*** This entry was originally posted to LiveJournal March 4, 2008 ***
I just concluded playing a role on stage in which my character was instrumental in restoring another character's faith in god. A real test of my acting ability, that. On the other hand, my character was also instrumental in convincing the other character to open her heart back up to love. That one I can totally get behind.
If I were to pick a quibble with the playwright, it would be that he made (in my judgment) far too facile an equation of love, hope, and god--as if neither of the former two can exist without the latter. If you've been paying attention to this blog for long at all, you can no doubt guess that I beg to differ.
There's the old saying, at least in Christian traditions: "God is love." I remember as a kid I got a coin purse at church that said this. Apparently those who bandy that saying about conveniently forget all the earthly suffering and the eternal damnation--but that's a whole different can of worms. Anyway, it occurs to me that it comes closer to the mark to turn that saying on its head: "Love is god." In point of fact I still neither require nor believe in a "god" in the traditional sense. I do, however, hold love to be the highest ideal of human existence. So it's about as close as I get.
A lot of atheists spend their time railing against religion with logical arguments. Goodness knows I can relate to their desire to show rationally how religion and god just don't even begin to work out in logical terms for them (or for me). I can absolutely empathize with their frustration at the active refusal by such a huge percentage of the population even to consider the possibility that there might not be a god (even if many of these same people refuse just as actively to follow what they themselves believe their god tells them to do). It's maddening. It is. I know. Believe me, I know. The trouble is that because of their perfectly reasonable insistence on logic and because of this maddening frustration they feel, a lot of atheists come across as really angry people (and some of them may be) or as plain old assholes (and some of them may be). For myself, I really don't want to come across in either of those ways.
So at least this time out, I'm going to come at the topic from a somewhat different angle. I'm going to talk about my belief that god and religion are more constraints on love and hope than they are necessary preconditions for love and hope. I won't guarantee that my frustration and anger and resentment won't seep into what I say. They are a part of my truth too, and as such they do even have a place here, in my judgment. I'll make you a deal: I'll agree not make my frustration the point of what I'm saying if you'll agree to look past it when it does seep in and to find what I'm really trying to say.
God is widely held to be the absolute pinnacle, the very ideal of love--the model for how unconditional love behaves. And yet, in every religious context I've ever encountered, god's love is VERY conditional. "Follow these rules, do things my way, love only me--or I will cast you into eternal punishment," saith the Lord. There does not seem to me to be any way around the conclusion that those are conditions on god's love. Big ones. I've been told that god gives us the free will to choose his way or not. But if eternal torment is the stick, isn't that very strong coercion to choose the carrot of god's way--even if we might not otherwise wish to do so? That doesn't strike me as free will.
God comes across then as the bad dad who loves his children for what they do, not for who they are. Even though this dad created his child and made him or her who he or she is, this dad validates and affirms and loves his child only when the child excels at sports or gets good grades or follows in dad's professional footsteps or whatever else fulfills dad's expectations for the child's life. If dad's a coal miner and the child wants to be a poet (or vice versa as in the Monty Python sketch), or if the child is unathletic or homosexual or something else that differs from what DAD wants for the child, then dad wants nothing to do with the child and withholds his love. Personally, I think the image of god grew out of our collective human experience with such fathers, and I think this now-entrenched image of god helps to perpetuate this style of fatherhood--and so on, in a feedback loop.
Unconditional love, properly speaking, is exactly that--unconditional. If I love you unconditionally, then my love for you is there whether or not you choose to love me back, and I will bless you on your chosen path either way. I won't punish you for choosing another way from mine. I may be sad if you do, but it won't diminish my love or make me any less willing to be open and welcoming to you. Even though I may have my own thoughts and wishes and hopes, ultimately what *I* want for your life is what YOU want for your life. My love for you is not tied to your fulfillment of my hopes for you. My love simply IS. Period. And I accept you and love you for exactly who you are, whatever choices you make (even if I don't agree with those choices).
I firmly believe that the need to be loved in this way--this truly unconditional way--and the capacity to love each other this way both exist in each and every one of us. We disappoint each other in giving and receiving this kind of love all too often. Still, the need and the capacity are there. In fact, I believe it is this need and this capacity, coupled with our disappointment in getting and giving this kind of love, that led to the creation of the concept of the loving god. In our disappointment, we thought that this kind of love was beyond us. So we assigned it to a mythical being more powerful than ourselves. The trouble is, we projected onto this being not only our power to love this way but also our fallibility in doing so. So we have given ourselves a flawed, imperfect model of unconditional love. I think that at some perhaps subconscious level we are aware that if even our ultimate model for unconditional love falls short of the mark, it lets us off the hook for not loving each other unconditionally. Real unconditional love transcends this image of a paternalistic, legalistic, cast-thee-out-for-thy-iniquity god. Adherence to this concept of god--at any level, not just all the way to the hellfire and brimstone level--restricts our vision of what unconditional love can be because we don't think to look past what we erroneously take to be the ultimate model. God limits love.
I know that there are many concepts of god, and that not all of them are as legalistic as are many Christian traditions. By the same token, legalism is in no way limited to Christianity. Not by a long shot. Nevertheless, I still believe that even the less stern concepts of god limit us in fulfilling our potential for unconditional love. As long as we tell ourselves that only god can love us and the others around us completely, we abdicate our power and our responsibility to love ourselves and each other completely. We're like the child who has no motivation to learn to tie his or her shoes as long as Daddy will do it for him or her. The child tries, encounters difficulties, and says, "I can't. Daddy, you do it!" If Daddy's not around in some moment when the child needs his or her shoes tied, though, suddenly both the empowerment and the responsibility fall to the child. The child takes it upon him or herself to overcome the obstacles and to fulfill the need for tied shoes. So it is with god and love. I don't have to overcome the difficulties in loving and being loved as long as god is there to do it for me. Without god, though, I am motivated to do the work necessary to fulfill my own need and that of others to give and receive true, unconditional love. Even the less legalistic concepts of god limit love.
This is getting really long, and I have other matters to which I wish to attend. I think I'll cover hope in a later installment.
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