sitting on the edge

Humility is found in silence before truth, but silence can be both good and evil. Silence in the face of evil becomes complicit.

Evil is not-good. Neither good nor evil can exist without at least the potential for the other. Evil can exist. Evil exists (I've seen it). Good exists (seen that, too).

Evil is eternally itself, as is good. All empirically observable reality is elementally good and evil. People are good and evil. The balance between the two can be manipulated by the will. The will is easily misinformed, and the mind can preconceive evil acts and convince itself that they are good. This neither makes the acts good nor the person evil. It is extremely difficult for a person to differentiate between the two, because of the mind's mischeivous, evil bent.

What is required is an ultimate judge/criterion. That judge must not be a person, because it must be an end unto itself, which persons are not. Persons are also highly unreliable and self-deceptive in all that they do. Therefore, if there is to be any meaningful ultimate distinguisher between right and wrong, it can be neither a person or that which has been created by a person.

I, therefore, am not that judge, and should probably shut up now. I do not shut up now. Is this because I am not humble, or because there is great evil and to shut up makes me an accessory? I don't know.

The only possible ultimate judge/criterion is that entity implied by the word "God" to a person (such as myself) raised in the shadow of a monotheistic religion. If that entity is constructed by people, then it is not a reliable judge. In that case, God can be viewed as a useful foil for the struggles people have with their own moral dilemmas, but still no ultimate judge is available.

If, however, "God" exists, that existence begets the question of whether God sides with good, or evil. The answer cannot be determined by observing human behavior or expressed belief, because human behavior and expressed belief are, as we have seen, morally unreliable.

Why, then, should I bother to believe in God? If I need God in order to have some ultimate judge of good and evil, but cannot trust my mind to allow me an accurate picture of what that God is (or even if God is), it would appear that I am caught in a vicious existential circle. I tell myself that my reasons for belief in God are good ones, but admit that I (as I understand mySelf) am an extremely unreliable source of information about reality.

So why do I persist? Here's what I think (here is me, blathering on, not being silent). I think I want to know that there is an ultimate judge, and that the injustices and oppressions of this world are not all there is. Because I cannot give up on this desire and maintain a belief in the value of continuing to live, I persist. As I persist, I find evidences to indicate that there is rhyme and reason to it all (rhyme, to me, is more important than reason). I begin to believe that there is God, and that God made me to try to know what God is. Is my mind once again playing tricks - fortifying my will so that it will continue to persist in the chosen path? Possibly, you cynical, ivory tower philosopher.

Nonetheless, while I will attempt to maintain the humility required by True self awareness, I do believe in God.

I will not fight you over this.

I will, however, love you over it. Because the more I live, the more I value Love. The more I see Love (graceful, patient, kind, self-sacrificial, forgiving, humble love) as being at the centre of Ultimate Reality. Love Is the way things Are, and while I still don't understand or like evil, I believe that it is a necessary (possibly temporary - I hope?) counterpoint to Love (and by the way, I don't capitalize evil because I don't respect it).

Because I believe without knowing that Love is the ultimate, then I believe that Love is what God is, and that everything that is not Love is not-God. Again, I DO NOT KNOW THIS. I believe it. So I look at the world. I read about different people's understandings about God. I read about Jesus and I think, *&%$ yeah! This is what it's about.

I know what you're thinking - "well, that's convenient. Guy's raised in a christian family in a somewhat christianized culture and he comes to see Christ as God and the centre of reality". This is where I don't want you to get me wrong. I don't see Christianity as God. I see the evil, non-loving acts and lives wrought in the name of the church and I shudder. That, I think, cannot be God.

Nonetheless, I read the story of Jesus and I think, bang on! I study the claims and life of Jesus, and I conclude that he claimed to actually be that Ultimate I need to believe in for the sake of the stability of the universe. I read about what he did and said, and I can't find anything I want to disassociate myself from - everything he said was really and truly loving. I read about mohammed, and I cannot do the same. I read about pantheistic religions and I think - interesting, but not ultimate. Jesus - now that's something/someone I can identify with.

I don't trust myself, of course, so I digress and regress and progress (maybe?) as my mind pinballs off of possibilities and perchances.

In the end (today), I come to this conclusion: I cannot trust my mind. Therefore, it doesn't matter what my mind tells me it believes. My true beliefs will be revealed by my actions. I will try, then, to act in accordance with the love I tell myself I believe to be exemplified in Jesus, knowing ahead of time that I will fail.

This is another reason I like Christ. This is another thing that distinguishes him from all the other prophets and "spokesmen for the truth" I've been offered (Mohammed, Benny Hinn, George W., Neitche, C.S. Lewis) : GRACE. I think it was Bono who said that Grace is why Christ is different from the main figure in any other religion. As I see it, Grace is a completion and transcending of Love. It is Love itself, the ultimate judge of good and evil, saying that It understands that the human mind/body/spirit cooperative is a deceptive little bugger. It understands that failure to comprehend and to do Right is almost inevitable. And it responds, in essence, by saying "no big whoop".

So that's what I think, today. God's this Loving, Playful, Graceful entity who understands Reality (who is that Reality) and is OK with it - with us. God is a bit like Alanis Morissette, in the movie "Dogma" who, when confronted by a big, sticky, evil mess made of the passions and perplexities of human behavior, walks up to the chap responsible for it all, taps him on the nose with a finger, and says "boop". Then she fixes the mess and goes and does a headstand. This is what I don't mind spending my life convincing people to believe, to accept.

My life will be short, and since I want it to matter I am going to have to flip a figurative bird at established modes of thought that demand that I figure out exactly what I believe and exactly (to the teat) how it all works together. I will hold my faith and I will try to live in accordance with it... but I will not box my reality. I will not discuss this reality with you (my internetial bretheren) in such a way that presupposes that if you don't agree with me you are evil - and possibly an idiot.

Just remember whom it was that Jesus got pissed at when he was walking around in sandals. Not the hookers, the swindlers, the marginalized or the working man - it was church people. I don't want to be church people. I don't want to hang my hat on systematized propositional beliefs. NEWS FLASH - until the past few centuries, unless I was a cloistered monk this would not have been an option.

I want to live. I want to love people who are not like me. I want to make a difference to the marginalized, poor Other whom Jesus came to hang out with. When Jesus said he was there for these people because it's the sick who need a doctor, he was not implying that the church people were not sick. He said that tongue-in-cheek, folks, because he knew that the real problem with the church people was that they were not willing to admit that they were sick, and in the realm of human well-being only people willing to admit they're sick can be receptive to the restorative medicine of Loving Grace.

But there I go again, talking. And again, I am not sure exactly why. Hopefully it's a humble annoyance at evil and not an arrogant presumption that I am good that has prompted this tirade.

God, I guess, will be my judge.

And by the way, God (since I believe you're reading this), thanks a lot.