Читать книгу House of Faith or Enchanted Forest? - Charles W. Hedrick Jr. - Страница 8

Belief in the existence of God remains constant in American culture. For most Americans, God, however conceived, is creator of all and has endowed the universe with balance and regularity. For religious people, balance and regularity in the universe lead to the idea of a designing “intelligence” behind the universe. Even those who are not particularly religious would likely agree, because they share the traditional view that God created the universe. After all, things had to begin somewhere—so the popular rationale would go. Unfortunately, disturbing events in the modern world raise questions about the idea of a “Designer.” For example, What is the “intelligence” in intelligent design?

Clearly the universe has regularity; yet things do not always work exactly the same. For example, light sometimes acts like waves and sometimes like particles, the scientists tell us. Most physicists recognize both regularity and randomness in the universe. But to describe its regularity as the “design” of a particular “intelligence” is essentially a confessional, not a scientific, statement. The “confession” derives in part from observable reality, and in part from religious ideas, and it is not the only way to account for the universe. A religious physicist, working with strict standards for scientific statements, might make a religious “confession” about the origins of the universe but would not pass it off as scientific—unless he or she had a particular agenda.

“Designs” are not always deliberate or intelligent. For example, anyone who has ever made an ink blot knows that the particular design one achieves is not deliberate but only accidental, produced by the amount and consistency of the ink and the way pressure is applied—a purely fortuitous product, it would seem. Cancers also have design—but what kind of intelligence would deliberately design a cancer into the fabric of the universe?

The idea that our universe is, more or less, regular does not lead inevitably, or even necessarily, to an intelligent designer—and certainly not to a benign intelligence. Some could well conclude that the intelligence behind the universe is careless, capricious—or worse, devious. What sort of intelligence would design a universe purposely hostile to life? Yet we seem to have such a universe. Debilitating disease (cancer, birth defects, cerebral palsy, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, etc.) and natural “acts of God” (like tornados, hurricanes, and floods) are apparently designed into our present universe.

In antiquity, some groups opposed the idea that a benevolent God fashioned the universe. Mindful of the suffering in the world, they argued that the fashioner was flawed, stupid, or even evil. How could caring intelligence deliberately produce a universe so frightfully hostile to humanity? Christians and Jews argued back that the designer did not originally create such a world. God created a world suitable for, and beneficial to, humankind (Genesis 1:31). As a result of willful creaturely rebellion, however, the designer then deliberately “cursed” the world to punish humanity (Genesis 3:17–19). But this does not solve the problem, for, like it or not, the “designer” is still left with responsibility for our hostile world. Cursing a world hospitable to human life over one infraction hardly seems the act of a caring intelligence. In arguing “intelligent design” the problem is how to distance the designer from the present world.

Could one also surmise that the designer simply abandoned the universe? Possibly, and without the designer’s oversight, creatures abandoned in a hostile world must adapt or perish, and, that seems to be the situation in which we find ourselves. In this world, as presently ordered, we either adapt or perish—as Mr. *Darwin argued nearly 150 years ago.

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We usually describe God in terms of the attributes with which we endow him.1 For instance, he gets angry with sin (wrath), he punishes the evildoer (retribution), he loves his creatures, he is patient, he forgives (merciful), etc. We don’t reflect on God as an entity with “personhood,” but rather only in terms of how we think God reacts to us. We don’t think God is a blind force, but rather as a deliberative deity who reflects the very best of our own human characteristics. At least we use our best features to describe him, so it is surprising we don’t inquire into God’s mind, and ask questions like does God ever muse about things?

What does God think about when he has time on his hands (so to speak)? Is God introspective or curious? Does he ever daydream? Has he ever had a new thought—an “Aha” experience? The question is not far fetched, since the Bible portrays God in the first account of creation giving himself a reflective pat on the back (“he saw that it was good,” Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31), and kicking back for a rest on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). In a second account of creation, he takes time off for a relaxing walk in *Eden “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8)—still the custom in the modern Mediterranean world. I know some will object: “metaphors”! These are just figures of speech—the biblical writer is not speaking literally. Still, even to use such images begs the question: does God ever take time off from the business of running the world, curing disease, punishing the wicked, and the like, or is his divine mind always occupied with the cosmos and its creatures?

Does it really matter? Well, perhaps not to you, but it mattered a great deal to some of the ancient philosophers. For them, the ideal state for a God was “at rest.” God existed in silence, singularity, solitariness, and stillness—he even moved “motionlessly”! Movement, or thought, changed the deity, and change was a flaw. Deity, as they conceived it, was truly the same yesterday, today, and forever—without beginning, without end.

On the other hand, the popular view in ancient Mediterranean culture conceived of the Gods actively involving themselves in human affairs—destroying and protecting cities, devising plagues, working miraculous cures, discoursing with human beings, and much more. Today God is conceived more like the ancient popular view than the philosophical view. God is constant motion 24/7, everywhere at the same instant, juggling myriads of activities, starting plagues, performing miraculous cures, creating hurricanes, answering prayers, winning ball games—to mention just a few.

The philosophers would say about my curiosity, “what a nerdy question. Of course God does not dream, because his dreams, like his words, would be divine ‘things’ existing apart from him, and his former singularity would devolve into a duality—or worse.” They thought of God as an irreducible singular entity—a *Monad.

Today in western culture, we also think of God as Monad—on our best days we are not *polytheistic. On the other hand, Christianity is mostly *Trinitarian—the affirmation of three distinct persona in one God-head. This concept would strike the ancient philosophers as theoretically improbable because it employs plurality to explain God’s nature.

I prefer to think of God as sentient—a thinking being. And if God thinks, he is apt to be curious, think new thoughts, and even daydream. The philosophers would rightly object: if so, he is not “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Others might object that I am simply inventing God in my own image! Perhaps so, but doesn’t everybody?

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During droughts in the American Midwest believers of all stripes will turn to God petitioning for rain for the crops. Indeed, petitioning God for a variety of things we humans find necessary for life is pretty much general practice in America. We seem to think that God, however we conceive him, is interested in the minutiae of each human life. It does not matter whether a person regularly and formally prays or not about such matters, in the streets people generally assume that God does control nature and natural occurrences. But certain events do seem to challenge such an idea.

The wake of destruction and death left by the *tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 and category-four hurricane Katrina in 2005 beg the question: who controls the weather, God or Mother Nature? The Bible does not portray *Yahweh, God of Jewish and Christian faith, directly administering the day-to-day routine of nature, as ancient nature Gods are portrayed. The regularity of their cult rituals was believed to ensure both the benevolence of the natural processes and the fertility of fields and flocks—though not even they were always able to control the weather (1 Kings 18:17–29). The *Canaanite God *Ba‘al, for example, was portrayed as the God of storms. Ruling over wind and clouds, his power was manifested in thunder and lightening. Yahweh, on the other hand, “earned his spurs” and made his reputation controlling history (Exodus 4:22–23; 15:21) and managing the religious welfare of the Israelites. He was far more interested in their religious obedience than directly maintaining the harmony and rhythm of the natural order. Rather than ensuring annual harvests by day-to-day hands-on (so to speak) management of nature, Yahweh is portrayed managing people by using nature to reward obedience and punish disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:1–46). Thus it seems more proper to say: Yahweh used nature when it served his purpose, but he is not generally portrayed directly juggling the daily routine of the physical elements, which was the nature God’s primary concern.

Whether Yahweh used nature wisely, or morally, however, is an open question. For example, he is portrayed as authorizing the killing of Job’s children (with a great wind, Job 1:19) as part of a bargain with Satan (1:9–12). Because of human “wickedness” (Genesis 6:5), he flooded the earth, obliterating every living thing (Genesis 6:17)—he thought better of it later, however (Genesis 8:21; 9:11). He destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and everyone in them by means of fire and brimstone (Genesis 19:24–25—was it a volcanic eruption?), and he was also known to use hurricanes (Psalm 83:13–15). Hence, it appears that his periodic use of nature in the Bible is consistent with the recent tragedies in Indonesia and the Gulf.

Apparently God can control weather when he chooses, but he seems less inclined to regulate nature directly day by day, preferring to manipulate it from time to time for reasons known only to him. When we do know his reasons for interfering in the natural processes, he seems (from our perspective) to be a bit heavy-handed. The biblical record raises two questions: does God actually govern nature in a hands-on way (so to speak), or has he set an unregulated system in place, leaving to “Mother Nature” its day-to-day operation, which he manipulates from time to time? The more serious question is this: is it moral to use weather to reward and punish? Even we morally-challenged humans know degrees of evil exist in the world, and justice demands that they draw different degrees of punishment appropriate to the crime. But no such discrimination exists in “natural” disasters. The innocent suffer along with the guilty. If God uses storms to punish evildoers—such as using Katrina “to get those damn casinos” (as some suggested)—then in the process he is also taking out hospitals, seminaries, and orphanages! Describing “natural disasters” as “acts of God” makes God look incompetent or immoral; it seems best to chalk up such disasters to Mother Nature and revise your personal theology.

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Of course, maybe God has nothing to do with weather at all and the climate of a given region is a natural phenomenon and as such is simply due to luck, a comment that begs the question, What controls our lives: divine providence or “lady” luck? At some point everyone has said: “What a great stroke of luck,” or “We survived by the providence of God.” As a Baptist, I understand “divine providence” but what is “luck” and how do I reconcile it to the dominant idea in western culture that God somehow regulates the universe?

My brother-in-law had a great game of golf one weekend—even for him. He shot 67 for 18 holes including a hole-in-one. His wife chalked up the hole-in-one to his skill with the clubs. But he insisted “No, anytime you shoot a hole-in-one, it’s luck.” I thought about it for a moment and had to agree. If holes-in-one were due to skill there would be more of them. So I suggested: “Perhaps it was divine providence.” He replied: “No, it’s luck; God doesn’t care about golf.” My brother-in-law is a Baptist deacon, so I had to take him seriously. After all, golf is a game where you play against yourself, so the only plausible reason for God to intervene in his game and “bless” him with a hole-in-one was to lower his golf score and make him feel rather smug. We usually like to think God has bigger issues on his plate, which is what I think he meant by “God couldn’t care less about golf.”

What we seem to mean by “luck” is that sometimes things go in our favor and at other times they do not, including even the most trivial matters. We seem to conceive luck as a pervasive random force in the universe that, for whatever reason, is erratic or whimsical in application. If this is true, we do not live in a universe where everything is micromanaged by God. Hence, people who believe in God’s providence must cope with the disturbing idea that God manages, or micromanages, some things, but allows other things simply to happen, as they will, without his oversight. Or, on the other hand, we live in a world where God micromanages everything and must be given the credit (or the blame) for everything that happens. If God is to get the “credit” for everything that happens, then we humans bear no responsibility for global warming, poverty, the breach in the ozone layer, or the failure of the levees in New Orleans in 2005. Somehow, however, we instinctively know that we cannot make God the “scapegoat” for all the misfortunes of the world. Most of us realize (I hope) that God did not cause the *ENRON debacle, or the incompetent response of the Federal Government to the disaster in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.

Perhaps “luck” is only a more or less natural “force,” in the universe—something like gravity, for example. While the ancient Greeks and Romans personified it into a deity named *Tyche, we moderns have secularized it. Nevertheless, the idea that some things just happen for no apparent reason is a disturbing concept for those who must think there is a master plan to the universe. If things happen for no reason, then we have a universe permeated by a principle of randomness that suggests God may guide matters in the universe in most instances, but leaves others to happen without his guidance. Such a possibility raises the question: how can we tell “benevolent concern” from “random event”? Perhaps we cannot.

The Bible is full of bad things perpetrated by the biblical God on basically decent people, although many believers seem willing to accept that sometimes God does bad things even to good people for reasons we cannot understand. Job thought so: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil”? Maybe we invented the idea of “luck” because such apparently capricious behavior on God’s part is simply inconsistent with the idea of a benevolent God. But if we invented “luck,” we could have invented God as well.

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It is surely questionable that God is concerned with the minutiae of individual human lives or even the mega problems that plague whole nations. During the Second World War the belt buckles of German soldiers were etched with the following slogan: “God is with us.” Of course the allied troops thought the same thing, because they too thought their cause was just. And this clash of claims for God’s support in the enterprises of our lives naturally raises the question about the minutiae of our lives. For example, Does God care about baseball?

Are we to suppose that God follows baseball and even decides the outcomes of games? I recently saw a player, after throwing the winning pitch in a baseball game, make the sign of the cross, kiss his fingers, and point upward—thanking God for the win. Some believe God really involves himself in the minutiae of life—even numbering hairs on the human head and deciding the deaths of sparrows (Matthew 10:29–30). But with such a complicated universe to run, surely God has concerns more pressing than sparrows, hairs in the drain—and the Cardinals/Royals game. In terms of universal importance, which team wins the pennant seems rather insignificant. Some events clearly have a more “profound” impact on life than others. True, the outcome of a Cardinals/Royals game is more significant than hairs left in the drain this morning, but totally insignificant when compared to the Iraqi war. Some die-hard fans may disagree, but in terms of significant impact on human life, baseball games fall completely off the radar screen for everyone, except perhaps those involved in the industry.

It comforts us to think there is a master plan to life. Believing that life is “scripted” helps us cope with tragedy and loss. Life must make sense, and even tragedy must have some meaning in the grand scheme of things—or so we insist. Even the death of a butterfly must have a place in God’s “master plan.” The alternative, thinking we live in an “unscripted” and arbitrary universe, is a frightening concept. In an arbitrary universe, no master plan exists. What happens—happens! Under those conditions, life’s meaning is what each of us makes of the random events that constitute our lives.

I personally do not like this alternative and hope that affairs in my life are part of some benevolent design for the universe. Yet I am a little dubious when someone tells me God spends time counting the hairs in my drain and marking the demise of individual sparrows. Such micromanagement will not work in large organizations—and the universe, if anything, is large. Effective management gives priority to the more significant. In a global crisis, I don’t want God worrying about minutiae, like the welfare of my wife’s tomato plants. Micromanagement may be why we have natural disasters, like floods, earthquakes, or epidemics. Other disasters, like war for example, are inevitably the result of human contrivance.

One should not too quickly criticize the divine Administrator of the universe, however, since we have only the barest inkling of what’s involved in running it. The universe may actually be unlimited, and if so, that is a lot of turf to cover, even for God—or so God suggested to Job (Job 38–41) when Job bitterly complained that God treated him unfairly. If God is weighing the outcomes of baseball games and neglecting the causes of war, he is likely out of touch with what’s really happening in his universe—at least in this small corner of an out-of-the-way galaxy. Surely God can find better things to do with his time than ponder the pennant!

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One major stumbling block to religious belief in the twenty-first century is God’s silence on matters we people of faith find perplexing. Most of these issues could easily be resolved if only God would be more open with his counsel and obvious about what he expects of us. For example, Why doesn’t God talk out loud anymore? Perhaps you have never wondered about that, but once upon a time God spoke in an audible voice—but not today! When he needed a national leader for the Israelites, he called out to Moses from a burning bush: “Tell them,” he said, “I Am that I Am sent you” (Exodus 4:14; Deuteronomy 4:33–36; 5:26). And though “the word of the LORD was rare in those days,” God spoke to Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1–11). Out of a whirlwind (Job 38:1), he dialogued with Job, but whispered in a “small voice” to Elijah (1 Kings 19:12). He addressed audible speech to Gideon, Noah, Jonah, the prophets, and others. In the New Testament two instances are notable: at the baptism of Jesus an audible voice from Heaven announced: “This is my beloved son” (Matthew 3:17), and the same words again from a cloud at the transfiguration (Mark 9:7). The biblical God was a talker! So, why the deafening silence today? If there was ever a time we needed to hear God’s voice in our ears, it is now, but today few claim to hear God’s voice (some do, of course, but today people hearing voices from clouds are usually institutionalized).

Religious professionals tell us God speaks today through the Bible—which for some is literally the “Words of God.” But written words are not a living voice! Quoting the Bible to solve modern social and moral problems really hasn’t worked; proponents on all sides of issues use the Bible to support their different views. At best the “written Word” is generally ambiguous on contemporary social issues and requires extensive rationalizing to make the text fit the modern situation (the Bible is, after all, a compilation of ancient texts). Religious professionals claim an edge on the rest of us in explaining the Bible, and even if they don’t, we defer to them anyway. Apparently we think God has privileged communication with them to which the rest of us are not privy.

We seem to have access to God thirdhand at best: once God spoke for himself, but today we only have memoirs from people we believe communicated with God; and most of the memoirs do not appear to be based on what God himself said audibly. Many religious professionals claim God’s spirit leads them to the “correct” explanations of the memoirs. But, alas, the religious professionals tell us conflicting things—and on God’s authority too! Imagine how easily our moral dilemmas could be resolved if only God spoke to us on point from a burning bush or a cloud in his own voice about abortion, homosexuality, war in Iraq, and care for the environment. Unfortunately the contested issues that divide Americans today are not directly addressed on point by the ancient texts of the Bible.

Why won’t God talk to us any more? Why should he need ancient memoirs and middlemen to communicate? A genuine conundrum for which no definitive answer exists! Some say: (a) God doesn’t need to speak; the Bible speaks for him. (b) We are too cynical and secular today to believe God even if he did speak; so he doesn’t bother. (c) God has oblique ways to communicate; for example, through his spirit by impressions on the human consciousness (but this could only be the “noise” of our own religious engineering). (d) God never really spoke audibly at all; biblical writers described events mythically (if true, it raises interesting questions about the Bible). Whatever the reason, we apparently live in an age when God’s living voice has fallen silent, and we no longer hear “from God’s mouth to our ears.” It is an age when God is absent, some have said, and we are left to ponder God and what he expects with little direct vocal assistance from him. The problem for us now is: How do we discriminate among the insistent voices of religious professionals filling the vacuum with their “right” answers to our perplexing questions?

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Our predicament, however, may only be due to God’s sense of humor. Growing up Baptist, I never thought God had a sense of humor. God seemed so utterly serious—not a droll bone in his entire divine body (so to speak). And no wonder; having to deal with sin, disease, evil, and such, would tend to sober anyone. It all made sense then that God had no lighter side but was always heavily serious—never a wink or a twinkle in his divine eye. But I have to admit there are things in the Bible about God that strike me humorously. Maybe God does have a sense of humor after all—a sort of dark humor, but certainly not slapstick. Take Adam and Eve in the Garden, for example. God places them there in a state of innocence and tells them “Enjoy! But don’t eat the fruit of that particular tree.” They take the bait and “fall” for the joke. Later God comes looking for them. But they hide from the All-knowing and All-seeing One, who, tongue in divine cheek, plays along, calling out, “Where are you guys?”—as if he didn’t already know!

God called Moses to go to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of bondage. After God twisted his arm, Moses agreed, and away he went. On the way, he stopped one night at an inn; God met him there and (oddly) tried to kill him (Exodus 4:24–26). Is this another practical joke? Well, can you imagine God “trying” to do something and not being able to do it? “Ha! Gotcha that time, didn’t I Moses? Aw, just kidding around!” One practical joke is still in process. Three modern religions worship the same God: Jews, Christians, and *Muslims. Modern Cairo, a bustling city of over 15 million souls, virtually shuts down on Friday. At one in the afternoon prayer rugs come out and millions of men pray in the streets. Mahmoud Tawfik prays to the same God as Solomon Silberstein, who worships at Saturday Temple in Jerusalem. On Sunday in Springfield, Missouri, Mary Smith’s “Our Father” ascends to the same God. Each religion thinks of itself as “God’s special people”—to the exclusion of the other two religions, I might add; and their holy books prove their paternity as God’s own people.

I hesitate to blame God for this strange situation, but if we believe the faithful of these religions, God produced their holy books, which confirm the privileged status of each religious community. The situation is not unlike the “jokes” on Adam, Eve, and Moses. There has to be a little *George Carlin humor in all three claiming to have exclusive access to the divine ear. Can you imagine the God who parted the “Red Sea,” made the sun stand still, and raised the dead not being able to correct the record? The brunt of this particular joke seems to be those who fail to recognize how ephemeral their favorite fundamental dogma really is.

Of course, it is possible God has absolutely no sense of humor, and never does the divine equivalent of winking, or tucking tongue in cheek. But I would like to think that God was never really serious about some things we credit him with—like Samuel telling King Saul, “God said annihilate the *Amalekites” (1 Samuel 15:1–3), or God telling *Abraham, “sacrifice your son” (Genesis 22:1–3). It seems perfectly clear that God was never really serious about that last order, since he stops Abraham from killing the lad (Genesis 22:12). And a God who is not always serious could very well have a funny bone (so to speak).

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Can humans really trust the Gods always to treat us with integrity, when on our better days we appear to have a sharper sense of morality than they do on their worse days? We assume Gods will always act with integrity—after all, they are divine. We expect immoral behavior from demons, but not from Gods. The record, however, is flawed. For instance, in *Homer’s epic poem the Illiad * Zeus deceived *Agamemnon with a lying dream—to the hurt and detriment of *Achilles (2:1–35). And even *Yahweh, the God of the Bible, sent a lying spirit to deceive King Ahab of Israel so he would be defeated in battle. Later he placed lying spirits in the mouths of all the prophets of Israel (1 Kings 22:19–23). On another occasion, he sent an evil spirit to torment King Saul (1 Samuel 16:14–15)—strange behavior for a God! Such behavior by the Gods recalls Homer’s description of Zeus’ father, *Cronus, as the God “of the crooked ways” (Illiad 2:205).

Humans believe it is not ethical to deceive or mistreat others. And that is one reason the “serious misconduct and loss of moral value” of American soldiers in the *Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraqi war was so reprehensible. The soldiers were held accountable for their actions, but apparently Gods can act as they wish—and with impunity! We explain their occasionally shocking ways by arguing that Gods obviously know the big picture. Since they are Gods, we assume they must know what is best for us in the long term. Our human view of things is finite; we see matters dimly and then only in short term. So we conclude: an event appearing tragic to us must only be so from our limited perspective, for surely Gods always act justly. For that reason, we tend to think that our personal tragedies must somehow be for the best. This solution, however, leaves honest folk with a nagging ethical question: how can bringing anyone harm ever be considered “good”? Is it possible that Gods do not always know best after all, and humans invented that idea to cover divine misbehavior? Or is it, perhaps, possible that the writers of our religious texts have mistakenly misled us? For example, did Jesus really instruct his disciples to take up the sword (Luke 22:36).

The biblical book of Job is one of the clearest examples of divine misbehavior in the literature. Job simply could not understand why tragedy struck his life. When his “friends” told him that God punished him because of his sins, Job was perplexed. He was willing to admit he was not perfect, but he knew his suffering was not proportionate to the sins he committed. And Job actually was correct: God permitted his egregious suffering to see if he would commit a greater sin, as the text makes plain (Job 1–2).

“The ends never justify the means” is clearly an idealistic sentiment, and we humans on our worst days never quite measure up. In cases of expediency, we frequently find our ends justifying our means, like at Abu Ghraib, for example. Nevertheless, when we privilege ends over means, we at least know we are traveling down a lower road. And if we finite humans sometimes know the difference between high road and low road, shouldn’t Gods always know the difference?

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Do all things happen for a reason? If I said that someone survived a car crash with barely a scratch but four others in the car were killed outright, most people, religious or not, would likely observe, “stuff happens for a reason.” Behind that observation is the popular religious belief that God micromanages the world. But if I were to ask, Was there some divine reason for a bird dropping poop on my forehead rather than my shoulder this morning, many would think my question silly. Nevertheless, a serious issue lies behind both situations: Is anyone completely in charge of the universe?

One answer is that God micromanages the universe. If so, everything happens for a reason. A micromanaging God would scarcely leave anything to chance! This line of reasoning leads inevitably to the conclusion that even bad things (New Orleans comes to mind) are due to God’s deliberate management. Hence, since by popular definition God can do no wrong, everything apparently bad must really be good—and that includes even the bird poop on my forehead. A micromanaging God would have had good reason for the bird poop—for under the theory of divine micromanagement, God makes everything happen for a reason.

Perhaps God only generally manages the universe and is not responsible for everything that happens. Under “general” management some things are divinely manipulated but other things are just allowed to happen as they will. Under this theory the universe has been set up to work in a well regulated way, and God only intrudes now and then for whatever reason that strikes the divine fancy. For the most part, things do seem to work fairly well in our world. The world turns with general regularity and only the occasional glitch (New Orleans and cancer come to mind). This theory raises the question: how can we ever really be sure what is deliberately caused by God, what is part of the regular pulse of the universe, and what is a glitch in the system? The bird poop is well accommodated by this explanation, however: it is just one of those billions of little things that never register on the divine radar scope, or simply are part of the regular pulse of the universe where things happen for no particular reason—like a leaf falling off a tree, or bird droppings. I just happened to look up at the opportune time this morning at the precise moment the bird pooped. Such occurrences are part of the regular design of things: leaves fall off trees, and birds poop all over the place. But under this theory one can never be sure of anything God does or does not do.

It is also possible that God has chosen to be an observer of events in a universe designed to run itself, more or less—or worse, God has gone missing. “How could that be possible? God created the world, so why abandon it?” Good question! But since we cannot even prove that God exists, how could we possibly know whether God is missing? A missing God, however, does make a sort of perverted sense of our human situation, and could account for natural disasters and unconscionable human sufferings (New Orleans, *tsunamis, and cancer come to mind)—in short, for whatever reason no one is minding the store! Bird poop on the forehead makes excellent sense in such a world, however; a God absent for the big things could scarcely be expected to be around for the little things.

Perhaps we have simply misunderstood God’s character. If God were a bit devious, it could explain the general regularity of the cosmos and its blessings when things work without the glitches—such as natural disasters, the tragedies of disease, and fatal “accidents.” In short, God may be prone to be a bit “impish,” so to speak. Certain passages in the Bible seem to support such a theory—at least the early Israelites and Christians must have thought so by some of the ways they portrayed God. The book of Job is a case directly on point. Bird poop on the forehead is precisely the kind of thing one might expect from a mischievous God.

Of course, it is always possible there is no God. The only difference between this possibility and the last is that human tragedy and natural disaster could not be caused by a nonexistent God, but must be the result of randomness in a universe that never had a manager of any sort. We would be alone in a sort of well-regulated universe—except for the occasional glitch. Such a situation accommodates regularity, natural disasters, and bird poop on the forehead.

The five possibilities for explaining bird poop and divine management of the universe boil down to this: do you choose to believe in an uptight micromanager, a lax general manager, a God gone missing, a mischievous deity, or in no God at all? One could choose to ignore human experience (which the Bible is), and fashion a God of one’s own choosing. I suspect that is what most of us do!

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The issues addressed in this section are provocative enough to raise the more basic question about God having a future, particularly in the light of the numerous Gods worshiped through recorded and un-recorded history. Persons even slightly familiar with the history of religions would be unusual had they not in more reflective moments pondered the question: Does our God have a future? I know it sounds like a really dumb question. How could God not have a future? If anyone or anything has prospects surely God does! From the perspective of world history, however, the question is obvious, for history is littered with decayed temples dedicated to obsolete Gods whose religious communities did not survive the passage of time. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, and modern popular imagination, all other Gods are “false” or imaginary Gods, created in the minds of ignorant and misguided people. In their heyday, however, these other Gods were powerful and controlled the lives of many people for many years. They were loved, feared, and their grace invoked through prayer just as devoutly as the God of *Abraham, *Isaac, and *Jacob is today. Those who believed in these now obsolete Gods were as convinced in their faith as devout believers of the Judeo-Christian God are today.

Every religion assumes that its God has eternal prospects. But the idea that “our God is eternal” is simply wrongheaded, as history shows. The character and personality of a particular God exist principally in the mind, apart from any existence the God may have as an “objective” reality. For example, the *Protestant God did not exist before the sixteenth century. He was conceived and born along with the *Protestant Reformation. The Roman Catholic God was very different—and still is. God as he exists in the minds of Episcopalians today is essentially different from the God of Protestant *Fundamentalists or Unitarians. The Gods of these groups have different views on required ritual, ethical values, sin, forgiveness, and the future—provided we assume (as each group tells us) their teaching derives ultimately from God. If tomorrow, Fundamentalism (for example) ceased to exist, the God of Fundamentalism also ceases to exist—I mean this: since no group would exist to serve his interests, his rites would no longer be available in the marketplace of religions. To be a force in society he would need to be rediscovered all over again. So it is with all religions and Gods. All Gods share a potential for obsolescence. *Apollo and *Zeus are no longer invoked in the warm language of faith as once they were. Their *oracles are silent. The *Hellenistic Gods, *Mithras and *Dionysus, once possessed the keys to eternal life and graciously bestowed that gift throughout the ancient world. Nevertheless, their altar fires are now cold ashes, their ruined temples are hollow shells, and their rites abandoned. Yet in the day of their popularity, their believers would have been shocked at the idea their God would one day be obsolete.

How answer the question: Does our God have a future? Clearly belief in a God has a definite future. If history shows anything, it shows human beings as “incurably religious”—even to the point of superstition. Human beings likely will always have a Greater Power they worship and serve, for too many mysteries exist in the universe and our scientists have been unable to answer them all. Yes “God” has a future—although the God we serve today may well not have a future. Only so long as a God has believers will he influence society. Thus a God without temples and worshippers to remember his holy days does not exist—at least not in any practical sense. And this observation raises a more annoying question: Does the demise of even one God foreshadow the eventual demise of all Gods?