Look at everything that He is.
God is an Artist.
He is a Composer.
He is a Scientist.
He is a Creator.
He is a Father.
People occasionally ask me how I can believe in a God. My mind goes to a scripture in the Book of Mormon:
"...all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."
[Alma 30:44, emphasis added]
I believe in God because it makes sense to me that He is there. In my mind, a race as meaning-driven as the human race can only exist if there is indeed a meaning to its existence. There would be no meaning if there were nothing for us after our short mortal lives, and there would be no afterlife if there were no Creator for us to return to.
Why do you believe in God (or whatever you believe in)?
Dig down into language. Look at structures and components. It is easy to look at an edited and isolated comma and conclude that it has no meaning. But a comma can drastically alter what a group of words mean.
ReplyDeleteHumanity seems to work something like that.
You say this thing about life would be meaningless if—what makes you think life has meaning? This is a different question than what you think is the meaning of life. What benefit comes with meaning? What is lost if meaning is edited out?
What is the difference between purpose and meaning? In a religious context the two seem interchangeable. In other contexts there are vast differences.
Meaning is relational, a conjunction. When life is described through its meaning, then life is a sort of vehicle or vessel and meaning is held inside. There is an implication that meaning is carried to. Held until. Doesn’t that also presage that afterlife has shed meaning?
Is life about something, or is it something? Meaning is shed when we look at the thing itself—meaning is tied to aboutness. Aboutness is not relevant in the presence of the thing itself.
If my life is not about something (that is not my life), the core of life remains. My life can only be about something that it is not. Yes, the language here is tricky, but designed to open up a question that is not tricky.
One way to look at the afterlife is to identify what follows what. In the LDS description, life becomes eternal when it is of God. Death is a separation from God. In a very pragmatic way you are already in your afterlife because you have overcome a profound separation from God (death) by ridding yourself of uncertainty relative to your belief in Him.
I know little about what my afterlife will be like. My life has already given way to other life. Dander and excreted mucus become feasts for a forest of mould or a family of mites. There are cycles and circles, and even return, without a blue skinned boy who plays the flute for cows. I find profound beauty in this version of afterlife ( my body feeding yeast and fungus that will later grow trees). I am grateful to be alive, but I am also grateful that there will be an end to my consciousness, an end to my suffering, an end. Rest.
I am in a different kind of afterlife than you. I am separate from god again. Not by fear. I do not fear god. I do not fear the lack of god. I arrived at this place by an embrace of a kind of spiritual enlightenment. I spent a significant amount of time guilt ridden because I was never sure whether I believed in god. I had doubt and not a testimony. I was wracked with grief because I never had that confirmation so often recited in LDS culture. And then I had a profound realization: the answer I sought had nothing to do with whether there was God. I only asked that question because I was told to ask THAT question. When I re-posed the question: what would change if I learned with certainty that god was a false construct, my life opened. All the things described as spiritual confirmation came into my life. I realized that my values, my direction, would still be there to support me if there was no god. The question itself could never be answered by God because God would not give me the answer to someone else’s question. I have never cared whether there was god since. As I look back I see that I was afraid I was wrong. I was surrounded by people who claimed to be sure. I am no longer afraid of being wrong. I have faith that it is ok to be wrong.
We can’t see what is correct without simultaneously seeing what is incorrect. Discovering what is wrong is intimate with learning. Ironically, my fear of being wrong was ensuring that I would remain wrong.
Thanks for the response, Uncle Paul. That's an interesting perspective on the afterlife. I'd be interested to know how you came to your current beliefs.
DeleteHey Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI can’t keep track of every source, for ideas, but I will try.
The notion of differentiating between the thing itself from about a thing is an important idea in art. It became a central part of the art discussion as modernity moved art away from representation toward pure abstraction. This movement was driven not simply from style. The photograph freed painters from making likeness. Europeans and Americans began trade with Japan (among other places). My best synopsis says that the construct of the thing itself (an abstract painting is paint on a canvas and not pretending to be something that is not there) is a translation of Buddhist ideas. Many European and American artists were first introduced to Buddhist thinking through trade with Japan. Translation generates the possibility of misunderstanding and almost certainly shifts emphasis and context along the way. This can end up with an idea that is simply wrong. It can also help generate new ideas and real progress. Artists refer to the thing itself differently than Buddhist writers. I connected this view to “life” sometime in the past few years. I was likely anticipating my father’s death-thinking about what it “means”.
We need to discuss beliefs. I don’t base my life on what I believe. Years ago I was overwhelmed by the contradictory beliefs people carried. There are volumes and mountains of evidence that everyone believes things that are wrong. I am a fool if I think what is true for others is magically different in my case. People believe falsehoods whether their sources of truth focus on ancient wisdom or current philosophy and science, religion or math. We humans believe falsehoods. I don’t know how successful I am in finding other structures to guide me, but I am eager to listen to others, eager to adjust my assumptions as I find better vantage points. Those driven by hard convictions are likely to become rigid at the very places where they get it wrong—because wrong is the location of vulnerability.
My deepest convictions happen the same as yours—the result of attention paid to relevant mysteries. I become convinced of this or that first through a sense that something is not clear, not solid. I pay attention, I explore, I read, I search, I ponder. Same as you, I keep searching until there is recognition that I have uncovered a satisfactory answer—the best answer, the point of view that resonates. As such a discovery is made, there is a sense of relief and release. I find confidence to replace insecurity, and that confidence is easily described as warmth and certainty. That sense often feels like it comes from somewhere else, but reason and evidence says otherwise—our brains are rigged to work that way, and the recognition factor is the mechanism of my own learning processes.
I am different from you. I am well versed in the fallibility of my deepest recognitions. The approaches have proved invaluable to me. I am far more likely to come to robust knowledge if I include researching evidence and walking with deeply internalized meditation that accounts for my human empathies, emotion, intuition even relevant stories recounted in scripture (I probably look at a wider definition of scripture than you, and certainly contextualize these sources differently than you).
More simply: I follow my convictions, but presume some of them are wrong. I am not threatened to discover that I hold false beliefs.
I often muse that people can witness a truth, but still manage to harness the potential of an insight toward terrible ends.
It is difficult for me to speak to you of these things. I worry that I am setting myself up to be viewed as contentious because I disagree with you. But I think I have found insights that will prove useful to you.
I hope you are well,
Paul
Thanks for your reply, Paul. I don't view you as contentious; I just think it's really hard to talk about these things through little characters all lined up on a screen. It's much easier when I can hear you and see you as you express these thoughts. I do appreciate your views and insights, and I thank you for sharing them with me. Maybe we can have a real discussion sometime when I'm home from my mission.
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