Single-Minded: An Independent Journal of Fact and Opinion

I have become comfortably numinous in my agnosticism. An agnostic is one who believes that the essential nature of God (or anything else, for that matter) is unknown and unknowable. God may or may not be out there. (S)he probably is. God may or may not have a plan. (S)he probably did at one time. The plan may or may not be unfolding as it should. God only knows.

My numinous comfort zone has expanded as result of three conclusions I have come to after years of pondering the two mysteries at the heart of all religion: What happens to us after we die? Why do bad things happen to good people? I have finally come to accept that there is no afterlife. I have also come to accept the fact that like it or not, shit happens for no apparent reason. And I have come to understand that much of our religion flows from the internal logic of our belief that we are superior and apart from all of God's other creations, a position that has grown increasingly untenable as we come to understand the smallness of the gap between ourselves and the rest of creation.

Francis Bacon wrote ''Men fear death as children fear the dark.'' All Christian theology eventually comes down to that. We are all of us, myself included, afraid to die. We live in a world where everything dies. But we are special in God's eye, so there must be something different in store for us. To satisfy that need, we came up with the idea of an afterlife.

But not an afterlife for the masses. Heaven's Gate was not open to everyone. Our Heaven was a meritocracy. Only the virtuous could get in. Otherwise, what would be the point of leading a virtuous life? Nope. We needed one place for the saints and that, by its own inexorable logic, meant there had to be another place for the sinners.

But the price of admission has grown increasingly steep as centuries of religious thinkers have come up with ever more restrictive interpretations of God's will and word. Christians and Muslims especially have formulated very restrictive theologies that limit heaven only to the faithful. The only thing those two religions share in common is an enemy -- the Jews. Two milleniums worth of fighting have brought us no closer to mutual understanding.

All of this fighting over who has the ticket to Heaven. But what if there is no Heaven? What if we just die? Whoa, doesn't that simplify a few things. What do I need a religion for if it all ends in the grave? Talk about your Faustian bargains. How much have we bargained away in return for the mere promise of an afterlife that no one has ever really seen? We have no trouble accepting the fact that this is what happens to everything else, even to our most beloved of pets. How did we come to believe that it would be any different for us?

I'm convinced that much of our theology stems from this sense that we are more advanced than the dumb animals. Yes, we have languages and we speak aloud to each other. So do animals. Yes, we use tools to solve problems. So do animals. Yes, we think abstractly. So do animals. Yes, we mourn and bury our dead. So do animals. So the question can be asked: Did God really make us all that different from all the other plants and animals? Not if you look at the DNA, where only a few genes here and there separate us from the inchworm or the tomato. More and more it is apparant that only our pride and arrogance stands between us and the rest of God's creation.

And finally, there is the toughest question of all. Why do bad things happen to good people, or conversely, why do good things happen to bad people. When West Wing's Mrs. Laningham was killed in a car accident, President Bartletts' Latinate rant after the funeral put into words what even the most faithful have thought at one time or another: ''Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments. I was your servant here on Earth. And I spread your Word and I did your Work. To hell with your punishments! And to hell with You.''

The problem of bad things happening to good people is especially vexatious. We can't just blame it all on the Devil. God is the Creator, and random acts of unkindness are part of that creation. It is my belief that bad things are going to happen because, well, because that's just the way it is. They are part and parcel of the warp and weft of creation, and there is no point in screaming at God about it because clearly this is the way (S)he wanted it, assuming that we are indeed God's handiwork as opposed to a slight glitch in the Big Bang.

So, if the bad thing deal is in fact all part of the plan, then only one of two conclusions is possible. Either God doesn't care (which even I would prefer not to accept) or God has chosen not to control the specific events of our specific life. Personally, I have no problem with that. I like to think that maybe God has bigger fish to fry, so to speak. I like to think that maybe it is up to us to work our own way through our own lives. Only if you think that way does the idea of free will begin to make sense and to be meaningful.

There you have it, the sum total of my wondering what is the nature of God's game. I can only live life as best I can, trying to make the most moral choices I can. I have no expectation of reward or punishment, and I have absolutely no clue as to what it all means. I have become comfortably numinous.

Something to think about.

May 20, 2001

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