An old professor in my university notably begins a discussion with this question: if you were to one day wake up with the utmost certainty that there is no god, would anything change?
The answers, predictably, can range from “nothing” to “everything”. The extent of the possibilities is what I find intriguing. Of course, something that is based on arbitrary substantiation and not on any definitive measures can have as its influence all from “nothing” to “everything”. Yet what is most fascinating is how none of those arbitrary substantiations affects the supposed essence of the concept. By that I mean that at a most basic definition, god remains god regardless of how one perceives god to be—to be god is to be this something that is beyond any sort of substantiation. Marion describes this eloquently: god without being. Hence, since all of our language and means of understanding are within the realm of being, this something god is one that ultimately escapes language and understanding.
Still: human beings persist in trying to understand that which can never be understood. And we end up with caricatures: “super-human” characters that are fundamentally humans. Maybe they are bigger, maybe they are louder, maybe they can control more or are stronger, but at their core are flaws that could only be explained as inherent human experiences.
Think of it this way: logically speaking, would an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything something change? Be angry one moment and appeased the next? Be conditional with some and unconditional with others?
But the caricatures—these various images of ‘god’—are interesting in their very existence. Why would an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything god that supposedly contains/possesses the entirety of existence be so deceptive in showing this divine ‘true nature’? I say deceptive because I take all-powerful, at least, as meaning that there is such a possibility in which this god allows everyone/everything to know that true nature truly and fully. We could all wake up and know with utmost certainty the ‘real image’ of god, yet what we have are often conflicting visions with varying clarities, our beliefs on which being equally contingent on everything else.
There are, of course, various possible answers. None of which are the point here. The point, on the other hand, is this: that we could have various images of god and suppose this god exists, the various images are all equally allowed into existence/expression. Sure, one might say that some images are more ‘accepted’ than others while some might bring terrifying consequences on those who express them. However, I do not know that any of them are clearly and distinctly divine consequences. They are all, simply put, arbitrary human reactions to equally human expressions. Yes, people claim to have killed for god—for their god—but the truth of such claim remains contentious. Hence, we can only attribute the deaths to their material/human killers. (The same is true for virtue: one might claim to be virtuous because of the divine but the attribution is questionable as well.) (The same ideas can be applied to non-human-initiated phenomenon: when, for example, is a natural phenomenon divine punishment and when is it simply something that happens?)
This is not to say that there is or is not a god, but allow me to sketch what looks like an elegant logic for such a concept: imagine that you are an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything something and you see these creatures beneath you making up all sorts of images and stories and dogmas about you. Would you do anything?
The only sensible answer, I believe is this: nothing. ‘god’ will not do anything. For one, god would already have known. Two, none of the images/stories/dogmas could possibly affect/influence/matter to an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything something.
Žižek in talking about power describes a lack of it as a father who feels compelled to shout and be disruptively angry as a means of sublimating the potency he seeks. We all have heard of the virtue of ‘speaking one’s truth’—of going up on pedestals or tables and saying what “needs to be said”. But lies, I think, are more covetous in that sense. Truth needs no validation, precisely because it is true—no one needs to believe it for it to be true. I do not need you to believe in my name nor to agree with it for it to be true that such is my name. Calling me by some other name neither would affect the truth of what my name really is. As arbitrary as names could be, I think these notions of truth and power are necessary in their elegance. Truth needs no repeating, but lies and falsehoods are dependent on repetition. Perhaps on another reflection we might ask more deeply: if something needs to be repeated regularly, is it ever truly known/knowable? If you need to hear something every day/on a weekly basis in order to continue living by the framework of reality that it brings about, perhaps either the framework is not as clear as it tries to function as or your belief on it is not as integral/inherent within you.
Do you need to believe in something to know that it is true?
Some all-powerful something I contend would be so powerful that they would never need to exercise their power. On that note, perhaps all-knowing might also mean that they never need to know anything and thus, truly, know nothing.
Let us then go to the title of this essay: to be god is to be dead. Again, imagine yourself to be this all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything something. You are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. In other words, the source/cause of all things.
And the world is being as it is now. And humans are being the way they are now. You know it: after all, it can only happen by the power that is you.
Why would anything need to happen or change?
A few days ago, I was struck by stillness. Nothing was happening, nothing was going on. I was not doing anything. Neither was I trying to do something. Then came this thought: what if this persists? ‘Stuck’ forever in stillness not being able to do anything. Things are happening around me and to me, but I have no ‘control’ over them.
Kind of like being dead, it seems.
The things that I made and the stuff I owned would go wherever. People might remember me and have all these stories about me. Or they might forget, and slowly, I would be forgotten. Someone might bring up my name but no one would believe that I existed. All these various images and arbitrary substantiations of my being.
And I cannot do anything about it.
Life—this being human—at the very least presents the illusory option that we can do something about some things, that maybe if we try hard enough, we might be able to expand our locus of control and exercise more power and establish more “truths”.
god, however, does not need to bother.
(Maybe there is more to the death on the cross than the resurrection that followed it.)