G is for...

God. 

As in, tell me all your thoughts on.  As in, what if He/She/It was one of us. As in, Oh. 

I don't supposed I could have picked a more controversial subject, eh?

My religion doesn't have any specific dogma on this subject. Each person is sort of expected to work it out for themselves.  

Someone I met in a bar last week made an interesting point that a person's relationship between themselves and God is in fact between themselves and God, not the whims or dictates of some organization external from oneself. And if that same external source were able to change or affect said relationship, it must not have been very strong.  

This was her argument against organized religion.  To me, it's an argument against blind faith. 

Blind faith is really my only problem with religion of any kind, very much including my own. 

I don't care what your beliefs are, just so long as you arrived at those beliefs after personal examination and a conscious decision on your own part to believe or to think that way. Your reasons for so doing are your own business, but to shift responsibility elsewhere for your decisions, beliefs or actions is, to me, the most foul of blasphemies.

As far as I'm concerned, absent any objective proof, any theory or belief in God or a Supreme Being would be as good as any other. Whether you sincerely believe in Jesus Christ or the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- if the belief makes you a better person and gives you what you need in life, and it doesn't negatively affect the lives of others, then you're not going to get any shit from me. Even though I probably won't share your affection for noodly appendages.

My own personal thoughts on God? I've honestly got a lot of thoughts, but I think they're best distilled to: God is love. 

That simply HAS to be the case, under the existing definition of what a god is. For a being to be omnipotent and omniscient, that being would therefore have to love completely. Because understanding comes about through the fullness of affinity, reality and communication. 

Thus, the more fully one can love (oneself, others, animals, the planet, etc.), the closer one may come to God. The more you love, the  more real things become, the more you understand. 

The absence of love -- or the active rejection of it -- would obviously draw one further away. The less you love, the less real things become, the less you understand.

People who want to be closer to God, do so because they rightly see this as a desirable change to their current state. 

Many complexities can be -- and are -- added to all of this, but as far as I can tell, this is the simple truth that forms the nucleus of all religions. And since they all say essentially the same thing, what is the point of argument? People get so caught up in the divergent practices (without considering the source and reason for those practices) that they forget the single, simple basic truth that binds us all together.

I have a lot more to say on this, but the rest of it diverges quite sharply from the cultural norm, so I'll leave it at that. 

Heavy thoughts, yeah. But hey, it's Sunday. People usually think of God on Sundays, neh?