The Nature of God

Guido Reni, c. 1635

I was raised in a strict Catholic family in which I was taught from a very early age that God was an unseen presence to be worshiped, but perhaps even more so, to be feared. Specifically, I was told that God was aware of everything I did and even of my thoughts, and that if I committed any of the so-called “mortal sins” I would be sent to hell when I died.  Even as a young child this seemed rather unfair, but as I grew older, I began to think it somewhat cruel that God would create us as imperfect and inherently inclined towards sin, only to punish us in the most horrific way if we crossed a rather arbitrary line.  As I entered my teens I determined that, as a result of my rather lengthy list of sins, I was destined for hell; consequently, I figured I might as well do whatever I wanted, since I was headed there anyway!  

For those who might be wondering why I didn’t just go to confession and be absolved of my sins, I will disclose that it absolutely terrified me.  I simply could not do it.  Further, it didn’t make sense that you could sin all you wanted, then confess those sins, recite a list of prayers, and then magically, all was forgiven.  When I later learned about the earlier practice of selling certificates of indulgences, my faith in confession as a legitimate route to reconciliation with God was as weak as my inclination to utilize it.

Any efforts to discuss the inconsistency and irrationality of eternal damnation being meted out by a perfect, loving God yielded very unsatisfying results.  My mother would tell me not to question the ways of God, and that doing so was bordering on sinful, or that there were divine mysteries that we would never as humans be able to understand.  One of the priests I confided in dared to declare that I was possessed by the devil for calling attention to the unfairness of original sin—the belief that we are born carrying the guilt of the sins of our ancestors, for which we need to atone.  As a result, I found myself struggling to believe in an entity that frankly, seemed to operate on a level of morality that was inferior to that of the average human.  Eventually, I put the whole God idea on the shelf for later review, and when I was no longer required by my parents to attend church, I stopped going.  

More recently, I have come to realize that the concepts of hell, original sin, and the atonement doctrine are human in origin, completely erroneous, and an affront to God and his true nature.  If we examine the most basic teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, he portrayed his father as supremely loving and merciful. Never did he suggest that we should fear God, as so many people profess to do today.  Interestingly, Jesus commanded his disciples and close associates to forgive even their enemies, and to “turn the other cheek.”  It does not make sense that he would ask more of us grossly flawed humans than his divine father was capable of.  There are several references to God’s mercy in the Bible:  Isaiah (30:18) states, “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.”  And when Jesus exhorted us to “Be perfect even as my father in Heaven is perfect,” he was inviting us to step up to a higher level of morality than is ordinarily observed in humans.  Luke (6:36) states, “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”  In Lamentations 3:22-23 we find “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;[...]”

How, then, did we arrive at such a gross misunderstanding of God’s true nature?  The idea of an authoritarian, punitive God was reinforced in the Old Testament, in part by spiritual leaders who sought to inspire righteous behavior or to gain control of their followers with the use of fear.  Many ancient religious teachers were limited by the moral maturity of the people of their time and in some cases, fear was the best way to effect positive change.  Also, the olden prophets and spiritual leaders were not far removed from primitive religions that were founded upon superstition, wherein, for example, natural phenomena such as lightning and thunder were perceived to be the outworking of angry gods.  It is also likely that the religious leaders simply projected onto God their own primitive natures and inclinations. 

While Jesus spoke of his father much more benignly than he was portrayed in the Old Testament, Paul (formerly Saul of Tsarsus), who contributed generously to the early foundations of Christianity and to the writings in the New Testament, primarily shared his personal experience of the Master and his interpretation of his teachings, rather than an objective account.  Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Paul was greatly influenced by Mithraism–a pagan mystery cult that emphasized sacrifice as a means of atonement and appeasement of the god Mithras, and hell as a consequence for sin.  It is also interesting to note that Mithras was purportedly born of a virgin on December 25th, lending strength to the assertion that many of the tenets and practices that we associate with Christianity were actually carried over from Mithraism—they did not arise from the teachings of Jesus.  Many early church leaders, including St. Augustine, in efforts to convert followers of Mithraism to Christianity and in recognizing the need for compromise, tolerated the incorporation of their pagan beliefs and rituals.  This tendency to hold onto outdated but deeply ingrained beliefs is actually very common—at times, even the apostles struggled to let go of their traditional Hebrew teachings, despite Jesus’ persistent words of hope, comfort, and liberation from oppressive dogma.  

If we more carefully consider the atonement doctrine, which states that God required the sacrifice of his “only begotten son” to atone not only for sins we have actually committed, but also for those inherited from our ancestors, we arrive at some rather disturbing conclusions:  God is either sadistic because he won’t forgive us without the sacrifice of his beloved, innocent son, or he cannot do so without the magic wrought therefrom.  If we adhere to the former idea, then we are assigning to God a less loving, compassionate, and merciful nature than most humans possess:  How many of us who are parents can even begin to conceive of requiring one of our well-behaved children to suffer a miserable death so that the others be forgiven their wrongdoings?  Jesus opposed sacrificing even animals in God’s honor; accordingly, he set free those being held for slaughter in the temple on Passover.  If we conclude the latter conjecture that the inglorious, agonizing death of Jesus was somehow necessary to atone for our sins, then we depict God as rather impotent and incapable—that he is at the mercy of some fickle magical force or another, perhaps malevolent higher authority.  In either case, if Jesus’ death on the cross actually saved us from our sins, why do we still need to perform the rituals of baptism, confession, last rites, etc. in order to be saved?  

If you agree that neither conclusion has merit, you might be asking why Jesus was allowed to die such a horrific death.  Why didn’t God, or even Jesus himself, intervene with divine powers?  I offer this:  Jesus wanted to demonstrate by living example the very lessons he taught his disciples—he wanted to practice what he preached about turning the other cheek.  And he did just that, showing supreme love and mercy towards his persecutors when he openly prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Further, if we evaluate that plea more critically, we have to ask why would the very people who fulfilled God’s theoretical demand for Jesus' death need his forgiveness?  Jesus asked his father to forgive them because they were wrong to take his life; it was NOT what God wanted.  Jesus desired to live his life naturally as would any other human, without divine intervention to lessen his suffering or to make his endeavors and trials easier.  It was important for him to experience what we mortals endure, including suffering if it is the result of the natural course of events.  It was Jesus himself who refused to escape the fate carved out for him by the humans he loved so dearly; it was not God who demanded or required it.  But dying an untimely death at the hands of self-serving, misguided individuals did afford Jesus the opportunity to demonstrate a hitherto unwitnessed transcendence of human wrongs with his unmatched love and mercy, while at the same time it enabled him to underscore his divinity by rising from the dead.

I also cannot believe that God would harbor a place specifically created to inflict eternal torture upon his erring children.  Again, I appeal to those who are parents:  Would you do this to your children, even if they really got off track?  Neither would God!   As I illustrated in my opening paragraph, the threat of hell is not an effective means of encouraging righteous behavior because it provides no positive incentive for doing good; rather, it encourages us to operate on one of the lowest levels of morality—fear of punishment.  Even human parents know it is better to encourage their children to do good simply because it is the right thing to do, rather than use fear of retribution as a motive.  And if we look to Jesus as God’s representative—“He who has seen me has seen the Father''---he never punished sinners; rather, he consistently encouraged and invited them to do good.  The concept of hell wears the unmistakable stamp of a primitive human psychological tactic for controlling others; it was not created by God.  

God’s true nature is demonstrated by his unfathomable unconditional love and ever-abundant mercy.  Over and over again from Jesus’ teachings we learn that even the greatest of sinners is welcomed into the Father’s embrace without the need for sacrifice or for any sort of payment; in fact, nothing but the desire to be forgiven and to be saved is required.  Some of us might prefer to retain the antiquated depiction of God as a stern upholder of justice, perhaps because we want to see some of our fellows get their just deserts.  But if we rise up to Jesus’ injunction to “Love one another as I have loved you,” then we must progress beyond the perverse satisfaction of schadenfreude and instead try to lead our erring peers onto a more righteous path.  God is the very source of love and the ultimate manifestation thereof, and our lives would be greatly enhanced if we would only receive it gladly and then let it flow through us to others.

NOTE:  I would like to acknowledge Oliver Codd as a generous contributor to this essay.  He and I had several discussions about this topic before and while I wrote about it, and he offered many valuable suggestions along the way.