October 28, 2021
I am having a fun morning. I can say things like that because, this is my blog and…it is all about me. Haha. I found a post on Facebook that has caused me to think about the Devil, God and evil, generally. Part of this morning’s thoughts were orchestrated by the dream I had. I dreamed I was at work again. Yes, that evil place. It won’t leave my psyche and I am now thinking that perhaps, I have Post Traumatic Stress Imagining about it. Was it truly evil? Did The Devil run the place? Were everyone’s hormones subject to gravity waves from the moon? Was God too busy to get involved?
Work was pretty bad. Near the end, people would shout at each other as they walked through the office. One fellow said he would ‘beat the shit out of you’ to another guy and they started pushing. I am guilty of being caught up in it, myself. I once corrected someone’s English (abysmal) and he exploded at me. I received an extremely threatening, inches away from my face tirade. He would have attacked me physically but that I acknowledged his complaint as accurate. Yes, I did correct his English and yes, that may have seemed to have ‘put me on a pedestal’ and yes, ‘who the hell did I think I was’. I agree. As ever, that day no one said a thing about it or tried to intervene, defuse. In fact, my co-workers just ignored it. That sort of misbehaviour happened on a daily basis. Yeah, it was kind of evil. This Devil guy that we hear about or have heard about (we Christian indoctrinates, anyway) must be alive and very well, thank you.
The post I saw on our beloved Facebook spoke about the Devil as being a fictional character in The Story. Yeah. He was ‘an element of the text’, as they say in literature class. While I have had some rough experience in life that might tend to put ‘the fear of God’ in a person, I agree God and Devil may not be more than text elements in a series of books. The books got bound together in a different fashion for different folks. There was a Facebook post about it. I took that post and ran with it. It gave me cause to reflect on Devil and God and life and truth. Who is telling the Truth? Is there a Truth?
I think The Story is exactly that. It is one culture’s attempt to explain the big three: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? The Bible, because I was born into a Christian cuture, is our take on how and why. The indigenous cultures had their own ideas. Some of the other ideas around the world are a bit more colourful, some are more clever, some are more rational – as in science’s conclusions. Still, science has some pretty far-out and hard to believe ideas, just like the Bible. The Big Bang Theory? is that any different than ‘God saw that it was good and on the seventh day, He rested’? Quarks and black holes and Charm? Why do we tend to believe that sort of malarkey? Because it is measurable? Because we can see it and it’s effects and because the theory seems to work? Well.
I am stepping back a bit from the Science explanation, from the Christian explanation, from the Hindu explanation…etcetera. I think that the very likely truth comes somewhere in between all of the different theory and opinions. When everyone finds a point, small point of agreement…we are probably on to the truth. The exact truth will take a whole bunch of analysis yet. We have to grow, improve. The data can’t be trusted, our machines and minds are not well enough developed. Yeah.
I imagine that life and soul can be reduced to this: we DID come from somewhere. we DO exist and MIGHT have a reason for being. we ARE going somewhere. Yeah, we see folks being born and more folks kicking the bucket or buying their farms. We see the little creatures keel over and get eaten. Sometimes, we do the eating and the keeling them over. The plants green and grow, then brown and curl up. The sun rises, the sun sets. ‘Swiftly go the years/ one season following a-no-ther/ laden with happiness and …tears’.
Could it be God who makes the sun shine and the Devil who has power over the moon? Is it a Quark with Charm or some other kind of particle that wiggles and builds sentience, then wiggles again and shuts the whole she-bang down? Is it the Great Spirit who built Turtle Island and our stubborn imperfection that puts the garbage out without a tight-fitting lid, causing all manner of ill things to happen?
Maybe Diablo or God are elements of the text and not real things? How and why do either of them play into this, Our Story, Our Realness? I think that in all cases (science, too) a Devil is just an object, a theory, a thing to blame for the crap we don’t exactly care for about living. “The Devil made me do it!” or “To the Devil with that nonsense!” Hitler was the Devil incarnate!” (BTW – as an aside to thinking what The Devil made folks do. Yes, it seems Adolf Hitler may well have had only one testicle. What puzzles me is: either Eva had a big mouth, or somebody took his pants off when they found the body? If somebody took his pants off for a look-see, then why? Were they thinking, “Well, sir…the only thing that could make a man so crazy is to only have one ball. He won’t mind, let’s have a look!”).
In some cultures, angry Gods caused the difficulties, the floods, the famines, the poor television reception. It wasn’t The Devil, it was just God on a tear. I am thinking, God, Devil, Quark, Black Hole…if you say so. I have to take all of it on faith, since I have not got a method to prove anything. I can’t say for certain that Earth is round. Sure looks like it is but I haven’t got an evidence of my own. I can’t say there is or is not a God. As an experiment, I prayed once and I didn’t get what I wanted. The test was inconclusive because the wild card was – I may be a sinner and God wasn’t happy about it. Perhaps, God thought I didn’t need what I wanted and that a couple of stained glass windows for the church were a budget priority.
I did bad things once. It was me, being stupid…I didn’t feel the hand of Satan, pushing me, his voice in my ear, “It’s cool, Babycakes…go ahead and smoke it.” or “Sure, it’s your Dad’s Christmas money but you could use it for now.” Of course, my belief that trouble happened by my own action isn’t proof of no Satan, either. It could have been the God of Hell-Fire who got into my head or put butterflies in my trousers that time. While I don’t have a particular affinity for apples, I do like fruit and I suppose the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil can make substitutions. If I were to be tempted by Satan, I think it would have to have been a cherry pie tree. Hear that, bad guy? Get it ready for the next time.
I am not righteous nor evil, I suppose. Each condition is a temporary thing, not an intrinsic one. I am, you are, all are moving between states (conditions, not entities). I am born, I will die. I am like the sun, on it’s rounds. I am warm, I am cold as the moon. I am alike as any creature, plant or star. I do good things, I do bad things, good things happen and bad things but there is no God and no Satan. (I say this equivocally – since I call the unviewable, the unknowable, God) The scientists are probably making their stuff up, too. The possibility exists of no actual moon landings or space stations – just movie sets and props that show well on TV.
While this could be wild theorizing, I am not in conspiracy…I just made it all up by myself with a little help from Facebook, People Magazine or sometimes, The Smithsonian. I keep trying to read more of The Bible but it gets a little boring with all the begetting and begotting. Sometimes, it has a high point or two, like when God catches Adam and Eve, then they each throw someone under the bus about the Crime Of The Millenia, before stitching up some loincloths and heading out. Yeah. The Book can get cloudy and hard to finish. I am reading it, slow as molasses in Damascus but finishing will happen one day, I am determined.
Robert On The Air 