In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God …
—from The Gospel According to Saint John
Everything I have learned about God is written in a book. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine how my worldview might differ had certain ideas not been memorialized, glorified, and canonized in the form of holy books, then placed in my path; born in the hands of parents and their religious surrogates as precious fruit delicious and appealing. If I could see that alternate reality, I suspect that I would recognize neither myself nor our world.
Think about it for a moment… How do you know what you think you know about God? Weigh any aspect of God that you might consider a distinctive and meaningful trait — a guide to knowing. Feel after anything that whispers to you, “this is God, and that is God.” Contemplate the image you hold in your mind when you attempt to converse with God. Could you begin to attempt it had you not first read a book, or had one read to you? Or heard the words at second, third, fourth-hand from someone who, regardless of faults in memory, trusts upon some authority with its roots in a book? Not buying it? Then write everything you think you know about God on a sheet of paper. Now cross out each item that can be found in a book you’ve read or that is otherwise available to anyone who has ever sought to describe God to you. If there is anything left, leave a comment for me with those items and an explanation of how one might reasonably be tempted to pray to what these things describe.
It is no mere accident that the religions of the world, great and small, revolve around canonized literature in the form of holy writ. Such things have a remarkable mass; one which generates gravity, influence, and power. If God has a message for us, we’ve long since been conditioned to expect to find it in the form of a book. And have you noticed how many of these documents of God are written by a woman? Which of these is not written by a man, about men, and with little more of women than a sideways leer? Don’t like the answer? Perhaps you’re then tempted to throw out these tomes and replace them with your own ideas? Again, which of these do not find their origins and basis in the very books you would reject? Any religious notion not rooted in a book is destined for the dustbin of passing thought. Give me a book whose ideas live forever and I will make those ideas my own!
And so we surrender to our books if we hope to know God at all. We bind them in leather and sheath them with gold to give them the proper air of authority and grandeur. We carry them across seas and over plains for the comfort we find in them. We take our oaths upon them, we keep them by the bedside and we pore over them …well, those of us who care to read them rather then trust solely in the reports of others. And we worship the Gods which these books describe.
What are these books which project the objects of our adoration? They are things fashioned by our own hands and filled with typographical symbols; abstractions shunted from the minds of men and carried forward across generations and out of the fog of ancient times.
True, there was a time more ancient than books, when all of humanity worshipped the objects of nature: the sun traveling across our sky in undeniable majesty, the moon with its cycles that aligned with fertility, and the earth with its offerings of nourishment and arms of rest. Those times are no more, at least not among the so-called civilized nations. We no longer praise the life-giving light and warmth, or wonder at the daily and seasonal cycles of sun, moon and stars, or offer thanks to our mother earth even as we moulder away into her soil … at least not without first routing all praise through a single God. A being who resembles something we think might sit down with us for a beer. We have turned away from the dance of life and offered our hearts to a new Son – one that we’ve heard will save us from all that we fear.
Now we worship The Great I Am, the Alpha and the Omega, the Son of Man. And this man is a Man of Letters.
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NOTES:
- The Image – my own design with the assistance of Microsoft Word for Mac 2011, using Publishing Layout View. The font is Constantia, one of the more beautiful fonts I’ve seen and one I felt inspired a tendency to worship. The background text is pulled from the results of searching lds.org for “Alpha and Omega.” I wanted something that whispered the words used by the Biblical God when describing himself, while also conveying a textual repetition. Floating above are the principal words as if chiseled of sanguine stone — a human heart.
- Resources – Special thanks to Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God. I did not draw directly from the book but was constantly aware of it as I wrote. And to all of my colleagues here on Doves & Serpents: your phenomenal abilities as writers and editors are an inspiration to me. Please remind me of the irony in my attempts to write authoritatively of God.
- About – Cipher on a Wall is a weekly column and forum here on Doves & Serpents which explores the realm of mind, memories, and dreams. You can find an introductory post for Cipher on a Wall here and a full archive of posts here. My name is Matt, and I’ll be your host for the duration.
- Updates – the approach we’ll be taking with Cipher on a Wall is to encourage lively and ongoing discussion throughout the week between each Saturday edition. To help with this I’ll be returning to each post and adding updates in the form of additional thoughts, observations, related news, elevation of comments, links, additional resources. etc. Just know there will be updates so it’ll be worth checking back occasionally throughout the week.
Thanks for this thought-provoking post, Matt. It begins with a really strong claim: that ‘everything [you] know about God, is written in a book’. I think it’s a claim that few LDS members would agree with, but that’s perhaps because they attribute a much wider scope of experience to ‘God’ than you do, in the way you’re describing here. When I think of my own experience growing up in the LDS church, I recall that although I knew ‘facts’ about God from religious texts, my experiences of God, as I understood, were of a very different order. They were the moments of revelation and prayer – communication – that I felt, directly. Now, I might ascribe those experiences to a different set of processes: but then, they were how I felt I knew God.
Also, it would be interesting to get input on this from a member of a faith which was much less text-centred than our own. I think I’m right in saying that the Mormon narrative is at the same time more text-based, and less, than even the mainstream of the ‘three religions of the book’, as they’re known. It’s a complex relationship because, although for early LDS members the Book of Mormon was the ‘evidence’ of their faith, it was rarely used in their preaching and daily life. Nowadays, again, although we hold the books aloft, I think it’s fair to say that our textual engagement is of a strange and limited nature.
You betcha! :D Yeah, I tried to make this more a post about my personal experience. I’m telling the truth as I’ve lived it.
I agree that this line of thinking would be troubling for many people. It’s the reason I suggest the exercise of making a list and following a process of elimination before answering the question, “would I pray to this?” For example, how do I come upon the association of personal feelings of exultation or congruence of thought — with the term “still, small voice” and a jump to holding some tangential collection of claims as true?
And I tried to think of a faith which does not use text as a way to perpetuate itself — I could think of none. Robert Wright gives an example of one 19thC faith (can’t remember it at the moment) which held the documentation of any of its principles as a sin against future generations. Naturally, this faith did not survive.
I believe Mormons are in fact among the most text oriented of faiths. I mean, the faith is founded upon a text whereas most other religions textualize their founding. They have a bigger canon of scripture than most, and if you include all published conference talks then they might even rival Judaism. Mormons read, and read, and write, and speak about what they’ve read like no other faith I know. Mormons carry their “sticks” around with them to a degree that has few rivals in my personal awareness.
Finally, I totally agree that most folks do not read their religious documents much, rather rely upon others to read for them. My personal experience was that I read a great deal out of a sense of religious obligation and due diligence for sharing, but also listened to others. For a religion to be highly text based does not require that its people actually read much, I think. It only requires that text is considered holy and foundational.
I have recently given up on god, thrown this concept on the dustbin of self-contradictory (i.e., square circle, 4-sided triangle, etc.) concepts. The attributes ( all powerful, all knowing, infinite regression, etc.) of god, those things that are required for god to be god, are impossible, they can’t exist and therefore neither can god.
Hello, ff42. I think we’ve met before … maybe over on MSP? I agree that giving some thought to some of the so-called godly attributes leads one to disbelief. Especially if you also find the “your mind is not my mind” argument troubling. We’re supposed to simultaneously hold the opposing thoughts “God is comprehensible” and “God is incomprehensible” in our minds? And not have a problem with that?
That’s really to most cogent argument against God; namely, that the function “x is God” cannot be satisfied because of the way that “God” is defined, and therefore the term “God” can never obtain a referent.
And yet I recall from more faithful days that this inability to define God was itself the strongest definition of Godliness. What kind of god would it be if the human mind could comprehend it? No god at all.
Oh, God — elusive is thy name.
That’s Kierkegaard’s argument: We have faith because it makes no sense. The problem with that, of course, was identified a long time ago by William of Ockham. He pointed out that if God is unintelligible, then everything said about Him is either false or unintelligible.
Of course, in order to have belief or faith, you must be presented with an intelligible proposition to have faith in or to belief in. Faith can bridge the gap with regard to lack of evidence, so that it’s possible to have faith in the idea that the oceans are made of Jello, but faith cannot make up for unintelligibility, so that it is not possible to have faith in the idea that God is good. So-called believers don’t actually have faith in anything, because there’s no intelligible proposition to have faith in. They just gain aesthetic gratification from making grandiose exclamations about their faith.
Interesting post which supports the idea that God and religion are human constructs.
Thank you, Ann. You’re onto my thinking. In a very important way, I think, seeing the human source in these things is quite a beautiful and hopeful vision.
Am I to surmise from this that you’re not a fan of men of letters?
Hah, it’s true that Mormon Letters probably influenced my choice of title a bit. But I’m a fan of all sorts of letters … typography, literature, books, and Mormon Letters. And in a certain way, when I refer to A Man of Letters, I’m referring to myself.
I’ve been struggling with this. I can’t separate my experience with what God has revealed and offered up for official record, and what S/He could reveal to me personally. Why wouldn’t truth be written down somewhere? I want something I can see and study that confirms my experience, or at the very least, my logic. And if truth exists that cannot be recorded, what does that mean for the veracity of our records? What good is impartial truth?
Much of what I want to believe is not found in scripture, and much of what is scriptural leads me to conclusions that I cannot stomach. I would almost rather that my experience with God was completely independent of words on a page, and even independent of anyone else’s experience. But then my faith wouldn’t have anything to challenge it, so I feel a bit stuck in a downward spiral.
I hear you, Corktree. I think truth would be written down somewhere but the writing wouldn’t be the source or evidence of truth … just a map or signpost. Entirely symbolic yet verifiable in the landscape described. Where I run into trouble is when a sense of divinity is described as a man who listens and speaks and passes judgement and etc down the line of things humans do. It is these descriptions that I’d like to cross-off my list because they seem like they mislead more than help.
It’s the elimination of the extraneous, non-personally verifiable descriptions of God that I’m proposing. And then what is left? Is it enough to find delight and wisdom and aspiration? I think it may be. The tough part, of course, is paring away at what is extraneous without cutting so deep that you lose hope.
I don’t think that when God said, “I am Alpha and Omega” that he meant, “I’m the beginning and the end.” In the Greek alphabet, there are two “O” characters, little “O” (omicron) and big “O” (omega). So what God was really saying was, “I am A big-O.” In the ebonic dialect of North American English, the term “big-O” refers to a large orange soda, usually served at a fast food restaurant. So what God was really saying was more like, “I am a large orange soda.” And if you think about it, it’s totally true, because it’s sticky and it stains.
OMG
ff42 – I hear you. I still use the word god, but it means something so different now.
It’s so challenging to separate knowledge of god from what is written, but it’s working to do exactly that which has helped me feel that I’m closer to seeing things more clearly.
I think the same can be said for even our thoughts — eliminate the words. What if you couldn’t think in English? Its been awhile since I’ve delved into this line of thought but I do remember thinking along these lines in a philosophy class when we studied Plato’s allegory of the cave. Words are just shadows when they try and describe the transcendence.
I found your site because I own another website with almost the same domain name. I was doing Google searches and thought for a second that my site was actually ranking high for once hahaha. Solid stuff.