I have an odd relationship with God and Jesus. Like I sang the hymns in primary school, but when I asked him to stop babies dying in Sudan seems he didn’t hear me.
Sudan might seem specific, but at the time, those were the adverts, and I was very small. I didn’t know where Sudan was – I was just informed that babies were dying. And God the almighty, the all-powerful, the miracles and the creator, as far as I knew – he could fix it.
That is too black and white, maybe. But if I was singing songs in the name of him, where was he? If I learned all about him in classes, where was he? What did he know about me? Nothing, because he didn’t ask.
Over time the cynic in me, my cynic, is strong, by the way, in case you don’t know that. Anyway, the cynic in me decided that how could a God be real? How could he be capable of creating life but not protecting it? How could God bless only some people? And leave millions to drown, die of intestinal worms, stillborn babies, cancer that ravages bodies of what is meant to be his finest creation? I still can’t balance that.
If you were a God, any God – is that what you would do? No, nor me.
It made less and less sense to me. And then, of course, I went from my little white people school that only covered Christianity into secondary school. In R.E class, we covered so many religions – so now I knew for sure I didn’t believe in the one God – how could it be possible?
There can’t be one God. Maybe there aren’t any Gods at all. Maybe… maybe.
I was so disillusioned and firmly in my anti-God and anti-Jesus convictions that in my R.E GCSE (yes, I am that old), I compared God/Jesus to Santa with as much mirth as I could muster. Failure? Sure. But I did not care. You couldn’t convince me that this exam was worth it.
I still think about that now.
When I am talking about God, it is the God of Christianity. That is the one that establishments spent their time trying to get me to love and honour. Maybe another God from another religion might make sense to me – but not this guy.
I recently watched Don’t Look Up. And while being a pretty spot-on observation of how social media and people would divide in the moments before we all died*, there was one thing that stuck with me. If you haven’t seen it, then spoiler in the following line.
In the end, the main characters sit around a table and hold hands. And here was what Yule said:
Dearest Father and Almighty Creator
We ask for your Grace tonight, despite our pride
Your forgiveness, despite our doubt
Most of all Lord, we ask for your love to soothe us through these dark times
May we face whatever it is to come in your divine will with courage and open hearts of acceptance
Amen
Around the same time Leo DiCaprio’s character says:
Even those who are not religious take part in the prayer; they say Amen. And it got me thinking, do we all turn to God in the end?
And in the beginning?
Is there some hope and truth in the language that we use with the word God in it? Are we asking for a sign that there was a God all this time? Do we leave just a little bit of room so that when the man comes around and our number is called, we can say we knew it all along?
P.S right about now I should say I believe in a lot of things. Norse Gods, Greek Gods, demons, ghosts, astrology, science, twin flames, soul mates, fate, the Law of Attraction and more. So you tell me why God is a stretch then.
And yet.
I’ve been running this around my mind, the language we use that is directly related to God.
- I wish to God
- God willing
- I hope to God it does/ doesn’t
- It was an act of God
- Please God let it or don’t let it happen
There are so many more too. In the middle of a catastrophe, we say things like ‘God, I hope they are alright’ or ‘God, please let them be okay’. Before or during a le petit mort ‘oh God’ too – why does God arrive in the bedroom? When we say we aren’t religious, but we pray for other people or ourselves, we say it is just in case they are listening.
It’s all the big stuff. It’s the biggest. It’s life, and more often death. It can’t just be a turn of phrase; we add God to the sentence to give it more power. If we do that, then indeed we must somewhere consider an outside force, a vast, unimaginable, unsubstantiated presence – that has the power to change the outcome. Why else would we choose to opt for God when we wish, hope, and need?
So my question is, on my last post of 2021 is Do we all turn to God in the end?
*Watch Don’t Look Up beyond the credits – like a Marvel film.
