god. part 1: what is it with that - guy?

ive given you heaven.

now i give you god.

because i believe in god. very strongly, in fact.

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first i should say - i dont know what form god comprises. and i'll tackle that subject in part 2. for now, strictly for the purposes of getting my thoughts across in this post, i will refer to god in the most accepted way known to my judeo-christian, balding-yet-well-shaped dome: the masculine third person. ie, he. him. bro-ham.

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first, a little discussion on what we expect of god. b/c these expectations have shaped my idea of who he is.

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it's like the man says in this song: O God, High in your fields above earth, Come and be real for us. (btw, that's a five-star ipod song if ive ever heard one. which i have.)

we need god to be someone we can relate to, something we can grasp. otherwise, whats the pt? if we cant get inside his heavenly head at all, then we're resigning ourselves to being subject to the whims and caprices of a random, arbitrary - well, arbiter. and no one likes that. i mean, have you ever been to tabtos?

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the problem is, as soon as we accept a god that's like us, that's real, we almost simultaneously require the dude to be unrealistically better than us, ie, 100% altruistic, kind, and benevolent. (yes, those three words mean basically the same thing. write your own blog, jack*ss.)

it's like the question residents of lisa's margarine tub micro-universe beg of her in the the genesis tub segment of the seventh simpsons halloween special. concluding she's their god, the minions ask lisa the age-old query: why do bad things happen to good people?

(btw, another philosophically genius part of this vignette is that the minions think bart is the devil, and are then shocked to learn that the devil and god are siblings.)

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yes, it seems to be ingrained in a lot of our consciousnesses that if there is a god, he has to be 'good.' and the logical thought that follows for many of us is: His works are not all good, in fact some of them seem evil and just plain suck; therefore, there is no god.

i myself was a victim of this provincial thinking - trying to reconcile the idea that there is an all-powerful god who doesn't care to do only good things - when, circa 1993, at the tender age of about 14, i went to a lecture at my hebrew school given by the the author of god: a biography. in the very beginning of jack miles's talk, he assured us that there were enough tales of bloodbaths and general atrocities in the bible (or torah, or whathaveyou) to conclude that not only is god not nec. benevolent, but he is, in fact, soemtimes given to setting in motion events that are decidedly malevolent. this really opened up my peepers.

i thought, god doesnt nec. have to be good. he might be bad. and that doesnt preclude his existence.

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but i have recently come to a better way of reconciling god's seemingly contradictory qualities. and no, it is not that he's an alcoholic. his tolerance would be way too high.

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i believe in God, The Artist.

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i think the holy homeslice is powerful - way more powerful than any man - but i dont think he's all-powerful.

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i do think he's totally benevolent, but since he's not omnipotent, nor omniscient, he cant just wave a wand and make everything perfect.

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he's an artist. and like any artist, it takes him a lot of practice, and many, many attempts to produce something that's equal to the expectations we place on him.

think about it. we know michelangelo, for instance, only for his successes: david, the sistine chapel, Pietà. and we look at these works and rightfully decide he's one of the best sculptors/painters ever (some might even say, god incarnate in a human sculptor). we dont think of michelangelo as having produced more half-finished, weirdo-looking blocks of marble than timeless statues, but he surely did. we know the famous ceiling, but not the dozens of cocktail napkins he did his practice sketches on.

we know ansel adams for those majestic photos of sand dunes, but we never think of the thousands of negatives that he left on the cutting room floor - some of them likely majestic photos of his own grundle - in order to showcase his triumphs.

well, i think it's the same way with god. he's a superlative artist - capable of sculpting your platos, and your mozarts; but behind them, there's a thousand guys making their names by carving gyro slices off a spinning hunk a beef, and a million jon secadas. abraham lincoln? george w. bush. michael jordan? stephon marbury. mahatma gandhi? the cab i'll take home tonite. the wright bros.? the olsen twins. virginia woolf? danielle steel.

koala bears? electric eels. the mighty oak tree? crab grass. crab the food? crab the animal. krab the fake crabmeat? crabs the real venereal disease.

you see where im going with this? for any artist, it takes a lot of throw-aways for that one masterpiece.

most of us are in the middle - just good, solid people. it wasnt hard for picasso to quickdraw a classy little piece, and it's the same with god. but in the process of shooting for those legendary works - of creating those legendary men and women - you end up falling short a lot more than you strike gold.

same goes for events and eras. these are like plays god stages. some sell out broadway theaters for years; others run one night and close. parting of the red sea? that great flood. the hanukkah miracle? the 2005 knicks. etc. etc.

yes, god is an artist, and we're his art. and that allows for the idea that he loves us all, but he can't salvage us all. some of us great, some of us terrible, most of us average.

i can get down with that god. he gives it the 'ol college try, he does. id rather him keep making art than not. so i allow him his missteps. they're just that, not evil doings.

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ps - as for conditions on earth, like the ice ages or global warming...i think god moonlights as an amateur chemist.