Emails from God

So you are sitting in your living room one day. It occurs to you that there has to be a better way. Everyone is arguing about separation of church and state, which religion is right, if God exists, who to vote for, how to save spotted owls, which charity they should donate to, and whether to shop at Wal-Mart. How is a sane person to figure it out?

Ask the one who knows.

Not me. I have an idea, but I certainly won't say I KNOW. Ask God. Whether you believe in God or not, you can ask Him to guide you to Him. Why would you? Well, it is sort of like Pascal's Wager. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/ for more information on that.

Let's say God doesn't exist. All those billions of believers in some sort of higher power are just a result of natural selection where believing in God is a benefit to survival. Or maybe belief in God is hard-wired into our brain, which is pretty much the same thing. The afterlife doesn't exist, and this is all we have. Our life on earth. Birth to death. Altruism doesn't make sense to me if God doesn't exist. If the best way for me to spread my genes is my survival, then I am going to lie, cheat, steal, kill, sabotage, and do whatever else I need to do to survive and procreate. I'm not going to lay down my life for the "survival of the species" because then my gene pool dies out. Yet something prevents this from happening. We don't have this kind of survival of the fittest. It is more like "survival of the mostest" if you will. Something seems to transcend our individual need to survive. Something makes suicide, murder, and incest taboo across cultures. A cultural template from which all cultures start. I also have a hard time believing that the universe "just happened" and have read some very interesting "proofs of the existence of God."

Obviously there is more to the whole atheist argument than that, but let's look at the other side. One reason some find it easy to not believe in God is because trying to believe in God is very confusing. If most people in the world believe in some sort of higher power, whether it be the Goddess, Allah, Unknowable Creator, or whatever you call it, why doesn't anyone agree about what that power is and how to worship or acknowledge it? Many people do believe in some higher power, but don't have any specific form of religion to which they adhere. If you do believe in God, where do you go from there?

I see a few options. You can believe that each religion worships that higher power differently, and that whatever they want to do is okay. The "all paths lead to God" approach. Or you can believe that all other paths are wrong, and you have found the only correct one. You can believe that there are many different gods, and that Allah is different from God who is different from Brahma. Or you can believe that however you define your relationship with your creator is okay, that a specific religion isn't required. You can believe that God exists, but you don't need a relationship, thank you very much. How do you sort through these?

How can we decide that we don't need to adhere to a specific system of beliefs to worship God? I guess we could say that if God said it, but that would require determining what God said and getting His okay. Otherwise, you are making the decision, not God. I think we'd have to determine if God did have a specific system for us before choosing that path.

With so many religions to choose from, how do we choose? With many names for God or Goddess and many ways to worship, some of which are seemingly mutually exclusive, how is one to choose? And why is there so much confusion?

I believe it is because of a concept called "progressive revelation." There are two easy places to see this in action. One is the Bible and one is the Koran. How would God communicate to us? He doesn't send emails. He doesn't write books. He doesn't hold press conferences. He does, however, communicate with a chosen person, who then passes that message on to us.

Do we listen? Some do, some don't. People have a hard time hearing someone say that they've been talking with God and have a new message. So people choose to ridicule and persecute the person and cling to their cherished ways. The people who have the most to lose are the clerics and priests of the previous religion who are vested in holding to the old ways. Each messenger of God is persecuted for their teachings. It repeats throughout history.

Think about it. As a third-grade child, you listened to and loved your third-grade teacher. Then it was time to go to fourth-grade. It was painful, because it was new and you may have felt that by liking your new teacher you were disrespecting your old one. But that third-grade teacher wanted you to move on and progress. I believe that religion is the same way. God chooses a messenger who gives us a lesson for that particular time in human history and evolution. Then mankind evolves and matures and needs a new lesson. There is an eternal element of these religions, an element that is always the same. Moses gave us ten commandments. When Christ was asked which were the most important, he said to love God and love your neighbor. The Golden Rule is taught in all religions. Love God, love your neighbor. There are teachings that change as we change. The social teachings of each messenger of God change because they are what is needed at the time.

Anyone for using Occam's Razor here to shave away the extraneous confusion?

It becomes much easier when you can see that there is one God. That makes sense. Is it easier to believe that a pile of brick became a house spontaneously or that someone built it? Is it easier to believe that our universe just happened despite all the coincidences that would have to have occurred or is it easier to believe someone was behind it? Is it easier to believe that most of the world believes in a higher power because one exists or because they are all deluded the same way?

If there is one God, it is easy to explain the confusion by believing that He has one religion. It is one constantly updated religion and God doesn't leave us alone. The religions are more alike than different when you look at their core beliefs. When men get involved and add their interpretations and veils, it becomes confusing. That creates sects and schisms, each like the tributary of a river. God sends a messenger to renew His religion because it has become too distilled and needs to get back to the source.

So in a nutshell, I believe that there is one God, one religion, and one human race. What could be simpler?

One word about calling God Him. God transcends gender, and unfortunately English doesn't. Since common English usage refers to Him, that is what I use. I don't believe that God is a man, or that men are favored when we use the word "him" for God. We were all "created in God's image" which obviously doesn't mean we all look like God. We are created in His spiritual image. We all have virtues and a spiritual side which it is our responsibility to develop. We also have a material, human side. Our body. But that is a topic for another day.