The Absurdity of God
God is not what/who you thing it/he is.
What is god? Let’s start with what god is not: a man, a woman, something in between, white, black, American, human, a church, a sermon, the Bible, a Christian, superman. god is not what we think, and nor should it be. To revere god in the way that we describe him, simply trying to describe him at all should be shunned as blasphemous and profane. The great thinker, St. Anselm, described “god” as “greater than that which can be conceived.” god, is greater than even what we can even conceive. Think about that. We can think that there is something greater than what we can think. god is greater than even that! To even begin to name god is to degrade who he is. Christians may sometimes think the Jews are a little odd to not even dare utter the name of god, but if you think about it, that is the only true way to describe god, you can’t.
Some people view god as an projection of their ideal selves. I am not always honest, therefore god is always honest. I am not always loving, therefore god must be all-loving. It is a nice approach, and it feels good, but that cannot be who god is. If god is merely a perfect version of a life, then is he not on par with the ancient Roman and Greek gods? Some see god as slightly more “god-like” than the aforementioned. he is all those perfect attributes, but he somehow exists outside of our understanding. He is everything we are not, but in a way we cannot yet understand. This still limits god.
God is may other things. Countless theologians and philosophers have dedicated their lives to understand who/what “god”is, and what such attributes of a being would be. To me, god has to be so much more. The more I experience life and learn about how differently god looks to each and every person, the more I want to gain the greatest understanding of how to think about god, but without creating an idol out of the search for god.
God is the absurd. God is exactly where you think he is not. God is the homeless, the drug-addicted, the broken, the sinful, the beaten, the scorned, the raped, the murdered, the deceived, the dead. How can one read through the parables of Christ and not be left in utter bewilderment. Each parable ends differently than expected. The father welcomes the son home, the Samaritan in the one who stops, the shepherd turns from the many to go after the one, the man sells all he has for a seemingly barren field. While on paper, we may agree and often claim to have foreseen the outcomes of the parables, we live in a way that negates our agreement with Christ’s teachings. We beg for justice. We scorn the wicked. We cast out the sick. We ignore our hurting enemy.
Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel once described god through the story of his concentration camp experience and witnessing of the hanging of two men and a boy:
“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out,
swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.
And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still
red, his eyes not yet extinguished.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
‘For God's sake, where is God?’
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
‘Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows…’”
God is hanging from the gallows…
God is will never be where you expect god to be. God is in the eyes of the beaten and broken. God is in the tears of the orphans and the prayers of the desperate. God has to make us uncomfortable. If god becomes a force that we use to justify beliefs and ideals, then I pray for god to rid us of god.
God is found in the writhing boy hanging from the gallows, and god is also found in the love of one another. God is found in the sunrise and sunset. God is found in the tumbling waves and the sounds of the forest. God is found in the first cries of a newborn and the last parting smiles of a loved one. God is all around us. God is that sudden realization we sometimes have that life really is better than we often think and realize. God is the freshly fallen snow and the morning dew. God is a song, a dance, a painting, a poem. God is in everything and god is everything. God can only create good. Everything good comes from god. Laughter is good. Fellowship is good. A loving partner is good. Sex within the bounds of god’s love is good. God is good.
I get so tired sometimes when I hear people use god to justify their beliefs, or to condemn people who think differently. God is whatever pushes us—makes us uncomfortable. Jesus was not this being or symbol that came into existence to call together to the lost the downtrodden into a group of their own so as to rival their oppressors. Jesus came to tear apart every preconceived notion of who god was, and is. Jesus’ ministry was not to give us a clean and tidy set of instructions on how to escape hell. No, Jesus’ ministry was meant to wreck our lives and rattle us to our core. Even Jesus’ disciples did not fully understand Christ’s mission. Read the story of the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of John’s gospel. Jesus knew that the disciples would so heavily question his actions, that he sent them into the city while he meant with the woman who would later become a resounding echo of the love of Christ to all those who cast her aside and counted her out.
God is love. God is what we feel when we love. God is pain. God is there in our darkest and most painful moments. God is not a superman who rescues us from every trouble, but rather a loving father/mother who sometimes painfully allows a child to endure a hardship, knowing the strength it will build in them in the end. God is uncomfortable. God is comforting. God is gracious and merciful. God is the unexpected and unpredictable. God is the unreasonable and illogical.
God is the absurd.
