To The Greater Glory Of…….Something

Where did we go wrong? Why have our core values of morality, like honesty, integrity, honor, justice, and respect for our fellow man, been – like the proverbial baby – washed away with the bathwater down the drain of materialism and consumer greed?

It could be the beginning of one of those really boring Sunday sermons. You know it too well. The hymns and prayers are done with for a while, the paster shuffles up into the pulpit, ruffles his papers, and you can already feel your eyelids relentlessly starting to droop.

No, I haven’t been contracted to write Sunday sermons for the local priest, but it does seem we are sliding down a slippery slope towards a world where no-one gives a damn about anybody else, life grows cheaper by the minute, and the latest flat-screen TV is so important we’re prepared to kill to get it.

The church, of course, has a perfect explanation for this sort of behavior. They say we don’t get enough God. As usual, they’re lying. They don’t really mean we don’t get enough God; what they mean is we don’t get enough of them, or at least, more of us should get more of them. If we all went to church and absorbed more ‘God’, then we’d be better people – provided we filled the silver plate with coin on leaving.

But, it’s not true, is it? After all, where do all the ‘righteous’ go as soon as they’re let out of the pews on a Sunday? Down the local Wal-Mart to fight over the latest flat screen TV, that’s where.

So more ‘God’ is obviously not the answer, it’s just another of those marketing ploys that assail our lives from morn till night, seven days a week.

Perhaps the answer is less ‘God’? Certainly, the general conclusion of anyone who’s researched the effects of ‘God’ on the world over the last few millennia, must be that we’d all probably be a lot better off without Him. Quite why He chose to devote Himself to this tiny, insignificant, planet when there’s a whole universe full of them to play around with, is somewhat incomprehensible; though it does say somewhere that He works in mysterious ways, so maybe He chose us because we’re stupid enough to believe He’s an omnipotent, omniscient, Superhero who’ll solve all our problems if we just remain sufficiently servile.

For me, that presents a problem. It requires ‘God’ to have an enormous ego, and surely, the whole point of ‘God’ is that He’s ego-less? On the other hand, if ‘God’ is nothing more than a huge ego, and has nothing else to give us, it could explain a great deal.

For instance, have you noticed that all the wars in the world are started by egos? Never has a conflict arisen without an ego at the head of it. Nero, Charlemagne, Hitler, Pol Pot – all the famous names, on down through the ranks of petty tyrannical rogues to Ceausescu and George W Bush – have been driven by ego.

It begs the question: were all those egos pumped up by God’s superego? You know, rather like balloons filled from a pressurized gas tank?

Personally, I don’t believe so. But then, I don’t believe in the conventional human ideal of God. Strikingly, the human concept of God adheres closely to humanity’s view of its own individual self. God made in the image of man, rather than vice versa.

It makes more sense. If we invent a nebulous being in the image of ourselves, we can conveniently dump all our responsibilities onto it, and providing we keep it fed with our own servility, it allows us to go about our consumer-ridden, materialistic, lives secure in the knowledge that God will – eventually – take care of everything, so we don’t have to worry.

Among those dumped responsibilities we can count honesty, integrity, honor, justice, and respect for our fellow man. After all, it may not make for a better world, but it’s a much more convenient one.

Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to dash. I’m off to Wal-Mart to purchase the latest flat screen TV – before all those religious freaks get down there after church on Sunday.

Filed under: Pinnacle of Creation