THE gOD WHO DIED

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about gods and God.

There's a book entitled The Nobel Book of Answers edited by Bettina Stiekel.  In the book is a chapter entitled "Why do we have to go to school?" by Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1994.  In the chapter, he writes the following:

        "Being defeated in the war led to big changes in the life of the Japanese.  Until then, we children--and adults, too--had been taught that the supremely powerful Japanese Emperor, the Tenno, was a "god."  After the war, however, it was announced that the Tenno was a human being.

        I believed then that the changes were right.  It made sense that a democracy created by all people with equal rights for all was better than a society that was ruled by a "god."  I sensed this important change with all my soul, that it consisted of our no longer being forced to be soldiers, who killed people from other countries only because they had been declared to be our enemies--and who were themselves killed.

        But one month after the end of the war I didn't want to go to school anymore.  You see, the teachers who had maintained until midsummer that the Tenno was a "god" and who had made us solemnly bow in front of his picture, teachers who had proclaimed further that the Americans were not people, but devils and monsters, now told us the opposite, without batting an eye.  Not a word about their earlier way of thinking or method of instruction being wrong--or about whether they had even thought about it.  They told us, as if it were totally natural, that the Tenno was a human being and that Americans were our friends."

        The only difference between Oe’s upbringing and mine is in my world Tenno is alive and smiting.

No one in the USA calls him Tenno of course.  We simply put his name on our currency and license plates, but he is Tenno just the same. 

Many believe that he rules our land from above.  They want his laws to be our laws—even the loony ones like executing gay people and adulterous women.   

Many believe he has enemies.  A lot of church people feel justified in hating these imaginary enemies of their god.  They tell us that it is our crusade to invade other countries who worship an enemy god.  They tell us it is our crusade to stop these worshipers from erecting their sacred places in our neighborhoods.

Many believe he despises what they despise.  For instance, he hates it that little children of the world are walking into America as if some sign on a golden door has invited them to make themselves at home.

All enemies of God are imaginary because our infinite God loves all who make themselves to be enemies.  God hates no one.  It is impossible for love to hate.

I am a Christian.  For me God has been made manifest in the life of Jesus the Christ.  Love is the almighty power of God.  I have no choice, but to love my enemies and everybody else by God.

Any doctrine or statement about God from the mind or mouth of any person must measure up to our God of love. That is judgment--true and just.  

The slightest twang of murder and vengeance in the voice of anyone uttering words that he claims are about our God of love is noise.

I do not care if the god’s name is Tenno, Allah, Yahweh, Jim Jones, or Jesus.  A neutrino of hate makes a sea of love false.  Such a god may be worthy of religious studies, but not worthy of our love. 

     Are we not happy to see all those smiting, strutting deities of long ago die?  Their fell deaths became inevitable the moment Copernicus discovered that the earth orbits the sun. 

What?  Is science iconoclastic?  Has it ever been the case that knowledge makes wise those who love God and through whom God loves?

Blessings...