The Gods Must be Crazy

I'm taking a break from grading--only three more papers to go!--and musing about the recent spate of natural disasters. The cyclone in Myanmar, the earthquake in China, the tornadoes in the USA: what is going on in the world? If I was superstitiously inclined I'd say that this is some very serious divine retribution for military dictatorships, Western apathy, Chinese human rights violations, etcetera. But why target innocents? In China scores of school children were crushed by their classroom ceilings, and in Myanmar scores more will die of malnutrition and water- and waste-born diseases because the junta won't grant access to foreign aid groups. If this was some sort of message from above--"Hey, humans, quit exercising your right to be vile"--the divine source of humanity would be a mirror image of our collective disdain for others. I can't allow for that possibility. What's the point of a god human enough to commit our errors? That's not a deity. That's a really incompetent universal CEO.

This is not an original viewpoint. For centuries--millenia?--people have been pondering the existence of a god that allows for undeserved catastrophe. In Judaism we think of it as God hiding his face, maybe in grief and dismay at human grossness. Such a god allows for free will by passively letting us make mistakes, even grievous ones. The problem with this shame-faced god is that it provides no solace to the suffering, no one to supplicate to in one's efforts for salvation. If god is absent in times of need, what is left to fill the void? Without god there, do the holes created by need become filled with hatred, anger, frustration, loss, and despair?

On the other hand, there is supreme danger in the belief that god is listening and will nurse your grievances. The gods who sanction suicide bombings and the denigration of women and outsiders, who encourage evangelism and moral superiority..these are not compassionate gods. A god that listens to one at the expense of others, that saves one and slaughters millions, that prioritizes among creation, that is a bad god. The shame-faced and the confidante gods both incite desperation and violence. So what are we left with, with our cupboards and altars bare?

I want, not to believe, but to live in a place where belief is possible and beneficial. Contrary to my liberal arts peers, I don't think religion is an unmitigated evil or a stupidity. I don't like the idea of god per se, but I do appreciate prayer and faith and thankfulness. These things jolt us outside of the everyday focus on ourselves, and at their best encourage us to grow outwards and embrace the world in both its totality and its specificity: to love individuals (people, trees, animals!) and know that we are all the sum of the world's parts.

In the end natural disasters simply occur. Global warming aside, cyclones and tornadoes are random acts of environmental violence that don't differentiate between good and bad people. But would our responses to tragedy be better, more productive, if we remembered that calling out to god is just another way of calling out to each other? Love and hopefulness have long been eroded by cynicism and merited disappointment in organized religion, but that's no reason to give up on the idea of god as love. Really, when it comes down to it, fuck those punks who drag on their clove cigarettes and drolly observe that religion is the opiate of the people. Their disdain allows them to maintain a critical distance between themselves and those others crying for assistance. If the gods we have are crazy--and they are, no question--maybe it's time to deify humanity. With all of deification's attendant, humanitarian responsibilities. And none of its bullshit.