im not a religious person. i dont not have any intentions of offending. i believe in critical dialogue and thought. please feel free to let me know what you think
i grew up with hindu symbology that i still resonate with, but i wouldnt call myself a worshipping hindu. to be honest “hindu” triggers me because of what its become. i have a lot of thoughts on this subject but again, another blog post but in short i resonate with the orthodox form of “hinduism” more, before it was even coined “hinduism”. anyways. id say i am more spiritual in that i dont believe in “worship” or being a “servant” of the divine. i dont believe in having certain restrictions in one’s lifestyle to appease the divine. i believe that the divine is genderless. i also dont believe that the divine is purely good. you may think this is polythesitic, pagan, withcraft… but… you would be surprised that this is god not being so great, is in monothesim as well.
for instance, it irks me a little, and i find it extremely emotionally UNINTELLIGENT when people say something along the lines of, “god wanted something so tragic to happen to this person, this was in their destiny, god’s plan, etc”….. i understand that this may be a way of coping, but people are allowed to mourn and resent god no? god can be unfair… god is the almighty to you, so they are allowed to take things away from you despite that being their plan [which is exactly what you believe] yet humans appease themselves by thinking that god is good for doing such thing, so isnt this not exactly faith?, as your faith is on the premise of god being good?
god has no plan. it is even known that if you do all to appease god, god can still take you away from this world for himself. but wouldnt that make god selfish if god himself has laid out the plans for you to succeed spiritually and you can still potentially tragically perish at his will?
the main idea im trying to iterate, especially when it comes to this sort of belief [which is not only restricted to monotheism in practice btw], is that people skirt around this idea of a “good god” instead of actually practicing faith.. that is, faith in god not being good. the humanizing of god… god being all good, which was never the case as there is no holy text that explicitly mentions that god himself told us that he was good…according to such beliefs [mostly monotheistic as im referring to god as a he], this was a prescribed notion by humans. this is also is supported by Sweeney, who studied the history and origins of satan, as they write “According to the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, God alone controlled all events and was responsible for all conditions within creation, both good and evil. This idea, however acceptable it was early in Jewish traditions, became confusing and frustrating, and led to the basic question of theodicy: How could a loving and benevolent God allow so much suffering and pain on earth?”
the universe was never dualist in its making. for instance it is well known in hindu theology that there is no purely good or evil. shiva themselves is known for their rage, for cutting their own kin’s head off and replacing it with an elephant head for crying out loud. god was never good.. and if this is a pagan unholy belief to montheists, who will tell them that even the concept of satan and the devil himself was also an appropriation of god by the human mind? to distance the good god from the adversaries that he creates? according to sweeney the concept of satan where he is gods greatest “evil” adversary arose in the new testament, interestingly after “onslaught of violence and conflict [that] left the people of Israel in both chaos and division”… sweeny talks about the slow evolution of satan.. from being a mundane “roadblock” associated with common people, to literally the most insidious form of evil in the abrahamic cannon. i find this incredibly interesting because even hell itself is not a Biblical concept.. but if humans developed satan over time post new testament, then it would only make sense for hell to exist..to justify the importance of a good god, and also a heaven. what would be the chaos of the human mind if you were to tell people hell and heaven were the same… doesnt that sound all too familiar? too earthly? since this world itself has the greatest pleasures and is simultaneously ridden with loss, anguish and pain? if god allows suffering, if that is his will, then how do you know that you will not suffer in heaven? and even if you would suffer because that is gods almighty will for you, even in the afterlife, you would you still go? i mean satan… through this lens.. was almost on to something. i mean we cannot ignore the fact that heaven isnt only for good people, because ironically according to the concept of good god, humans cant be all good either.. or else we would be god.
its interesting how this sort of dualist cosmology arises… because it is psychological, bestowing the goodliness in god, when he literally never identified as such. he never said he was good. but humans cannot bear to worship something that isnt good, which is even more fascinating to me, because isnt that what faith is about?
i guess what im encouraging you to be.. is critical, critical of almost universally impossible dynamics of purely good vs purely evil when in fact, something that is good to one may be evil to the other. that you cannot avoid and demonize one form, and worship and greedily want the other, that having genuine faith means faith in a god that isnt all good and is cosmically ambivalent. to put your faith in the almighty is enduring his shortcomings that are bestowed on you, not because god is good, but because he is almighy. that enduring doesnt always have to be for a “good” reason, but just because.
if this resonated with you and you follow the christian cannon, there is a school of thought called nondualistic christianity if you want to check it out.
references: https://www.iup.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=161917
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” – Isaiah 45:7
tata for now
peace, prosperity & plague
-m
cognitive chaos 