Driving home today I was listening to Speaking of Faith on NPR. The topic was the novelist as god, and here's how they describe today's program: "Novelist Mary Doria Russell shares what she discerned about God and about dilemmas of evil, doubt, and free will."
By the way, if you've never listened to Speaking of Faith, I cannot recommend it more. It is fascinating and thought-provoking. And I encourage you to listen to this particular episode, it is much more interesting than this post.
Russell said something that I thought was both incredibly poetic and mind-bending: she was talking about cosmology, and the theory that the universe might not have simply began at the big bang, but might instead be in a constant state of expansion and then contraction. An incredibly long process, to be sure, but how she relates it to god is that the universe is god's breath. When the universe is expanding, god is breathing out. When the universe is contracting, god is breathing in.
Assuming for a second that this expand/contract theory is accurate, the current universe is 13 billion years old and still expanding. So even if it stopped expanding right now (whiplash!), that is one LOOOOONG breath. Which I believe is pretty good indication that god does yoga. No, just kidding.
So Russell's concept of god is that it is all-encompassing. I mean, imagine a supreme being (if you can even call it that) who takes 13 billion years to breathe out. Actually, I don't think we can fully imagine such a thing. I certainly have a tough time wrapping my mind around it.
That, I find, is a beautiful concept, but it also made me laugh about religion in general. For my religious friends, sorry, please don't take offense, ok? But I thought, my god (hah!) how ironic would it be if we could prove the existence of god and then discovered that god has no awareness of or interest in us. No doubt we would convince ourselves that this is not the true god, but that's another conversation.
Of course, it has always been my opinion that to think that we are made in the image of god and that therefore we hold this high place is the height of arrogance and hubris. I mean, seriously, how self-centered can we be? I am mystified by all the religions, and the subsets of the religions, all of which are CONVINCED they know the word of god. As Russell said, just because we want so much to matter, does not lead to the logical conclusion that there is anything out there.
This leads to another thought: if we are made in the image of god, then why would we think that we alone are made in its image? Why isn't everything in the universe created in its image, and why would we be any more important than rocks and gerbils? Just because we can think? Mmh. I'm not convinced.
And of course, like religions, this is just an opinion, and I could be wrong.
Oh - and this:
