problem. Let the next president after Joe Biden take the oath with hands, not on the Bible, but on the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Let the invocation ‘God Bless America’ transform into ‘May America Be Blessed’.
Dara Molloy is a modern-day Celtic monk. His latest book: Holy God! A Spirituality of Experience is available for pre-order at https://www.aislingpublications.com/globalisation/Book_HolyGod.html
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