Wednesday, July 23, 2008

God Cares

You ever feel like not even the most convincing conspiracy theory in the world matters? And it's not out of apathy that you don't care, but out of the feeling that whatever little fusses we make mean shit anyway.

I feel like the majority's God doesn't give a rat's ass about us. God cannot feel. I wish I had a more succinct way of stating what I mean by this. I mean, we can hear God, but God can't hear us. God can't hear us speak to God as if God were another human being. God doesn't have ears to listen to our whiny voices.

I like the Jewish thought that God created and then contracted, tzimtzum: "to conceal from created beings the activating force within them, enabling them to exist as tangible entities, instead of being utterly nullified within their source." This God's paradoxical reality is immanence and transcendence.

In this, God remains powerful, but does not exist on the end of the telephone. If the concept of a God that can hear us, as if seated on a throne in the high heavens, would remain in the realm of metaphor and myth, I would be satisfied. If we would not bring God to our level, but would raise our own consciousnesses to the level of God, somethingness would happen. An awareness, a truth would be experienced.

I cannot bridge that gap or make the logical leap to the God who can hear me as I pray in bed at night. I've felt stupid each time I beseech that God. That God cannot hear me.

In tzimtzum, God is the grace that allows things into existence. I am already connected to that God. No admission or supplication will help or save me. The only good it will do is to psychologically cleanse me. Of and for myself. If I am in need of God, or am in search of God, I have to seek God in God's nature.

God doesn't care if I say my prayers at night. Opening my mouth so that God can hear me won't make me closer to God. To experience God would be the ultimate knowing.

Updated December 5, 2010

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