SEARCHING FOR GOD IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

Even a cursory reading of some of my journals and newsweeklies makes it quite evident that atheism is finding a resurgence these days. Not that atheism was ever dead, mind you. It’s always been around on the fringes even in my lifetime. The old Russian cosmonauts were widely quoted as saying they found no evidence of God in outer space and Madalyn Murray O'Hair gained much newsprint and perhaps even a living trying to take God and prayer out of schools.

Today writers and social critics like Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything, and The God Delusion by Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, hit the best-seller list, command media attention and even interest sort-of retired clergy. Hitchens condemns religion as "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive of children.”

Religion can be that, often is that, even Christianity. But religion is of-man, of-human beings. It is not necessarily of-God. That is not to say that one cannot find God in religion. It is to say that some religious practices can be anything but Godly. We creatures of God, children of God, often do some of the ungodliest things in the name of God and religion. It’s no wonder religion has often gotten a bad rep and God has gotten the raw end of the deal.

The problem with atheists is that they are constantly searching for God in all the wrong places. Granted, they should find God where they, all too often, have not: in organized religion, in institutions and structures. But God is only peripherally found therein. God is found in creation, first and foremost, and in God’s creatures most certainly. The fact that we creatures of God, we children of God, often do not reflect God in our own lives in not God’s fault. It is ours.

Violent behavior, racism, bigotry and the like are not and never were of God. The fact that they exist is not proof that God does not. They are proof that many of us who profess a belief in God are not living as God would have us live. That’s our fault, not God’s. I can’t blame my parents for my sinfulness or shortcomings. They wouldn’t approve any more than God does; but that does not negate them as people any more than it should or would negate God.

Free will is the real issue at hand, is it not? Hitchens and Dawkins have the free will and the freedom to believe what they so choose to believe and even condemn those who believe otherwise. But they can do so because the God who created them allows them that freedom even though, in my opinion, that same God wishes they would not.

All they, or any one else for that matter, have to do to know God exists is to observe the faith of those who are being persecuted because of their faith or skin color or for any other reason, watch those who not only walk the extra mile but walk the first one, who give not from their excess but from their necessities. That’s where they will find God.