G is for God

od is good, right? Wikipedia says that "God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence." Being good, God should not wish upon us any kind of misfortune, or evil, except perhaps in the case that it is temporary and it brings about a "greater good". So then why does the overriding impression of religion in general verge toward unhappiness and denial rather than happiness and comfort? For centuries the devout have pared away their lives in order to get closer to God, they have fasted, gone on pilgrimages, abstained from sex, been insular and serious.

At the risk of boring you with another long quotation, here is an excerpt from "Eat, Pray, Love": "The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In the search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon the comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered to you in return for what you've given up. Every religion in the world operates on the same common understandings of what it means to be a good disciple -- get up early and pray to your God, hone your virtues, be a good neighbor, respect yourself and others, master your cravings. We all agree that it would be easier to sleep in, and many of us do, but for millennia there have been others who choose instead to get up before the sun and wash their faces and go to their prayers. And then fiercely try to hold on to their devotional convictions throughout the lunacy of another day."

But why should it be that way? Why is it so ingrained into our collective psyche that we must reject ourselves and our natural impulses in order to find God? Why does fulfillment not lie in the path to God? Why not do what we enjoy? For me, in my life, the state of happiness is the epitome of goodness -- it's when I feel the most "good". So, if God is good, and wishes us to be good, then surely I should make myself as happy as possible? Why all the negativity? Is this just an aspect of religious control that results from putting faith and religion in the hands of imperfect humans? I mean, if your religious doctrine is "Do what you want, whenever you want", you're not going to get a whole load of people turning up to your church or mosque or shrine -- they'll be hang-gliding and swimming with dolphins and having sex and doing crosswords instead of sitting around listening to what you're saying. Churches will go out of business! However, if you make people feel bad about themselves, guilty and ashamed (but subtly, of course), then they'll be queuing up at the door trying to learn what it takes to get rid of these bad feelings... which allows you to continually indoctrinate them, while spoon-feeding them placebos. Massive crowd control, and significant power. This is probably the sort of thing which lead to the concept of buying and selling of indulgences in Catholicism, which Martin Luther so vehemently opposed.

Of course, there are limits, but I think, on the whole, this hedonism is self-regulating for any intelligent human. For instance, I enjoy going out for drinks with friends. The alcohol relaxes me, and conversation is often open and humorous. But if I drink too much, then the next morning I sure don't enjoy it. I can then temper my next alcoholic excursion so that it's more balanced. I can drink a little less, and therefore hurt a little less the next morning. Another caveat is that one person's enjoyment can be another person's misery. One person may enjoy stealing money from another because that makes them richer, but the victim probably isn't going to enjoy being intimidated, and made poorer. But in a way that's regulated too. If it's something criminal, then, as a civilisation, we've instituted a police force to deal with that. If it's more of a personal thing, then there are consequences that act as future deterrents (social ostracism, etc.). A third concern is that, of course, there are things in life that we don't enjoy doing that are inevitable and unavoidable. Hopefully very few people enjoy having a loved one depart, but as yet, we have very little power over preventing that. We all have to pay taxes. Generally, we all have to work, which for some may not be particularly enjoyable (thankfully, I love my job!). And here the idea of the greater good comes into play: we pay taxes so that we have roads to enjoy, so that children can enjoy learning, so that lives can be saved. We work so that we can enjoy spending the money that we earn. The goodness is delayed, and perhaps not even directly delivered, but it is still a result.

Probably at this point many of the people reading this are thinking, "Hey, bozo, this already exists! It's called ATHEISM". And that's true, atheism is pretty much hedonism -- people just do what they want when they want, within the constraints of their pay packets and social norms. But this article is about God... so why can't we combine enjoyment with God? I think we can. Certainly within Christianity there are small movements of "Christian Hedonism" -- John Piper is a very well-known and active purveyor of this doctrine. I imagine there must be similar things in other religious movements. This is far from widespread, though. To me it seems clear that with a good god, and a loving god, beautiful and lovely things must flow. Disciples of this god should also be like him/she/it. Enjoy yourself, responsibly, and no longer be shackled by thoughts of guilt and imperfection and conscience-imposed misery! Take a lie-in every once in a while, indulge yourself in a little present on occasion, love and enjoy yourself, other people... and your god, because he would surely want you to.