Pictures of God

Of course we don’t know how God looks like (suppose that He “exists”). There are however images of old wise men with yet powerful body appearances that are intended to represent “God”, the most famous of which is the Great Creator by Michelangelo portrayed while He is creating Adam and Eve. In the Jewish and Islam religions and some orthodox Christian denominations it is forbidden to make representations of God in pictures or sculptures, or sometimes even to picture people.
Nowadays many people believe there’s no God. There are even people who say they believe in a God who doesn’t exist. Many other people believe in a really existing, personal God who guides them through their lives and listens to their prayers. Of course, they also want to have some message of this God, and they find it in the Holy Books (I’m only talking now about the three great monotheistic world religions). The Holy Books are written thousands of years ago and especially the Bible (Old Testament) is a collection of stories and reportages. The Quran is more a collection of admonitions and promises, with less stories. Christians, Jews and Muslims who call themselves “believers” are supposed to believe in these stories and admonitions. And here the great theatre is starting. There are many different ways to believe, also within each religion. Performance of religion has much in common with theatre play, and this need to play has to do with the needed respect people must have for each other to keep a community, society or group peaceful. Although any monotheistic religion with a Holy Book claims monopoly for itself, the faithful believers must come to terms with the existence of other religions or branches of religions with the same claim. The official ways of performing religious acts and duties are a form of theatre to express one’s faith, and also to keep control over the “pureness” of the own religion by enhancing and reinforcing the truth in the stories and admonitions in the Holy Books. But, as said, this resembles a theatre play. It isn’t equal to a regular theatre play because the latter maintains full distinction between the role player as a person and the played role. In a religious ceremony the role player is far more the played role itself. At least, is supposed to be. Be honest, many will experience some religious functions or acts as a little bit of pretending, even if they are deep-religious persons. In Christian churches the “Twelve articles of Faith” (the “Credo”) are recited by many people without any conviction that what they recite is really their deeply-felt faith. They are reciting “dogma’s”, i.e. facts that they are supposed to believe, that they “must” believe as a condition for their religion. In the past people who were not brought up with these mixed feelings, could get heavy struggles with their conscience. When they told their doubts to a priest they got as an answer that these were sinful thoughts and a proof that they only were bad human beings. Only the elite, the upper classes knew that you were supposed not to have problems with these doubtful feelings, but simply to play the game for the sake of order and control.

In her book “The History of God” Karen Armstrong elaborates on the dogma principle. We in the West, she says, are looking at dogma’s as imposed-on facts that we must believe in, whereas in the Eastern Christian churches a dogma is more considered as “mystery”, which protects us for feelings of guilt if we are not inclined to believe in their historical or physical truth. This leaves room for contemplation on symbolic and/or more abstract meanings of what is taught by e.g. the Credo, or other facts of faith, such as the Resurrection, the virginity of Mary, the Holy Trinity, the Divinity of Jesus, etc. As a mystery, they keep their unshakable truth and at the same time don’t need to have “happened” or to be “measured” as physical sequences of facts like required in a court session (even there it isn’t often clear what the meaning of historical facts is).

Nevertheless, leaders of religious groups and organizations such as churches, rabbis and the Muslim Brotherhood stress the historicity of facts that must be believed such as the fact that Allah wrote the Quran by the hand of Mohammed, that Mary was a virgin (papal decree), that Jesus’ corps really resurrected from death, etc. etc. There is however a trend to question or to ignore all these facts. Take for instance the Evangelical movements among Christians. It seems as if for them, only two facts are important: Jesus, God’s Son, saves us from evil and prayer is the only way to improve things. Has he resurrected from death? OK, but if he wouldn’t , also OK. But resurrection is better because it tells us that death can be defeated and we must not despair. They don’t even seem to ask themselves if things such as these are true, they simply adopt it in their mindsets. Other people, especially those who have been brought up in a Christian environment and acquired knowledge by later education and life experience in a non-orthodox environment (such as myself), have doubts. They often go through a dozen or more years of doubts and negligence in their religious lives, don’t practice their religion anymore (because they “tell lies and sell myths as truth”). When I was a kid I asked my mother a very difficult question: “mother, tell me, grandma never goes to church and believes nothing, but she is always so good and lives exactly how the gospel and the pope tells us to live, will she go to hell?” Our religion teacher (the parish chaplain) at the primary school explained that we live further after our death, either in heaven (good heavens, we had to look at God eternally, and that was supposed to be delicious!) or in hell (worse than that) or in the purgatory, a kind of waiting room for heaven, where our minor sins would be burnt away. I remember having raised my hand and asked: “Sir, so in fact we are half-eternal, because we do have a begin, but no end?” which was confirmed by the chaplain, I remember that he smiled after my question, and I was reassured that we were not that good as God, who had neither begin nor end. I also remember having been bothered by the pressing question how astronauts who got an accident in space and would never return to earth, would get a so-called “delighted body” and get up from their earthly graves when Christ would return to judge the living an d the death. Didn’t their corpses wander somewhere between Mars and Jupiter? Or lie still on the moon? This problem kept me from my sleep, because I told it to my parents after I went down from my bedroom to look for consolation in this difficult matter. Of course this was in a time when in the R.C. Church cremation wasn’t done, that was something for the heathen.

Anyway, my point is that there are many ways to be religious, to pray and to experience the presence of God, and that nevertheless churches and mainstreams in monotheistic religions proclaim a historical, physical series of wonders and happenings which must be believed in to be a good religious person, and a series of acts and ceremonies you have to participate in, also to be a good believer. So: what is the picture of God? Can be expanded to what is the picture of religion? I think we have to back to the core of the matter, despite all attempts by leaders and officials of churches and faiths to keep their sheep within the fences. The core of the matter lies outside these fences. Let’s start with my personal experiences and feelings.

I have been brought up in Roman Catholic tradition, went to R.C. primary and secondary schools and even the first two years of my academic study. My parents had been converted to the R.C. religion I think because shortly after World War II they moved to South Limburg in the Netherlands where 99% of the population was R.C. at the time. Our family wasn’t very pious, they lacked the R.C. tradition, so we went to church every Sunday, but not every day like in many other families. In short: if a religious R.C. performance demanded too much time or effort in our 5-children household it wasn’t practiced. In the seventies my parents said goodbye to the R.C. church and became “nihilists” or at its best “agnosticists” with some kind of belief in life after death. I think they said goodbye because they couldn’t come to terms with all these stories and myths, those saints and above all, the arrogance and dominant behaviour of priests. Priests were part of the elite, they were represented in the boards of all associations, schools, institutions, clubs etc. as “spiritual advisors”. My parents found that priests lacked life experience, they were educated in religious matters and always single, so how could they tell mothers and fathers how to raise and educate their children? Or how could they be trainers and educators for young people wanting to get married (in the so-called “courses for engaged couples”). Nevertheless they acted as if they represented and knew about the one and only truth they had to teach you. It was also a time in which there was much status difference among people: there were labourers, office clerks, educated people, government officials etc. Sociologists made studies of these class differences that now seem to have almost totally denuded from their intrinsic value, nowadays differences are more based on career achievements and material possessions. The goodbye to church was a goodbye to hierarchy for most people and to dominance of the priests, vicars, imams and rabbi’s.

Doubt was en is a reason to make one’s own choices, especially when one has the freedom to do so and would not expect punishment from family or community for the act of leaving the traditional religious performance culture. One leaves the stage on which the play is performed. However, in the meantime many others continue to play despite their doubts, separating their true feelings and beliefs from the rites and symbols they are participating in. A third group, the group who isn’t bothered by doubts for whatever reason became more outspoken and found a refuge in Pentecostal movements (I wouldn’ t call them churches) or right-wing parts of churches. In Islam and Judaism we see this development in fundamentalism and ultra-orthodoxism. The traditional religions without extreme orthodox or fundamentalist wings don’t seem to appeal to many people anymore, which on its turn seems to strengthen the orthodoxes and fundamentalists in their zeal. E.g. in the Netherlands it has become extremely difficult to recruit young people to become a priest. So the reverse of the situation of 100 years ago takes place here: we import priests from South America and Sout-East Asia to perform the priest office here. They can hardly speak Dutch and, above their lack of life experience as a married or semi-Christian person, they are supposed to perform pastoral duties, with their background of working in a far more orthodox, 95% R.C. country, now in a country where the R.C. church has become an almost ridiculous institute, thanks to Rome’s policy to appoint orthodox bishops whose main characteristics are offending pastoral volunteers who try to compensate the lack of “genuine” appointed priests, and stressing the church truths as historical and physical truths, only referring to their symbolic meanings as explanatory circumstances. In fact, they despise the connotations of the word “symbol” when it comes to religion, in religion everything is fact and truth and you have to believe it. I am my self a divorced man and for that reason I’m excluded from the holy sacrament of the Communion. A divorced man remains excluded, certainly when he is re-married again outside the Church with a woman of another confession, and refuses to ask permissions and licenses to the Church Court. In most other Christian churches I would be welcome and get support for the difficulties in my life. Which also caused me to think about how people are religious: are they dependent on a Book with stories, what do these stories tell them, are they dependent on an institution, staffed with divinely-powered leaders and guides, founded by the Son of God Himself? Are they dependent on habits and rites observed by the community in which they live, e.g. a village in Iran or Brasil? I think the latter is the case in most situations.
Resuming: In the Netherlands and also other Western and Islam-countries numerous people leave the churches because of the discrepancy between on the one hand the “truths of faith” and on the other hand the meaning that these truths are (were) intended to convey. In general, religious leaders and orthodox believers support the historical and physical “truth” of the book stories and admonitions. In Western countries, and far more so in Islam-countries because of heavier community pressure, many experience religious performances as role play-rites with valuable symbolic connotations without the need to be true as factual happenings or to be observed admonitions. I returned to the R.C. church because after reading some literature about the gospels and about symbols and their meanings I found much truth in the many parables and words of Jesus Christ: yes, that’s how we are supposed to live. I found many parallels with day-to-day life, which is too much permeated by economical, instrumental and political reasonings and decisions and avoids moral issues as topics to be dealt with. Thoughts and actions that are considered ethically justified or necessary by non-church members are often considered very ethical by orthodox church members “because the Bible says so”, and/or because people have an interest in them. Take e.g. the fishermen of Urk, a Dutch fisherman’s village where far more fish was caught than legally allowed, although the Urk people are orthodox Christians who are not supposed to steal or who agree that “what belongs to the emperor, should be left to the emperor”, the classical gospel-quote about taxes and government rules concerning profit. Or take the Muslim leaders of Somalia who forbade pirating because Islam forbade it, but after some successes of pirates became strong supporters of pirating, sharing its financial benefits.
What’s also striking is that believing in the twelve articles of faith (the “Credo”) as established during the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., only applies to the status of God, His Son and the Holy Ghost . Nowhere it refers to how one should live, like the ten commandments do. Church schisms are always caused by interpretations of historical or factual events or situations, never by moral issues. However, for orthodox people morality and factual truth are inextricably interwoven. They see symbols and rites as reinforcements of the historical truth of their faith, and, as a consequence in the second place, as guidelines for their ways of life, derived from this historical truth. A striking example is the resurrection of Christ after His death. The papal hierarchy, referring to St. Paul, claims that if this historical fact didn’t take place, our whole faith would be in vain and useless. Fact is that only orthodox Christians believe this resurrection really took place. Non-orthodox believers such as I am, believe that Christ’s resurrection fits in a whole series of resurrections throughout mankind’s religious and mythical world. They refer to a fact of faith, namely that mankind can only survive thanks to a positive view on life in which death always will be followed by new life, yes, even that new life needs death and destruction. Not by causing death and destruction by mankind itself, on the contrary, but that we have to both avoid and fight it on the one hand, and accept and resign ourselves in them if inevitable, in the view that after it new life will follow. Maybe not in heaven as a place where our souls go to, but in the universe of all that exists, which is a universe broader and larger than we will ever be able to observe with our human biological senses (maybe that is what is meant by “heaven”). This is maybe the crucial fact of life, and the reason why Christ’s resurrection is considered the most important fact of faith (historical or symbolic) in Christian churches. Claiming it as a historical fact means reinforcing the differences between religions and people.

Now considering these discrepancies and concluding that orthodoxism is keeping us away from the truth that we all are put on this ball of matter travelling in circles through space. That a general moralism is needed to guide our behaviour. That men are essentially religious because any human gifted with senses must ask: why has our life an end? Why do we exist? Why does nature favor us sometimes and why does nature strike us with disasters at other times?, and that these are religious questions, leading to the question: how must we live to survive? Well, I think the truly religious human will conclude that there must exist a non-written moral system we have to pursue, and that orthodox people are free to believe what they think is good, but must refrain from imposing their truth on us, because they divide humanity in a way that we cannot afford to, namely the true believers (their “we”) and the non-believers (their “they”). On this small planet there cannot be a they and we in the long term, we all are we. Which leads us to an answer to the question with which we started namely : does God exist and if yes, what is His picture? I think God is the wording (John also says in his gospel that God is the Word) of the good, of our wanting to avoid death and disaster wherever possible, and accepting it and resigning ourselves to it in a positive way. The best way to do so is starting with respecting each other and wipe away feelings of superiority, of revenge and own glory and achievement. That’s what God is, the Highest we as humans could achieve, if we only were able to, but we aren’t, we can only strive for it. I purposely avoid the term, “love”, and used “respect” instead, because I think that true love can only exist if we respect each other first.

Seeing God as a mighty person creating and ruling everything is more nonsense than the God spoken to in a prayer of a child asking for recovering his very ill father or mother. Prayer is a mystical act, addressing to the Universe which in itself is neither good nor evil, but in which we poor mortals are suffering and create our goods and evils ourselves. Prayer gives consolation, not in the way of being aware that there are worse things and around and don’t worry, but in a way that gives strength and power to cope with our existence. That’s how God is working.