We need a friendlier God, a friendlier relationship with God.
The Old Testament (OT), comes from the Hebrew Bible, and is the first part of the Christian Bible. A lot of the Hebrew Bible is revolutionary for its time: for instance, 'An eye for an eye' sets a clear limit on what an injured person may claim in compensation, and when God says, 'Vengeance is mine', he is taking the burden of vengeance away from the people.
Human sacrifice was outlawed when God told Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac, you can read it in Genesis, written some 3,000 years ago, where you can also read that Abraham rebelled against worshipping idols. In the OT there are several warnings against worshipping goddesses. All this, and much more, is revolutionary.
But many of our ideas of God are terrifying and very backward looking: Jesus hanging on the cross, bleeding from the wounds of torture, sacrificed, we're told, by his divine father, God. Christians worship all this, little children are shown the idol of the crucified Christ in their churches and taught to worship torture and sacrifice. Torture and sacrifice feature in some interpretations of Islam, the case of Raif Badawi, for example, whose savage sentence included 1,000 lashes, the public whipping started on January 9 2015 and was due to end twenty weeks later; it is very clear that this barbarism is performed as sacrifice to the goddess of fertility which pre-dates Islam, but many priests still believe in the ancient goddesses and are still afraid, though the priests are probably unconscious of their ancient, fearful beliefs.
Aspects of Christianity and Islam are quite ugly and horrible to many sensitive people; atheism appals many believers and seems empty. Personally, I am very lucky that I learnt about God, probably on the radio in a talk by a Rabbi, when I was 3 years old. To me, God was magnificent and friendly. But when my parents had me baptised when I was 4, it made me unhappy seeing Christ on the cross, and I got ill trying to understand the three-gods-in-one and I still can't make any sense of that.
But behind the difficulties I've had with Christianity, the idea of the Magnificent Creator God is still there, still friendly, and that idea still makes me happy. Being educated by George Frankl, my ideas have naturally developed, but it seems to me that we would benefit from a strong and friendly God, children especially.
Friendly God 2
It's very unusual to think of a friendly God, isn't it? But such a thought does make sense: God the Creator, and a creator loves what he or she produces.
The first sign of human worship of a god or deity may be the huge stone that the people brought to Olorgesaille, which Bill Bryson mentions in A Short History of Nearly Everything. (I have not seen this stone mentioned anywhere else.) Bryson says that modern experts are puzzled by this stone, but it seems clear to me that it was the stone axe head god.
In psychoanalytic terms, we may recognise God, gods male and female, or deity, as Super Ego (see the works of Sigmund Freud). We may understand that the presence of the huge stone axe head god would intimidate the people of Olorgesaille, and keep them at their work of making vast numbers of stone axe heads. The huge stone would be an oppressive super-ego for the workers of Olorgesaille, but a great help to their rulers, who, we may rationally speculate, had it dragged there in order to keep the people under control. And if that sounds familiar …
Bill Bryson gives the dates of Olorgesaille as starting about 900,000 years ago and finishing about half a million years ago, but there does seem to be some dispute about the time scale. We can sure, however, that the settlement at Olorgesaille lasted for a very long time and that very many people spent their time making stone axe heads, many of which weren't fit for purpose. The experience lasted long enough to be veryfirmly embedded in the human psyche.
In modern times, that is to say since the emergence of patriarchy, we have monotheism, the idea of the one God; and I was extraordinarily fortunate to be introduced, when I was 3 years old, to the idea of the magnificent Creator God, who seemed to like me as much as I liked him.
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You can see the history of deities and the difficult relationships human beings have had with them over the long generations.
It seems to me that children would benefit greatly from an introduction to a friendly, goodnatured God. I did.
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A friendly, good natured God reflects our naturally good nature. We do need that, as a species.
We need to be able to identify with a good natured, friendly, powerful, effective God.
We need an encouraging Super-Ego.
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It is difficult to put into words what I felt about the idea of God to which I was introduced at the age of three. Does God have words? Although I felt very close to him, to the wonderful idea of him, I don't remember that we ever spoke. At three years old, children are buzzing ecstatically with the excitement and wonder of the world, and the idea of God to which I was introduced fitted into that, validated (is that the right word?) gave depth to what I was already experiencing. It seems to me that God is beyond, above, words; God transcends mere words.
It seems to me that God relates to the fundamental goodness of life. Frankl's Proof.
I am very grateful to have been introduced to this idea of God as a young child, and I very much want all little childre|n to have the same wonderful, brilliant opportunity.
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God doesn't have words, he doesn't need words; God is of instinct. But I'm human and I need words to help me understand what I know instinctively.
The idea of God to which I was introduced is wonderful. To me as a young child, the idea of God was exciting and delightful. When it was first introduced in the world, that idea was revolutionary in many ways; for example, God abolished human sacrifice: Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but God stopped him (see Genesis).
We don't know when human sacrifice was abolished. We may speculate that there was a long period among the people of oral history before the invention of writing. From the account in Genesis we see that the sacrifice of human beings had been common practice at sometime historically.
Before the emergence of patriarchy there was, and always had been, matriarchy. But during the ice age, the matriarchs became increasingly maddened by their responsibilities to the goddess and behaved appallingly to the populace. We may speculate that human sacrifice to the goddess became common practice towards the end of the ice age.
In Greek mythology, and in modern fiction, there are tales of the sacrificial murder of the beautiful young man to the goddess. But when we look at Christianity and at aspects of Islamic Law, we see that the sacrifice of the young man is fact.
The crucifixion, Jesus nailed to the cross, helpless and perpetually dying in agony, is central to Christian worship.
Islamic Law allows now for such cases as that of Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, a barbaric punishment which was scheduled to take place over 20 weeks from January 2015.
The crucifix, though a barbaric and terrifying image, is at least symbolic. The punishment of Badawi is fact. We may clearly see the torture of Badawi was intended as a sacrifice to the ancient fertility goddess: twenty weeks starting in January, through winter and into the growing season, the blood of the young man fertilising the earth
Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic faiths; both claim to believe in the one loving God. But both religions are regressive, and the angry goddess is still very present in their unconscious thinking.
And we may see war traditionally as the sacrifice of young men to the ancient goddess. War and anti-Semitism are appeasement of the power of the angry goddess.
The confusions in Christianity and Islam make it very difficult for humanity to benefit from the genius of the One God.
As a species we must overcome our frightened dependence on the angry goddess so that we may learn from and enjoy the idea of God.
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God, the Idea of God is the truth of what we really are.
I haven't met God in trauma; I don't see God in war, he isn't there. God did not create our human reactions to the phylogenic traumas of our history.
George Frankl proved that human nature is fundamentally good; all babies are born good and loving.
The Idea of God reflects our good and loving nature.
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The idea of God we've been looking at here reflects us, humanity, as we truly are. George Frankl proved that human beings are fundamentally good; all babies are born good and loving. We are, by these, encouraged to experience the universal good in life; the universe is good and as we recover the instincts which have been smothered by the experiences of our early ancestors, we will regain our sense of universal goodness
Human behaviour is often appalling; human beings flounder because we have lost trust in our instinctive sense of the good, which is not some airy-fairy fantasy. The good is of mind and body, natural and earthy pleasure, sexy in body and mind. We have been terrorised out of our natural pleasure in life.
It's easy to fall into pessimism; difficult to be optimistic seeing the news; saddening. We should be free; as all life naturally should be free.
George Frankl said, 'The energy released seeks form.' I look forward to that release.
Meanwhile…
Heigh-ho.
Friendly God 9
I've lived in this house for 10 years come the spring. Next door is a branch of the local authority. They're rotten neighbours. Every year they let brambles grow from their property to invade my garden. But brambles are natural. Electric light is not, and for 7 or 8 years, every year, these neighbours disturbed my sleep; they might leave the lights on all night, or suddenly flood my bedroom with ghastly yellow light at 2 or 3 in the morning - a cleaner with eccentric ideas of good neighbourliness - and in the winter months waking me up an hour or two before dawn so that the contract cleaners could do their work. Eventually, I managed to persuade these neighbours to let me sleep at night. OK.
But now they've started up again. And the new personnel in charge at the town hall deny any knowledge of the problem, which is ridiculous and an insult: it has surely gone on for decades.
As far as I know, every living creature needs sleep; most human beings, including me, sleep at night, and need several hours of undisturbed sleep every night. Deprivation of sleep may cause serious illness.
It's a nasty business. And why do they do it, my neighbours, why does the town hall let it go on? Because one person only is affected, and it happens to be me.
And where is God in this little example of nasty behaviour? Nowhere.
But behind or beyond all the bullying, whether by great tyrants or by a local authority who may feel it is right to sacrifice one person for the good of many (it isn't) God is there. Naturally. God is here.
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Fear, anger, becoming sensitised over time to the repeated imposition … these are some of the effects on me of this specific bullying (resolved now, for now).
It seems that old people look for God, so I've looked for God and I cannot find him here. Animals and little children naturally live in that goodness, are born within goodness; but the adult human sphere is corrupted, perverse and weird. Horrible.
George Frankl didn't much speak of God, but in the last few months of his human life, mentioned the Life Force; and he proved that we humans are naturally good and loving; so I take it that the Life Force, from which life comes, is naturally trustworthy.
Frankl worked to free the human libido, and it must be possible to do so. However, in the short term, I look for liberation when I stop being human and fully join, or rejoin, the Life Force.
I very much want to be more encouraging about human life on earth, but I must be honest. Certainly in the short term, I am not optimistic.