thread: 2006-09-08 : Picky-choosy religion, 3 views
On 2006-09-13, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Tris: [Why] worship a being who cared less, just because it had more power?
Because it can also offer you more goodness than any individual human being.
That's just the short answer, of course. The slightly more complete answer follows.
First:
I'm not particularly interested in "worship"—that word has far too many ambiguous meanings in our language, and you'll notice I haven't used it so far (I think so, at least: Please point me to any instance where I have). I don't think God particularly craves being "worshipped"; I do think He wants to be loved, and He wants us to be happy, because He loves us.
What I am interested in is being open to the goodness of God. The rituals of communal worship help me and many other people in that; prayer helps; study of scripture helps; music helps—for me, music helps a lot. But all those are aids to salvation, not salvation itself.
Second:
God "cares less"? Even if you assume that He has indeed decided to inflict suffering on us for reasons we don't understand (and remember that I am not confident of any answer to the "problem of evil"), that does not mean He "cares less." He cared enough to be born, live, die, and crawl back from death, after all. It is possible to hurt someone you love and still care tremendously about them—look at almost any family.
Third:
We don't know why there is evil in a universe created by a loving God. We just don't. I've never seen a satisfactory answer. But until we get a satisfactory answer, there are three courses of action:
1. "The existence of evil proves that God doesn't exist. I won't seek Him out."
2. "The existence of evil troubles me. Nevertheless I will open myself to the love of God."
3. "The existence of evil proves that God is unworthy of my love; therefore I will not open myself to His love."
(1) has the advantage of logical completeness; it's also a little bleak for me, in that it shuts the door on God for good and never wants to look through it again.
(2) admits a huge gaping hole in its understanding; it's also the only approach that is willing to move forward past the pain and try to benefit from God.
(3) strikes me as radically self-defeating. "Because I am wounded, I refuse to accept healing"—this is not a plan. If you suspect God exists, you should try accepting that you don't know why He does everything He does and be willing to accept the good you know He does do.
