Article 13:
Redefining God As Human-
Part 2
by Wendell Krossa
(From the series "Creating A Horizontal God", Copyright, W. Krossa)
Another important point to note in regard to a free God has to do with the matter of play. A free and humane God is a God of play. Such a God is the polar opposite of the silent Judge of religion with his impossibly high and inhuman religious demand.
And just a note here- the power of religious authority depends in large part on people taking the religious God seriously, too seriously. The power of religious authority depends on people taking the leaders and their ideas seriously.
But the God we find expressed in the teaching of people like Jesus was a relaxed divinity who enjoyed life. The realm of God as understood by Jesus could best be described as a great party. According to Jesus, God intended all of life to be enjoyed as a party. And we need to remember that Jesus was condemned by religious authorities for being too much of a party man and a drinker.
To bring on the spirit of celebration, Jesus announced that everyone was forgiven and free of the failures of the past. An open and free future was presented as the right of every person. No human being was to be enslaved to or defined by their past in any manner. We are defined only by our potential to be more humane. Every person has been set free to enjoy life. Being human now means that we are defined by an open, undetermined future with limitless possibilities for creative advance.
But something happens during human development which diminishes and often destroys the spirit of play in life. What is it that leads to the loss of play which is so spontaneous and free in young life? When we look at young animals and young people we can see that play is a natural and fundamental element to their experience of life. But why is that playfulness so easily diminished and often lost on the way to adulthood? What is it about our societies and our existence that suppresses and destroys the free playful spirit of youth? Is there something in social development or spiritual development that operates to negate playfulness?
A partial explanation for the loss of play can be found in the control and coercion that we experience in our daily life. We all suffer from the sense of drivenness that we experience in the vertical relationships of the hierarchical organizations that we exist within. Most of our institutional relationships are law oriented and under the control of law we experience little freedom for spontaneous response as unique persons. A law orientation and the control of hierarchy produces the drivenness that destroys the free spontaneity so essential to play. We, as people under the control of elite laws, must or 'have to' do many things due to threat of punishment or loss of benefits.
So there is this deadening influence of our institutional existence where we are too often coerced and controlled. We live in fear of violating rules, laws, and regulations with the threat of punishment for any infractions or even unintentional mistakes. This atmosphere generates a 'have to' response and not a spontaneous "I want to " response. I will return to the damaging consequences of this law orientation later.
Uniformization or conformity, which is an inevitable result of control by law, also hinders the expression of spontaneous uniqueness or the diversity that is essential to the spirit of play.Rothschild notes that in democratically run work organizations where people have more control over work decisions there is more opportunity for work to merge with play. "When work is relatively free from the press of necessity it becomes self-expressive, playful activity... The purpose of democratic control over the organization is to ensure that the product or service will be in line with one's own values, that the distribution of surplus will be more egalitarian, and that the process of work will be, in and of itself, autonomous and therefore 'fun... The essence of play is that it does not have an instrumental end in mind. In itself it brings gratification. It is a triumph of process over goals. However, in our society a clear line of demarcation separates work from play. We are told not to confuse the two, that they are opposites. (Democratic) organizations see them as related. In a sense, although they don't put it this way, members are trying to integrate the world of work with the sentiments of play. By putting process before product, they are trying to find a place for expressive impulses in an arena ordinarily reserved for instrumental activity. Of course, it might be argued that even the most formalized bureaucracy can not eliminate all traces of human emotion and expression, but the point is that these are regarded as inappropriate or misplaced in the bureaucracy. In the (democratic) organization they are cultivated and sought. They are part of the way that the organization accomplishes its business" (Joyce Rothschild, The Cooperative Workplace, p. 189-191).
We may also lay part of the blame for loss of play on the drivenness of the Protestant work ethic. It has been argued that this heritage fosters the ideal of using all time productively and efficiently. But as descendants of a hunter/gatherer past where a few hours of daily work would take care of our basic needs, leaving abundant time for leisure (57), we have not adjusted well to modern societies where needs have expanded rapidly and means to meet them are harder to achieve.
And it is interesting to note in this regard the statement of an anthropologist who observed that once happy 'pagan' villages often became dull, quiet, and morose places after converting to Protestantism.
Also, most people have little choice or opportunity to do what they would really enjoy doing. Most people are obligated to take work that they may not actually enjoy. Often such work is done under demeaning conditions where the workers may be controlled by dominating superiors who treat subordinates as irresponsible children that are to be tightly controlled. There is an intense humiliation in being ordered about by others, especially if it is done in an insensitive manner, as it often is in the workplace.
The situation has degenerated to the point where we now need fun specialists to reintroduce laughter and play into the workplace. But what we really need to ask is why the spirit of play was lost in the first place. Fixing these more fundamental problems would be a more constructive response.
I would suggest that efforts to re-introduce laughter or play will only amount to tokenism and will fail in the long term unless we deal radically with the fundamental things that undermine fun in the first place, such as the destructive control of vertical relationships and ideas of a dour old Patriarch who validates this divine order of the vertical.
As I noted above, powerholders want subservient people to take their authority with profound seriousness. Laughter and play undermine that seriousness and reduce powerholder authority to the show of clowns that it really is.
We should also note that play means different things in different societies. Campbell says that in Japan, freedom, instead of meaning liberation from the human condition, means "compliance with the same through willing devotion to secular activities" (Myths To Live By, p.121). This is a freedom that is expressed within the bonds of the given social order in which one is raised. Closely related to this is the concept that play is achieved within the drudgery of daily activities, not aside from the same. Japanese speak of a person being in such control of their lives and powers that everything they do is done in the spirit of play, including the most distasteful aspects of living (p.122).
It is also helpful to note in regard to recent play research that scientists have found that "to a variety of species (play) is nearly as important as food and sleep" (58). Play is vital, say researchers, because it lays the groundwork for creative thinking in adulthood (59). Without play children will fail to gain a sense of emotional and mental mastery.
When children play they take complicated or frightening situations and reduce them to ones they can control. The benefits of play as a means of learning control lead to kids that learn to cooperate more and are less antagonistic or intimidating. People who maintain a sense of play are also more optimistic (60). It sounds like the benefits of learning mastery or personal control through play are very healthy.
So we need to take play more seriously. Ha.
Brian Swimme makes the point that play is essential to being human. I quote him at length: "The young come into Earth's system of life as if play were what they were created for. They explore, cross the normal limits of things, leap about without reason, climb too far out on limbs, and fall in the water when their curiosity fastens on something new and strange there. The young reveal the core of life's mystery: the need and opportunity for adventurous play" (The Universe Is A Green Dragon", p.120).
"The difference between humans and other primates (is) the ability of the human to make play its dominant activity throughout a lifetime. Unique among species, the human makes exploration, experimentation, and- above all- learning, the central activities of life itself" (p.121).
"We can then begin to understand the human as an eternal child... The great accomplishment of the human form, then, was the creation of a mature form of childhood, a form of life that, upon reaching adulthood, could continue to devote itself to a lifetime of adventurous play. So you see what I mean when I say that life insists we develop the cosmic dynamic of adventurous play" (p.121).
This point is brilliant- that lifelong play is essential to being truly human. Listen a bit further, "What is the true habitat of the human? Adventurous play. A human denied this habitat of adventure and surprise and play is denied the opportunity to become truly human. Our anguish today rests in our failure to recognize our true talent. We thought we were supposed to become full time consumers in one great world-wide consumer society. But that brings no satisfaction, and we end up trashing the garden spots of the planet. We tried to live as appendages to our machines, discovering only unrelenting meaninglessness in the midst of grime and noise. What else could we have expected, trying to live outside our habitat? Can a whale live in hydrochloric acid? Can an oak tree send down roots in a tar pit? We will finally move into our destiny when we understand that we are to live in and as adventurous play" (p.122).
"Adventure is an adventure into the unknown. True play is without predetermined direction or definition. We are to explore, to learn as deeply as we can, to probe and experiment, and above all to laugh. Humor already reveals the presence of adventurous play- a deep belly laugh might be the one true cry of the human being" (p.122).
"Plunge into the work of living as surprise become aware of itself. You are the essence of surprise, the heart and core of play... Play, fantasy, the imagination, and free exploration of possibilities: these are the central powers of the human person.... Perhaps the entire natural world is a tremendous party, a festival, and we are the long awaited champagne" (p.123).
If being truly human and alive is to play, then what has happened to human existence? Where is there a work organization or school or religious organization that exists for and encourages play as central to human existence and destiny?
We could all start to recapture a life of free play by creating a view of the transcendent as play. And in reality, God is free to be creative, spontaneous and is therefore a God who plays. Traditional theology has tried unsuccessfully to imprison God in religious categories as an unchanging, stern, and damning sovereign who controls all. But the God of life is about freedom, fun, dance, laughter, and play.
It can also be added here that the pagan idea of a punishing God who threatens people with Hell has probably done more to destroy the sense of play in life than any other idea.
3. God is the God of life in all its complex diversity. Here we find natural life, as well as human life, informing us regarding a basic feature of God. Freeman Dyson has noted that at the moment of the Big Bang all matter in the universe was uniform, it was all the same. But with the progressive cooling of the universe, matter and then life has moved steadily toward growing diversity and complexity (61). This trend toward growing complexity and diversity is a fundamental characteristic of all life and of the universe itself.
Paul Davies has stated that the universe is progressing through the growth of structure and organization and complexity "to ever more developed and elaborate states of matter and energy...The universe began in featureless simplicity and grows ever more elaborate with time"(62). He further notes the diversity and irregularity of basic patterns in life and nature, for example, in stating that "galaxies are not distributed smoothly through space but associate in clusters, strings, sheets and other forms that are often tangled and irregular in form"(63). Such irregularity in nature and life, says Davies, condemns the effort of disciplines like sociology and economics to try to create systems of regularity and simplicity. His argument is that attempts by sociologists and economists to imitate physicists and describe their subject matter by simple mathematical equations are rarely convincing.
Further, Davies notes the difficulty in changing our way of viewing nature and life after hundreds of years of belief in the regularity and simplicity of the universe and its basic patterns of life. "There is a tendency to think of complexity in nature as a sort of annoying aberration which holds up the progress of science. Only very recently has an entirely new perspective emerged, according to which complexity and irregularity are seen as the norm and smooth curves the exception...This new approach treats complex or irregular systems as primary in their own right... The new paradigm amounts to turning 300 years of entrenched philosophy on its head. To use the words of physicist Predag Cvitanovic 'Junk your old equations and look for guidance in the repeating patterns of clouds'. It is in short nothing less than a brand new start in the description of nature" (64).
This fundamental fact of the randomness, diversity, and irregularity that shape life is damning to the traditional human effort to control and institutionalize life. It also damns the institutional trend of Christianity to use God to conform lives and behavior patterns of religious adherents. It is a direct denial of God as oriented to diversity and growing complexity. If God is involved in any way in shaping the direction of the universe and life, then the basic diversity of this creation demands a new understanding of God as free and non-institutionalized, a non-religious or a nonconforming God.
Brian Swimme also argues that diversity is fundamental to life. He says, "The earliest organisms advanced by a random appearance of novelty. We call this genetic mutation totally random, by which we mean that there is no controlling machine. The genes show a fundamental freedom of activity. Nothing could predict the outcome before the appearance of the new form of life" (The Universe Is A Green Dragon, p. 119).
"The adventurous play of the life forms bursts into the bewildering and sublime diversity of the past five hundred million years. All of this profusion of being and beauty is the outcome of play, of risk, of surprise. The creation of new life forms is not determined, but is the outcome of life's intrinsic freedom" (p.120).
This basic trend of life toward more diversity represents a very healthy direction. Diversity in any system enhances the chances or options for survival and creative advance of the system. Diversity in this sense simply means more alternative options. If one option fails or is shut down, the whole system will not die if it has varied other options to respond with.A writer in The Economist recently made this same point in an article on the rich biodiversity found in earth's wilderness systems. He said, "Losing species, even bugs and spiders, might matter for a number of reasons. Ecosystems containing a broad diversity of species and genes are generally better able to adapt to changing conditions than those with just a handful of species, however abundant. Genetic variation is nature's insurance against all sort of eventualities. It might help cushion, for example, the impact of a sudden change in the world's climate. It can also help reduce the effect of disease. The Irish potato famine was so devastating because in the 19th century only a few varieties of potato were planted in Ireland, and these all happened to be vulnerable to the same disease. At present almost all the world's food crops are based on a mere nine species of plants, but in the future any of thousands of other species might prove invaluable. Today's apparently useless species may contain tomorrow's medicine" (74).
The diversity that exists when no single organism is the same as any other organism not only ensures the survival of life but also enables life to advance into the freedom of an open and unplanned future. This freedom is essential for life to maintain the power to create. Be maintaining diversity, life is expressing its essential freedom to experiment and explore ever new possibilities.
Tragically, human civilizing and institutionalizing trends have often worked toward eliminating health supporting diversity by forcing uniformity on both people (social systems) and natural systems. This is often accomplished through organizational standardization of response, behavior, and decision making. This uniformization trend endangers the health and ability of systems to survive and move creatively forward.
The feature of diversity relates more naturally to a horizontal orientation of relationships where freedom is allowed more expression. Diversity is rarely permitted, but is more commonly eliminated in vertical relationships of control. In many such institutions it is often believed that diversity hinders efficiency.Excessive Organization of Life
People, especially since domestication, have tried to organize, dominate, and control both nature and human social life in order to make these realms more uniform and predictable. Generally, this control has allowed humanity to produce more and to elevate living standards. We can see evidence of these efforts to control nature in the replacing of wilderness with built landscapes that permit more intensive forms of cultivation. But the domestication of nature has often led to the loss of random patterning that is so prevalent throughout the natural world.
It is interesting in this regard to note Davies comment that "At school we learn about squares, triangles, circles, ellipses. Yet nature rarely displays such simple structures. More often we encounter ragged edges, broken surfaces or tangled networks... irregularity" (65). The patterns of nature are quite different from the patterns of human organizing.
The endeavor to control life is also evident in the organization of human social life. And while such efforts are important to accomplish any number of objectives, they have often undermined the natural diversity of human behavior and social interaction. Such control has had the effect of making uniform something that should be infinitely diverse and free.
There is a sloppy randomness to life that many people view as some sort of aberration. They take great pains to hide this sloppiness by organizing everything into neat patterns and categories. It is all part of an effort to give an image of tight, clean, and orderly life. But it simply does not exist anywhere in the real world. Real life is often random, unpredictable, irregular, and even downright sloppy.
In part, the effort to present life as consisting of neat and orderly patterns is based on a view that life operates according to fixed, unchanging, and rigid laws. Most recently in history this view of life has been expressed in Newton's theory of a closed, mechanical universe governed by rigidly eternal laws. Consequently, people have tried to replicate this view of life by creating neatly ordered systems of operation, tidy systems of ideas to support such systems, and cleaned up scientific studies to describe and validate what they believe must be orderly processes. Newtonian science, according to Davies, is not well adapted to deal with irregular things (66). The effort to replicate in human life what is believed to be the order found in nature is the same old drive to replicate in the social order what people believe to be the divine or natural order of things. Fortunately, this view of life as static and unchanging is being undermined by recent discoveries which show that life is not rigidly governed by predetermined laws.
In recent centuries, the emergence of economic concerns to a pre-eminent position in most societies has provided further impetus to efforts to organize and tightly control all of life. For instance, the concern for efficiency now supplants almost all other concerns, including the concern to be human. In recent history it has been argued that uniformity in behavior and in human organization enhances efficiency. Therefore, competitive efficiency has now added pressure and provided a rationale for institutions and societies to organize and control all human behavior in a manner that leads to growing conformity or uniformization. This is an unhealthy trend that threatens the survivability of many natural and social systems. As I noted above, efficiency and order in nature are far different from modern human ideals of efficiency and organization.
Economic principles have now moved to the foreground of modern human ideology to exert perhaps the predominant influence in the contemporary drive to control and uniformize both life and nature. But blind submission to modern economic principles, such as competitive efficiency, can be seriously dehumanizing. Note the massive corporate and government layoffs of recent years as an example of the trend to place ideological concerns before human well being. As one economist said, "To enhance shareholders returns by improving efficiency, you need to lay off workers, which raises the unemployment rate" (77). This economic law of efficiency has become perhaps the dominant law governing corporate planning and has led to some of the most devastating impacts on the citizens of modern statess. In light of this, it is very important that we take pains to ensure that economic principles and practices are shaped and governed by human criteria, and not vice versa.As noted above, efforts to organize social life have often undermined the natural patterns of human response and relating. Complex and dynamic human life simply can not exist as human within the rigid and limiting organizational systems we have created. These systems too often stifle life and crush the diverse complexity so essential to being truly and fully human.
The entire area of human organizing needs to be more thoroughly challenged. And we need to liberate ideas of God and human life from organizational or institutional contexts. God does not sponsor nor validate the human endeavor to create institutions or social structures. These efforts are driven by people trying to control other people according to ideas of orderly patterns, often patterns suited to the views held by the people trying to control. God has never inspired such institutionalization or control of life.
God consciousness was unfortunately shaped by the pagan drives of early domesticating people. Emerging god consciousness did not therefore lead early settling humans to see God as a free God of life. Instead, the new god consciousness was shaped by the vertical orientation and institutions of early human societies and ideas of God were then used to validate and support controlling male hierarchy in rigid institutions. God became an idea caught up in and associated solely with the new emerging process of creating dominating institutions for settled societies. God was inextricably associated with law, organization, and state control. Early domesticating humans successfully made God into an institutional reality used to support elite control. This was a denial of all that God stands for. This institutionalization of God was a serious mistake that has corrupted ideas of God ever since.
It needs to be stated very clearly that God is not institutional nor does God exist within human organization. God is free and inspires free life. God inspires and promotes the random and diverse spontaneity of life and the growing complexity of life.
As the human self is process and is a reflection of God, so God must also be evolving, changing, and oriented to dynamic process and evolution. God, like the human self that is his expression in life, is constantly creating anew.
Returning to the fundamental reality of life as diverse and random, I want to note that an essential part of the beauty of both natural and social life is found in the spontaneous, diverse, and random nature of their freedom. I am arguing that this same randomness and spontaneous diversity is also basic to the nature of a human God. Traditional institutional life, which operates primarily according to fixed orderly patterns, simply can not express nor encourage the expression of such randomness, diversity or spontaneity. These basic elements of life are often viewed as annoying irregularities to be eliminated from organizations through increasing the control of law to cover every aspect of life.
Randomness and diversity underlie the beauty that we see and feel when we observe wilderness. It is that element of nature that makes us feel so refreshed and alive, especially when we experience less developed environments. Most people recognize this randomness in both the structure and movement of nature and find it invigorating and inspiring.
What is so inspiring about randomness and diversity in nature is that it is evidence of the freedom for spontaneity, uniqueness, and creativity that exists there. As beings who are essentially free creatures, we find that our essential nature responds to and resonates with the freedom that we find expressed in wilderness.
Robert Cartwright made the same point that freedom for diversity is essential to human nature and existence. Commenting on urban planning, he said, "Another fundamental implication of chaos theory is that we must learn to rethink some of our deep-rooted beliefs in the virtues of order and predictability and the 'untidiness' of chaos and disorder. In other words, we must learn to accept the possibility that a chaotic city, for instance, may be preferable to and 'healthier' than an orderly one. It may even be that humans need chaos in order to survive- that chaos is an essential ingredient in the way we manage our finite lives in an infinitely complex world" ("Planning and Chaos Theory" in APA Journal, Winter 1991, p.54).But modern human organizing often undervalues the life inspiring properties of randomness and diversity and there is too often excessive effort to uniformize life. The effort to organize and control life is an expression of the ancient animal/bicameral drive for the supposed security that was to be found in a tightly controlled existence. Organizing is an effort to create order and therefore predictability and security, which is not altogether a bad thing. But in doing so, people hope to find refuge from the frightening uncertainty and unpredictability of true freedom.
I noted earlier, that over the past three centuries the effort to organize nature and human society according to strictly regular patterns has been deeply influenced by the Newtonian view of the universe as a closed mechanical system operating according to rigidly fixed and unchanging laws. Davies states that Newtonian science views all of life as being programmed at the molecular level by universal laws. He states that "According to Newton's theory the universe is like a giant clock, unwinding along a rigid, predetermined pathway towards an unalterable final state. The course of every atom is presumed to be legislated and decided in advance, laid down since the beginning of time. Human beings were seen as nothing but component machines caught up irresistibly in this colossal cosmic mechanism" (67). This element of determinism, he says, has grown to pervade all science. It argues that "everything that is happening now, and everything that ever will happen, has been unalterably determined from the first instant of time... however much we may feel free, everything we do is completely determined" (68). This view of nature and life has dominated western worldviews and patterns of organizing for centuries. Also as noted earlier, Davies has said wisely that Newtonian science is not well adapted to deal with spontaneity, randomness or irregular things.
The conformity and uniformity that is so common to human institutions with their standardized systems of law, expresses the death of freedom. The dull regularity of so much contemporary organizing expresses the tight control which undermines true freedom. That is why I argue that a free God does not validate human institution. God can not be controlled by such systems and he does not use such systems to control others.
Scientists like Davies are now arguing that life is not strictly determined by eternally unchanging laws of nature. Scientists have discovered that the universe and life move forward in an open process that is spontaneously creative. In nature and life we are constantly seeing the emergence of "wholly new things which come into existence in a way that is completely independent of what went before and which is not constrained by a predetermined goal" (69). Davies notes that the evolution of such increasing complexity seems miraculous and remains largely unexplained by science.I would suggest that the discovery of such free creativity and increasing diversity reflects the reality of a free God who encourages the emergence of life as open, free and spontaneously creative.
The built environments that we have created are responsible in great measure for undermining human freedom. This loss of freedom in excessively controlled environments explains, in part, why people feel so refreshed and recreated when they experience true wilderness. As I noted earlier, wilderness reflects the freedom of life. It embodies spontaneity, randomness, chance, incredible diversity, and openness to change which are essential elements of life and the universe.
We are all aware of the fact that in nature nothing is alike. Every plant and animal offers a unique expression of life. Human beings are creatures sharing such life, and feel refreshed by this natural freedom and diversity. It is life inspiring and enhancing. In wilderness people are able to feel once again their natural connection with the randomness and diversity of all life. It energizes and humanizes. It is the opposite effect to that of our deadening built environments which suppress and destroy the diversity and randomness that are so essential to life and the development of life.
The deadening effect of built environments arises from the control that is reflected in such environments. Built environments express human effort to excessively control life. These efforts at control have inevitably produced dull conformity which erases the beauty of natural diversity and uniqueness. Inspired by views of a universe governed by rigidly determining laws, human efforts at institutionalization and organization have often destroyed the diversity and randomness that are so essential to nature and human social life. An institutional God who supports these human efforts at organizing and uniformizing life must then be in reality a death dealing God.
Tragically, we are losing true wilderness areas. Human efforts to organize and control nature have left little of the earth's surface untouched. Modern nation states and corporations have been effective tools for such total control.
In arguing for diversity, I am not ignoring the fact that there are also patterns in nature and human social life. But these patterns are not fixed or rigidly predetermined in the same manner that controlling people would like to imagine that the fundamental laws of nature and life ought to be. Yes there is order- but it is far different from the order that we try to manufacture in our organizing efforts and institutions. Patterns in nature and social life are open, evolving, and flexible. Davies has argued that essential to the process of evolution has been the emergence of new levels of organization (70). However, these new levels of organization are not a movement toward conformity or uniformity as is true of much human effort to organize. The organizational advance in nature is toward increased complexity, diversity and free spontaneous creativity. Sometimes chance and spontaneity operate to suddenly and radically change the direction of entire natural systems. Our views of law and the consequent organizations that we construct often do not allow for this kind of freedom in natural or social life. We create institutions and systems that are far too unnatural and inhumane.
Madeleine Nash adds this insightful comment on order and chaos in life. "Biological evolution, says Kaufmann, is just one example of a self-organizing system that teeters on the knife edge between order and chaos, 'a grand compromise between structure and surprise'. Too much order makes change impossible; too much chaos and there can be no continuity" ("When Life Exploded" in TIME, Dec. 4, 1995).
Fortunately, the basic trend of life toward more complexity and diversity has led scientists to recognize that there must be new general principles or laws over and above the known laws of physics which have yet to be discovered (71). These new principles are laws in their own right but they will require new ways of thinking about nature that depart radically from the rigidity of traditional science (72). These new principles must encompass the chaos, randomness, and spontaneity that are now recognized not as annoying irregularities, but as the norm in life.
Even the atomic or molecular level, which was once believed to be governed by strictly deterministic laws, is now known to be very indeterminate. As Davies says, "the central feature of quantum theory is indeterminism. The old physics linked all events in a tight chain of cause and effect. But on the atomic scale the linkage turns out to be loose and imprecise. Events occur without well-defined causes... Particles do not follow well-defined paths, and forces do not produce dependable actions. The precision clockwork of classical Newtonian mechanics gives way to a ghostly melee of half-forms... What happens from moment to moment can not be predicted with definiteness- only the betting odds can be given. Spontaneous random fluctuations in the structure of matter, and even of space-time, inevitably occur" (73).
Davies also notes Niels Bohr's comments on the erratic behavior of subatomic particles. Bohr's view was that "there are no causes of this chaos, that the old Newtonian view of a clockwork universe unfolding according to a predetermined pattern is forever discredited. Rather than rigid rules of cause and effect, claimed Bohr, matter is subject to the laws of chance" (74). Therefore, says Davies, we have to accept that there is an intrinsic, irreducible uncertainty in the subatomic world and in nature (75).
In light of this it must be deeply impressed on human consciousness that the fundamental trend of evolution in the universe and in all of life is toward freedom to creatively advance toward more complexity and diversity. Efforts to uniformize and standardize life only destroy the essential movement and development of life. More recent efforts to control are driven by such values as efficiency for profitability which has almost canceled out the effectiveness of other social values. The impact of such efforts to control life has often been to destroy the natural flow of life.
Efforts to organize and control life are often condemned to futility from the start. Stafford Beer has argued that if management systems do not contain the requisite variety (the same complexity and diversity) of the systems that they are trying to manage, then they can not manage those systems (76). This requirement of requisite variety makes it questionable if any natural or social system can ever be truly managed, especially if the rigid and limiting structures of contemporary organizations are used as governing patterns. Perhaps the best we can do is to try to understand natural and social processes and then try to cooperate with them or to try to adjust to them without causing too much damage to the natural diversity and flow of these systems.
There is an element of arrogance in pretending that, despite our profound ignorance, we can actually manage nature or life. History is replete with examples of human management efforts gone massively awry. We have only to note the polluted oceans and air, the destruction of topsoil, etc., to see that we have made a mess of trying to manage or control life on this globe.If the fundamental trend of life is toward growing complexity, diversity, and freedom, then human effort at conformity, uniformity and control is in opposition to the fundamental direction of life in the universe. Our insane fear of freedom with its essential spontaneous creativity and randomness and our fear-ridden drive for more control of life, with the assumed predictability and security such control will bring, is leading us to undermine freedom and to oppose the essential trend of life. Such efforts are doomed to ultimate failure as freedom and life will ultimately overcome. The universe is moving irreversibly toward such freedom.
People through the past few millennia have tried to create an institutional and hierarchically oriented God to validate their efforts to organize life. The result has been a restricting, dominating God who controls life through rigid systems of law and rigid structures that operate to promote vertical forms of relating and domination with their attendant control and conformity.
The great world religions have been especially arrogant in claiming to be institutions that embody and mediate this controlling God and his truth. Morwood says, "This understanding of itself (the church as the center of God's activity) has given church authority an enormous sense of power and control over people's lives. This power and control have come to be centralized in a very tight governing system that operates from above. One of the features of this style of authority has been intolerance of diversity" (Michael Morwood, Tomorrow's Catholic, p. 124).
"Throughout history the church has struggled with diversity. It has put enormous effort into controlling the way its members think and act. This conformity and uniformity became even more entrenched in the Catholic Church after the Reformation when church authority sought to keep control of its members. Unquestioning loyalty, learning the catechism, and knowing the answers, blind obedience to church authority, rigid observance of church laws, total adherence to strict liturgical laws, fear and guilt, and the use of Latin throughout the world all served to ensure an extraordinary state of conformity" (p.125).
But please do not think I am condemning only the Catholic church for deadening conformity and the destruction of life-enhancing diversity. Every organized church has functioned to crush the human spirit with centralized structures of control- both behavioral and thought control.
A humane God has absolutely nothing to do with human social structures or institutions and orders. A humane God is the opposite on every point to a hierarchical and institutional God who effects rigidity and conformity in life.
The humane God creates life and grants life the freedom to diversify in infinite creativity and spontaneity. God is the God of life with all of its beautiful complexity and diversity. God creates life, not the structures or institutions which constrain and deny it the freedom to develop as it normally would.
I am arguing very clearly, then, that the humane God has no involvement at all with the efforts of people to control nature or human social life through excessive structuring such as is found in the institutional and organizational trends of our societies. God is not an institutional God living within and supporting human organizations and structures.
Ellul also argues that life with God can not be organized. He says, "God's order is not that which we conceive and desire. God's order is not organization and institution. It is not the same in every time and place. It is not a matter of repetition and habit. On the contrary, it resides in the fact that it constantly posits something new, a new beginning. Our God is a God of beginnings. There if in him no redundancy or circularity.... (life with God) is completely mobile, fluid, renascent, bubbling, creative, inventive, adventurous, and imaginative. It will never be perennial, and can never be organized or institutionalized. If the gates of death are not going to prevail against it, this is not because it is a good, solid, well-organized fortress, but because it is alive; it is Life- that is, as mobile, changing, and surprising as life. If it becomes a powerful, fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed" (88).
It must be made very clear that people and people alone create structures or institutions of control in an effort to dominate nature and other people. People alone are responsible for creating the structures which have constrained and destroyed the free patterns of life. It is a distortion and abuse of God for people to claim that God has led them to create some program or institution which then operates to control and conform human life.
And too often such claims have led other people to look to human organizations to help solve their problems and to meet their needs as though the organization were a new God.
In belaboring this point about God not being responsible for efforts to organize or control life, I am revealing a central goal of this study which is to liberate God from rigid institutional contexts. God does not inspire, create, nor validate any effort to control or organize life or nature. Life can not properly develop in institutions which function to uniformize all in the pursuit of predictability, security, and efficiency.
Human institutions must be viewed for what they often really are- the result of excessively zealous efforts of animal-like people to organize and control life. And such efforts have a place in meeting the needs of people in domesticated society. But often these efforts emanate from powerholding elites who are trying to control resources or people for their own advantage.
And again, let me offer the caution that I am not arguing that we abandon all effort at organizing human groups. I am simply saying that we need to take great care that in all of our efforts to organize or to cooperate, that we preserve and fit into the basic flow of life which is toward growing complexity and diversity. We must allow randomness and spontaneity to freely operate and we must never punish expressions of human diversity and spontaneity for breaking institutional patterns or rules. Only then can we claim to be co-creating with the free God of life.
When you argue for randomness and chance as essential elements of life, there are some people who will automatically assume that in such a world of chance there can be no place for God. Because the old ideas of God are so tightly associated with control and predetermination, any challenge to that rigid predetermination undermines the existence of that old God completely. And rightly so.
If there is no determinism at the subatomic level of matter and less determinism at higher levels of life, then certainly old ideas of a predetermining God are forever discredited.
The old ideas of God have for so long been associated only with rigid views of law and order that any element of chance or randomness is viewed automatically as evidence of there being no God. But admitting to a world of spontaneous creativity and chance is not automatically accepting a world absent of any trace of God. Randomness and chance and spontaneous creativity are powerful arguments for God. They are evidence, however, of a God completely different from the old predetermining God of control. They are evidence of a free and humane God.
Also, it seems presumptuous of strict atheists to commit so completely to a no-God position when we still know so little about life, reality, and the spiritual. There is far too little evidence for people to commit themselves to the fundamentalist attitude which believes that it has a final truth and all else is wrong. Remember, fundamentalists are not only found in religious settings. They are everywhere inhabiting ideologies as diverse as communism, capitalism, religious movements, science, and even atheism.
Ironically, many scientists display the same fundamentalist intolerance that they condemn in religious people. The commitment to a rational scientific explanation (based on the assumption of meaningless randomness) for everything in the universe is an example of this. Even as scientific discovery has led to increasing revelation of mystery that can not be explained rationally, many scientists insist on continuing to employ a strictly rational, mathematical approach to understanding reality. In this regard, someone has stated that one of the serious limitations of modern science is the very method of science- it is limited to describing things, not explaining things.
Maybe it is time to move beyond a fear of intuition and imagination and to start dealing with mystery that can not be explained in natural or material terms. It may be time for some new synthesis of the so-called natural and spiritual realms. While elements of the rational viewpoint can purge some of the irrational extremism of religious belief, intuition and imagination are certainly necessary to help inform the rigidly rational approach to discovering or understanding all reality. It may be time to end the human created division between physical and nonphysical reality and the separate approaches used to define these supposedly separate realms.
We often pose a bipolar conflict between science and religion as two opposing and mutually exclusive approaches to understanding reality and life. But we need the useful elements of both rationality and intuition/imagination to understand the greater mystery of life and the universe. We need all that humanity has to offer from all areas of thought. As we discover more mystery in the so-called material world and boundaries blur, maybe we need to opt for a more holistic approach to discovery and explanation. Maybe the spiritual and natural realms are more entwined than we have yet realized. I am reminded of the ancient reference to God as a reality in which we move, and live and have our being. Being enslaved to some limited viewpoint of reality, whether scientific or religious, will only hinder our appreciation of the interdependence of the whole.4. God is a social God or a community oriented God. God does not exist in self-sufficient isolation from others.
Brinsmead notes the origin of the idea of a self-sufficient God in Aristotle's philosophy of God as the Unmoved Mover. There God is viewed as complete and all sufficient within himself. That God, says Brinsmead, is not influenced or enriched by anything outside himself. Such a God is not "enriched or changed by any interchange with his creation" (77).
This isolated divinity bears no relation to the human God revealed in Jesus. Jesus sought and encouraged community and interaction with others as essential to life. In fact, the human God seen in Jesus has no existence aside from human community. Jesus was enriched and changed by interaction with fellow human beings. As noted previously, one of the basic notes of life is interdependency. God does not violate these basic elements of life.
As an equal in community, God does not overwhelm humans with his will nor does he coerce people into submitting to that will with threats of punishment or damnation. God does not extinguish the individuality or freedom of people in any way.
The community of God is one of free open cooperation and free and open commitment to jointly agreed on endeavors. It is a venture in cooperative co-creating without any element of coercion from God or from any elite group. Such community remains open and diverse and is not determined by any one member or any elite group of the community. It is also not determined by God.
In community with God, there is no demand for submission to the will of God. There is also no demand to extinguish the self and let God take control. Such demands for submission to God are often thinly disguised demands for submission to the whims and fancies of religious leaders. This submission to leaders opens people up to manipulation and abuse. It has led to all sorts of ridiculous and inhuman behavior.
Finally, God in community remains free, open, changing, evolving, and spontaneously creative. There is nothing rigid, final, eternal, or closed about a social God. The above material leads us to reaffirm that the essence of a human God is noncoercing love, not power or control. God is indeed love.A Few More Ideas About A Human God
In addition to the above basic features, there are several other things that need to be said about a new view of God. For instance, it needs to be pointed out that God does not have gender. God is neither male nor female. This is especially important to note in the light of a long history of male domination of women. The male patriarchy we find in the old God is a feature which originated with the dominating male patriarchs found in animal hierarchies. Earlier in this study, we traced the possible path by which animal patriarchy moved into early human society and then emerged in the early views of gods.
But the human God whose features we are trying to outline contains nothing animal in his basic nature.
Certainly, male dominance has no part in a truly human God.
Unfortunately, we have used the pronoun 'he' in referring to God in several places in this study. This is due to the limitations of English in regard to third person pronouns. It does not reflect a belief that God has gender.
In reaction to millennia of male dominance, some are tempted to now coopt the idea of God for the feminist movement. God is now declared to be mother God. But this is only more of the isolating and polarizing past we are all trying to free ourselves from. God is about being human and coming together around this common reality. The idea of God must not become part of the polarizing battle between male and female characteristics.Characteristics labeled as male or masculine, are often residual animal features that are common to both genders even though they may be more dominant in the male gender. Aggression is an example of such a feature. It is now known that aggression originates from that part of the residual animal brain which is the substrate of the human brain in both genders.
Characteristics labeled as female, are often actually human features common to both genders. Nurturing and the desire for intimacy would be examples. It is more helpful to view what are called issues of feminism versus masculinity as more of animal versus human issues, which they often really are. This is a much less polarizing way of dealing with such issues.
We could add that God also does not have ethnicity. God is not white nor black nor of any other ethnic background. God can not be used for ethnic or partisan movements or ideologies which separate humans from each other and set some humans against other humans.
The idea of God should never be used to set out some people as more special than other people. The doctrine of election has been a terrible curse in this regard as it declares some humans to be specially chosen by God. This has led to all sorts of inhuman treatment of others who were viewed as not chosen by God and therefore subject to being treated as less than fully human.
Michael Morwood has pointed out that the Christian claim to exclusivity has led to unbearable intolerance and oppression. The claim to be the one authentic voice of the divine presence and with this the expectation that all the world has to be converted to it as the one authentic religion has led to domination of others. He says that the more intensely people experienced their own sense of election the more they felt destined to be the instrument of divine rule over the nations of the world. But the truth of God's presence everywhere undermines this claim of exclusivity and domination. "If God is truly always present everywhere, we should expect God's presence and something of God's nature to be revealed in all of creation. We should expect and take seriously that God's presence, God's spirit, has been and is at work in all people, in all places, at all times, in a multitude of differing cultures, thought patterns, and worldviews. God's presence and insights into the nature of God will surface differently within those human factors. In a very real way, different cultures shape their understanding of God. This is inevitable"(Tomorrow's Catholic, p.47).
This is a challenge to any exclusive claims to God's revelation. If we image God as all pervasive, in and through all that exists, we must believe in God's spirit actively working in all cultures, in all places, at all times, within greatly divergent thought patterns and worldviews... The images of and ideas about God which emerge (in other cultures) are necessarily produced by and tied to that particular culture... We must continue to assert that God is beyond our culturally defined images and ideas" (Ibid, p.47).
"This viewpoint challenges the exclusive claims of any particular religion which wants to emphasize that 'We are the only true religion. We alone have God's revelation. We have God on our side; you don't'. Or 'If you want to be saved you have to accept our culture, our thought patterns, our dogmas, our rituals, otherwise there is no hope for you'"(Ibid, p.48).
"The tendency of human beings to lock God's revelation into their own culture and thought patterns in an exclusive fashion is remarkable. The history of religions is plagued with wars, the decimation of cultures, the inability to recognize God's presence in different cultures, and the refusal to accept that another religious tradition might have insights into the transcendent which might enrich one's own religious understanding. Only now are we changing... and beginning to appreciate that God's presence and activity in our world are not locked into any one religious movement" (Ibid, p.48).
God also can not be coopted for special or national interests. God does not bless some nations above others or bless some groups above others. God does not help winners over losers.
The idea of God is the greatest idea to ever enter the human mind. It is an idea that belongs to all human beings for their enjoyment, development, and general well-being. It is an idea and reality that is intended to assist all people to become more free and more fully human.
Tragically, this liberating idea has often been coopted by elites and used in their efforts to dominate and control other human beings for any number of purposes. But the idea of God, rather than supporting any special interest, is intensely subversive to all exclusivity, authority, control, and special interest. It is an idea for the benefit of all humanity.
As difficult as it initially may be, we need to think of God in radically new ways. God must be completely separated from all religion, law, human authority, human rule, eliteness, human organization, gender, ethnicity, and control. Instead, God must be associated with all genuine human freedom, with free life, laughter, love, play, chance, diversity, and with all natural life. God must be moved radically from the top and from elite control to the bottom and genuine bottomup control.
It may be difficult to imagine God in such a radically new context, because for millennia the idea of God has been coopted and imprisoned in hierarchically oriented and institutionalized religion. It has become almost impossible to think of God aside from religious institutions and systems of religious authority and theology. The only alternative offered by religious authorities to people who rejected this view of God was atheism. We must reject that simple bipolar reality as false.
It will be especially difficult to think of God aside from authority, law, and rule. Vast, complex systems of law and theology have been constructed over millennia to keep the idea of God entrapped in ideologies of controlling authority and law. As noted often before, we feel these things have merely been part of the drive to validate control and domination of others.
But if we are ever to know the reality that is God, then we must make the effort to rethink the idea of God in entirely new ways that have no relation whatever to old categories and definitions, often set by ruling elites of the past. The vast powerless majority at the bottom must now propose new parameters for God thinking that are truly bottomup.
True human freedom means that we may use all of the information from all areas of life to inform new ideas of God and the spiritual. This will mean a complete break with religion and religious categories as the proper realm for ideas of God.
The artificial boundaries of systems of belief and thought created by people in the past have only hindered freedom of thought and locked human minds in rigid ideologies and worldviews. This has hindered human progress.
It has been argued that over the past few centuries, much human knowledge has been separated into discrete disciplines or categories that have, in effect, cut many areas of knowledge off from other areas of knowledge. These different areas of knowledge have then been viewed as belonging exclusively to rigidly restricted categories or disciplines often controlled by elite specialists or authorities. This is now being recognized as an isolating and distorting mistake. Many people have come to recognize the inseparable and interrelated nature of all life and of all things. Life is now seen more as a flowing process in which everything is interrelated. God is vitally a part of all these areas of life and knowledge of God can be informed by ideas from all areas of life. And the most important elements of this knowledge is freely available to all persons.
We must now break the idea of God completely free of all the old categories and institutions and start to think of God in all of life. And as we move the idea of God in new directions, we must also beware of cluttering it up again with systems of fixed and final dogma. The idea of God must remain a free, open, and changing idea. It must be allowed to move as an open ended process flowing into an entirely open and free future. This open process approach more clearly reflects the free nature of the human God.
The approach to God research must be similar to the meaning of truth to some modern scientists, according to Joseph Campbell. He says that "what would the meaning be of the word 'truth' to a modern scientist? Surely not the meaning it would have for a mystic. For the really great and essential fact about the scientific revelation... is that science does not and can not pretend to be 'true' in any absolute sense. It does not and can not pretend to be final. It is a tentative organization of mere 'working hypotheses'... that for the present appear to take into account all the relevant facts now known" (Myths To Live By, p.17).
Works Cited
Matthew 20:16.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1991. "Reflections on the Question of Authority" in Quest, No. 10, p. 8.
Ibid, p.8.
Ibid. 1989. "Dare to Blaspheme and Dare to be Free" in Quest, Essay 1, p.5.
Ibid, p.7.
Ibid, p.6.
Ibid, p.6.
Ibid, p.6.
Ibid, p.6.
Ibid, p.6.
Ibid, p.6.
Zwemer, Jack. 1991. "The Nature of the Human Self" in Quest, No. 12, p.5.
Armstrong, Karen. 1992. A History Of God, p. 382-3.
Ibid, p. 394.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1998. The Historical Jesus Versus The Christian Religion, p.10.
Armstrong, Karen. 1992. A History of God, p. 355.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1990. "The Freedom of An Open Future" in Quest, Essay 4, p.3.
Ibid, p.3.
Ibid, p.3.
Ibid, p.5.
Davies, Paul. 1988. The Cosmic Blueprint, p.30.
Ibid.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1990. "The Freedom of an Open Future" in Quest, Essay 4, p.3.
Ibid, p.5.
Boorstin, Daniel. "The Asking Animal" in Time, Special Issue, Winter 1997-1998, p.21.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1990. "The Freedom of an Open Future", p.6.
Ibid, p.6.
Ibid, p.1.
Ibid, p.6.
Davies, Paul. 1988. The Cosmic Blueprint, p. 200.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1991. "Reflections on the Question of Authority" in Quest No. 10, p.1.
Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness, p.318.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1991. "Reflections on the Question of Authority" in Quest No. 10, p. 5.
Ibid, p.5.
Ibid, p.6.
Ibid, p.6.?
Ibid, p.6.?
Ibid, 1991. "Reflections on the Question of Authority" in Quest, No 10, p.6.
Ibid, 1989. "The Necessity of Freedom in All Relationships" in Quest, Essay 3, p.3.
Ibid, p.3.
Papert, Seymour. 1995. "The Parent Trap" in Time, November 13, p.37.
Ibid, p.36.
Rothschild, Joyce. 1989. The Cooperative Workplace, p. 66.
Armstrong, Karen. 1992. A History Of God, p.381.
Boorstin, Daniel. "The Asking Animal" in Time, Special Issue, Winter 1997-1998, p.17.
Todd, Douglas. 1992. "How could God let this happen?" in Saturday Review, The Vancouver Sun, March 21, p. D15.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid, 1992. "God is great, but not all-powerful", March 28, p.D15.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Sahlins, Marshal. Stone Age Economics: The Original Affluent Society.
Brownlee, Shannon. 1997. "The Case For Frivolity" in U.S. News and World Report, Feb. 3.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Dyson, Freeman. 1988. Infinite In All Directions.
Davies. Paul. 1988. The Cosmic Blueprint, p.20-21.
Ibid, p.22.
Ibid, p.22, 23.
Ibid, p. 57.
Ibid, p.22.
Ibid, God And The New Physics, p. 135.
Ibid, The Cosmic Blueprint, p. 8-11.
Ibid, p. 140.
Ibid, p. 129.
Ibid, p. 142.
Ibid, p. 142.
Ibid, The Matter Myth, p.141-142.
Ibid, p.221.
Ibid, p.209, 225.
Beer, Stafford. Quoted by Bill Rees in lecture at School of Planning, University of British Columbia, Oct. 1, 1992.
Brinsmead, Robert. 1990. "The Freedom of An Open Future" in Quest, Essay 4, p.1.
From the series "Taking The Vertical Out Of God" by W.
Krossa,
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