[Peace-discuss] RE: "God and government"

[Phil Stinard]

Mort,

The article wisely points out that the meaning of "God" is 
context-dependent.  It means different things to different people.  To James 
Carroll, it means "object of ridicule."

--Phil


>Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 14:44:50 -0500
>From: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel at uiuc.edu>
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] "God and government"
>To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>Message-ID: <2D5A91A9-7216-4F3E-8EC3-7B782F0195ED at uiuc.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>Ruminations on a word, one with no accepted meaning, and, I would
>posit, therefore only obscurantist. --mkb
>
>Published on Monday, October 17, 2005 by the Boston Globe
>All God, All the Time
>by James Carroll
>
>When they told us in Sunday School that God is everywhere, they could
>have been talking about the recent news cycle. With Harriet Miers, we
>see that God lives in the politics of the US Supreme Court nomination
>process. In a culture defined by the separation of church and state,
>President Bush and his allies have mastered the use of religious
>affirmation as a deflection not only of criticism, but of critical
>thought. God is thus a trump card, a free pass. If the president,
>senators, and members of Congress can justify their decisions by
>appeals to God, why not judges?
>
>''Acts of God" is the phrase applied to staggering natural disasters,
>from Katrina and the Pakistan earthquake to the coming avian flu. At
>the same time, survivors of such catastrophes credit God for having
>saved them, as if God callously let all those others die. Humans are
>perplexed when wanton suffering occurs, especially among children,
>and assumptions about God are overturned. The question becomes, How
>could God let this happen? Today, in Pakistan, where fatal disease,
>hunger, and thirst go unabated, the very ones who praised God last
>week for sparing them are pleading with God now, to no avail.
>
>In the argument between creationists and scientists, those aiming to
>defend God make absolute claims about mysteries of the deep past as
>if they themselves were there. Air Force flyers have thought of God
>as their co-pilot in the past, but in today's Air Force, God sits
>atop the chain-of-command. At the US Air Force Academy, which was
>rocked by sex scandals not long ago, God is now the designated dean
>of discipline, but this jeopardizes infidel careers. Unit cohesion
>requires conversion. Indeed, displays of faith can be a prerequisite
>for promotion throughout a government where the White House itself is
>a House of God. In Iraq, meanwhile, someone will turn his body into a
>bomb today, killing others by blowing himself up while saying, ''God
>is great!"
>
>Who is this ''God" in whose name so many diverse and troubling things
>take place? Why is it assumed to be good to affirm one's faith in
>such an entity? Why is it thought to be wicked to deny its existence?
>Most striking about so much talk of ''God," both to affirm and to
>deny, is the way in which many who use this language seem to know
>exactly to what and/or whom it refers. God is spoken of as if God is
>the Wizard of Oz or the great CEO in the sky or Grampa or the Grand
>Inquisitor. God is the clock-maker, the puppeteer, the author. God is
>the light, the mother, the wind across the sea, the breath in every
>set of lungs. God is the horizon. God is all of these things.
>
>But what if God is none of them? What if every possible affirmation
>that can be made of God, even by the so-called religions of
>revelation, falls so far short of the truth of God as to be false?
>Who is the atheist then? The glib God-talk that infuses public
>discourse in contemporary America descends from an anthropomorphic
>habit of mind, dating to the Bible and beyond, that treats God like
>an intimate friend or well-known enemy, depending on the weather and
>the outcome of battles. But there is another strain in the Biblical
>tradition that insists on the radical otherness of God, an otherness
>so complete that even the use of the word ''God" as a name for this
>Other One is forbidden. According to this understanding, God is God
>precisely in escaping and transcending comprehension by human beings.
>This can seem to mean that God is simply unknowable. If so, humans
>are better off not bothering about it. Atheism, agnosticism, or
>childish anthropomorphism -- all the same.
>
>But here is where it gets tricky. What if God's unknowability is the
>most illuminating profundity humans can know about God? That would
>mean that religious language, instead of opening into the absolute
>certitude on which all forms of triumphal superiority are based,
>would open into true modesty. The closed creation, in which every
>question has an answer, would be replaced by an infinite cosmos where
>every answer sparks a new question. If what we mean by ''God" is the
>living pulse of such open-endedness, then God is of no use in systems
>of dominance, censorship, power. God is everywhere, yes. But, also,
>God is nowhere. And that, too, shows in America, especially in its
>fake religiosity.
>
>James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. His most
>recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."
>
>Copyright 2005 Boston Globe