What Would I see, If I Could See God?

God is in the roses,
The petals, and the thorns.
Storms out on the oceans
Souls who will be born
And every drop of rain that falls
Falls for those who mourn.

Roseanne Cash, God Is In The Roses

Mankind has spent its time on Earth seeking God in every nook and cranny of the visible world and in the invisible reaches of space and time. We seem obsessed with the idea that God must have a definable nature, so much so that many of the explanations for God’s nature are simply nonsensical from the standpoint of physical laws.

True believers would scoff at the conclusion reached in that last sentence, for the simple reason that they believe that without “faith” (and by “faith” they mean your willingness to suspend disbelief so that you become able to believe as they believe), God cannot be appreciated. By so arguing, they turn the concept of faith into the missing ingredient necessary for their view of God to exist outside the realm of physical laws.

I find arguments for an improbable nature of God which are ultimately based upon faith alone not to be compelling. This skepticism of mine often gets me into trouble when I am discussing religious matters with true believers. I once told an earnest Mormon friend of mine bent upon my conversion that I was simply unable to believe in a “god” that dismissed 90% of the world’s human population. He was horrified and responded that I was not allowed to say such a thing. Given his faith in his beliefs, he was surely certain that I was bound for Hell in the afterlife, and that my comment would be remembered, recorded, and eventually read out as evidence of my apostasy when I make my appearance on the Mormon judgment day.

I have thought much about that conversation, and have discussed it with many of my other friends. Since most of my friends aren’t Mormon, many found the story amusing or a condemnation of the brutality of organized religion. And yet, when most of my acquaintances think of God, I strongly suspect that they envision an anthropomorphic God; that whatever their cultural equivalent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling might be, its art determines their internal visualization of God. For it is in art that faith renders the nature of God visible to humanity, since God remains ineffable.

I recently found myself wondering how my cat would view God. I suppose that an argument can be made that a house cat views God in human form, since it is a human hand that feeds it. But what of a feral cat? From a feral cat’s vantage point, would God assume feline form? Or is the mere asking of such a question nothing more than an anthropomorphization of the issue? As a life-long cat owner, I have long since given up trying to determine what cats stare at much of the day, so I am hardly in a position to know what – or even how – they think. I only know that they do think and that they are quite capable of emotion. I know, also, that those who would deny cats a soul for the simple reason that a cat is not human, understand nothing at all about cats – or, indeed, any animal other than humans.

I suppose I am a bit of a Jainist when it comes to all forms of life, for I believe that all forms of life have individual sanctity. I have gotten to the point where I have difficulty killing the occasional insect that wanders into our house, preferring, instead, to toss it back out the nearest open window into its normal habitat – without first having maimed it, if possible. In fact, I have come to believe that all life is a variant of a single force, a life force which invigorates each living thing and whose name is God.

Mine is not the life force of George Bernard Shaw, for he saw the life force as an experiment in increasing complexity that would ultimately end in the creation of God. He saw humanity as a step along the way and gave humanity primacy of place in its time.

“What you have got to understand is that somehow or other there is at the back of the universe a will, a life-force. You cannot think of him as a person, you have to think of him as a great purpose, a great will, and, furthermore, you have to think of him as engaged in a continual struggle to produce something higher and higher, to create organs to carry out his purpose; as wanting hands, and saying, “I must create something with hands”; arriving at that very slowly, after innumerable experiments and innumerable mistakes, because this power must be proceeding as we proceed, because if there were any other way it would put us in that way: we know that in all the progress we make we proceed by way of trial and error and experiment. Now conceive of the force behind the universe as a bodiless, impotent force, having no executive power of its own, wanting instruments, something to carry out its will in the world, making all manner of experiments, creating reptiles, birds, animals, trying one thing after another, rising higher and higher in the scale of organism, and finally producing man, and then inspiring that man, putting his will into him, getting him to carry out his purpose, saying to him, “Remember, you are not here merely to look after yourself. I have made your hand to do my work; I have made your brain, and I want you to work with that and try to find out the purpose of the universe; and when one instrument is worn out, I will make another, and another, always more and more intelligent and effective.” “

George Bernard Shaw, The New Theology (1907)

Shaw concluded his argument in this manner:

“The object of the whole evolutionary process is to realize God; that is to say, instead of the old notion that creation began with a God, a personal being, who, being perfect, created something lower than himself, the aim of the New Theology is to turn that process the other way and to conceive of the force behind the universe as working up through imperfection and mistake to a perfect, organized being, having the power of fulfilling its highest purposes. In a sense there is no God as yet achieved, but there is that force at work making God, struggling through us to become an actual organized existence, enjoying what to many of us is the greatest conceivable ecstasy, the ecstasy of a brain, an intelligence, actually conscious of the whole, and with executive force capable of guiding it to a perfectly benevolent and harmonious end. That is what we are working to. When you are asked, “Where is God? Who is God?” stand up and say, “I am God and here is God, not as yet completed, but still advancing towards completion, just in so much as I am working for the purpose of the universe, working for the good of the whole of society and the whole world, instead of merely looking after my personal ends.””

George Bernard Shaw, The New Theology (1907)

He was basically arguing that God couldn’t have built from the top down as suggested in biblical texts, since, once he had created angels, why would he create a lesser being (man) and then other lesser beings? He did not believe that an intelligent God could think that way. Instead, he preferred to believe that the Life Force was constantly seeking to build to a higher level, and that humanity was but one step along the way to the goal of “God.”

But what if the life force is content to be what it is and has no higher goal? In the words of Dylan Thomas:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

I prefer to think of God as Thomas’ green fuse: a pulse that first invigorates and then takes away individual life while moving in no particular direction by means of each individual life begetting another which, in turn, begets yet another such that each species survives – and so on until the end of time. If correct, this would mean that once we understand all of the physical laws of nature, space, time, and the universe (if we ever do), we may catch the merest glimpse of God.

And so it is that I believe I can see something of God. I can see God every day in the lanes and fields of Humptulips County. And, if I were there, I could see that same God in the Amazon jungle, in the starkness of Dartmoor, in the mountains of the Himalayas, in the vibrancy of a Paris street, in the depths of the sea, in the nooks and crannies of the desert.

And I wonder whether, if I were able to stand far enough away in the vastness of space and had the requisite wit, I might look down and see the same force, writ large, at work upon the Earth as a planetary entity, and come to the realization that those things which, when viewed up close, seem inanimate, are really invigorated by the same force as we are on a much grander scale previously unappreciated and incomprehensible from the puny viewpoint of our humanity.

What would I see, if I could see God? I would not only see all that I see now when I walk the roads and fields of Humptulips County or look out the windows of my home, but I would also be able to see the energy that binds each tangible thing, visible and invisible, together and renders us mutually interdependent. And I would realize we were of a comprehensible whole, and I would know that whole is bound together by God.

About Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County is the wholly fictional on-line residence of Stephen Ellis, a would-be writer, an avid fan of William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County, and a retired lawyer.
This entry was posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to What Would I see, If I Could See God?

  1. Richard Pierson says:

    Perhaps your view of God is an extension of the dream-demon hypothesis: ” I think therefore I am”. Rene Descartes. It may be difficult to extend our belief of God – beyond what we can see or imagine.

Comments are closed.