Salvation within and without

In the quiet I can hear the uncertainty of god and its existence or nonexistence. It feels good, not to know the mind of god or to believe that god’s faculties have anything to do with me, you, or this physical existence. If god is then it is not human and so doesn’t do human things. Faith is in the creation is just as strong, if not stronger, than faith that the creation is an expression of god.

The non-believer or the person who doesn’t care either way about god or gods has plenty of faith. But that faith is in different things–people, nature, the universe as a working system of systems, etc. I like that. Systems, physical laws, law violations, and constant change–or not. The randomness and uncertainty shows, contradictorily, that chaos is an order all itself.

There’s something comforting in knowing (having faith) that we are and I am not in charge of anything. We cannot be so full of ourselves to believe we know all or don’t know anything. We must instead understand that the history of human beings is the story of change, maturation, retrenchment. We react and hold onto emphemera. We sacrifice each other for faiths easier to believe than the realities we face.

That control, domination, or dominion appear to be possible makes the world, our lives, and our universe a beautiful, deeply enriching and fulfilling, and wonderfully absurd joke.

Where does that leave me? If there is no creator, nothing to save me from the randomness of chaos, the stasis of time, what is the use of, say, being good?

Good is a good of its own, whether it exists outside of the human mind and human judgment or not. That we can do good is even more just and beautiful if there is no reason for it. If there is no god, then the universe becomes a much more wonderful place. It is not of a mind or intention. It has no purpose or direction. It is neither good nor bad, harmful or beneficial. It has no reason for us and we are mere events that come out of a history of accidents–or the results of laws. Human lives, then, left in the hands of the universe’s utter indifference to them become even more important, sacred, precious.

To accept this, to have faith in the innate decency of the species, we have to do what goes against our natures. That is, we have to abandon the cynicism of instinct and be human. We have to have faith in ourselves.

We have to look into the mirror and understand our own divinity.