What if there is a god. Many people profess to believe there is a god, for Whom humanity has used many titles, including God. Suppose this God, Who so many believe in is more than a mere figment of the collective imaginations of people—that He is truly the Creator of all things in what we regard as our Universe. Think for a moment that He really is The Supreme Being. You may suppose that He is Jesus Christ as I believe. Or maybe you have some other notion. It’s all good.
Just imagine for a moment that God has a plan for humanity, that He didn’t just create us for some strange nonsensical recreational purpose, but for our own growth and betterment, and that He really does have our best interest at heart. That He roots for us, helps us, and has provided ways for us to be taught for our own good about how to live to our best advantage. Suppose that God, our Creator, really does love us, and allows us to attain whatever level that we will of our own free will. That He doesn’t force us to do anything, but if we are sensitive, that we have the capability of growing and, as many Christians believe, that He, Jesus Christ, set the greatest example regarding how to live correctly in this life, so that we might actually return to share in His glorious purposes after we die from this earthly existence.
Now I am only suggesting that you entertain these ideas—to play a child’s game of
“What If”, for a time, allowing your mind to bask for a little while in the comforts such ideas promote. This is not taking away from those of us who really do believe heart, mind, and soul that this Is the way it is. It won’t hurt anyone to at least imagine along these lines for a few moments, just for drill. Of course many people of the world do believe just so, and they orient their lives in such a way, as if to at least try to comply with what this Great Being wants us to do, as best as we can understand.
As far as I can tell, all cultures have believed, at least more or less, that there are forces of so-called good, and so-called evil, who war against one another. Good seems to be those things that seem to be to the benefit for the better welfare, happiness, sanity, health, and well-being of the maximum numbers of people who live on this earth—and if we believe along the lines that I have just outlined, good things would include those things that help us reach the ideal objectives that God knows will make us the most fulfilled and happy—not necessarily in this life, but in an eternity, whatever that means—to come. Our earth lives would then necessarily be finite—measured only by the things we know of this world. It would not be altogether possible to imagine infinity, because we have nothing to compare it to in this finite life.
Of course, this loving imaginary God, Whom we have agreed to suspend disbelief in for a time, just for grins, would want us to perpetuate our species, overcome as much sickness and disease as necessary for us to gain the experiences or whatever purposes he has for us to live in this earthly existence, wouldn’t you think? He would want us to learn to develop talents that promote the overall good of humankind, learn to co-exist with other similar beings, and maybe even be managers of what is upon the earth, since we would presumably be the highest order of life here.
It would be only prudent for us to try to conserve and manage our resources for the overall good of everyone, while fulfilling as much of our own individual growth as we could without interfering with the growth of other human beings who are our equal. This only seems reasonable based upon our momentary presumptions associated with this for- fun drill. If you disagree with any of this—just allow yourself to agree with it for the sake of academics or fun or mind-expansion, or foolishness, or for whatever reason—just believe it for a little while.
If you can’t really believe it, just make-believe—for a spell. It will do absolutely no harm, as far as I can see, to play this game for a time. It is good to be somewhat open-minded, to try to have empathy for others and certainly many others on this earth do believe this way. So just temporarily fight any urge to disbelieve the things I am proposing until we get done with this exercise. I won’t go much longer. So for now, you are suspending all urges to disbelieve. For now this is all true. You can do this much. It’s easy. See.
Now as we assume that all these notions are actually true at this moment, place yourself in the place of this God. God, for the purpose of this exercise, is a Being—a Supreme, and Superior Ideal Being, after whom it would seem to behoove us to try to emulate in as many ways as we can, as we are taught and as we can best assimilate to ourselves and among ourselves, deriving from the sum-total of all human wisdom and good experience, as far as we can, through our own God-given senses, and faculties, determining how God wants us to act.
Using these tools, which we must assume that our God has given us, knowing that we would indeed use these human attributes under ideal circumstances, let us try to imagine how God would expect us to try to assume his attributes and tenants. Let’s assume, as many religious writings seem to indicate, that God made us in His Own Image, that is to say, a lot like Him, in at least some ways. If not precisely in His image, at least symbolically, supporting and thinking in the ways He has designed us to think.
So, now lets just assume that it is entirely reasonable that God, having this plan for us, and having a thorough knowledge about how we would operate in this earthly life, would not make it terribly difficult to understand His purposes, just the way He would want us to—at least,given our assumed freedom to choose, that we really had a desire to understand what He wants us to understand.
So, you being in the mind of God for a moment, what would be a reasonable approach for directing your created beings toward some ultimate goal, which is for our, their, own good and development, to maximize this existence? Let’s play like we tended to use a obvious ways to communicate with Him and understand Him. This seems pretty clear, at least in this drill—such things as cause-and-effect, rational thought—realizing that the conclusion of such thought is only as good as the best information that we have.
Let’s also assume that we would use emotions, and conscience, and thought impulses, and feelings in our bodies and minds, and yes, our spirits, which we are assuming we all have, for now, which will survive this life after our bodies die.
And of course another great resource would be the combined wisdom of the ages. We sure wouldn’t want to ignore all of the best distillation of the thoughts of all the greatest minds or recorded history would we? That would be stupid and irrational. Why would we want to have to learn the same old lessons that many people before us have already learned. And of course we wouldn’t want to make the same mistakes that our ancestors have made either. It is entirely reasonable to plan to have people learn from history, in as much as we can decipher it and make it true and objective.
We would want to allow our humans to use every tool at their disposal to come out on top, wouldn’t we? And given the circumstances and assumptions so far cited, we wouldn’t make it unreasonably hard to figure out what is the right course of action in order to reach our goals, which are, if we have the whole picture, the same goals as God, us, has for us, them. As our Creator, or Ultimate Father-figure, He, you, would want the best for us and want us to arrive at the correct conclusions that would move us toward our ultimate purposeful fulfillment in our eternity. Yes?
As we are thinking as best we can determine, how God would think, we might assume that He might feel toward us, just as most of us who love our own children feel toward them. It would seem plausible that God would use just such symbolism. If you have a problem with this, remember that we are playing “what if”, so do this now and cast aside any negative arguments concerning this game we are playing for a few minutes to help our expanded growth, empathy and human understanding—or not. It is just a game we are allowing ourselves to play. Just for now.
Now, assuming all this and that we know all this to be true about God and us and humanity and the human condition and the human purpose and the help and direction from a true and loving God of our imaginations, at the very least, for a while—lets think about how He might expect us to try to follow His example. We have history, records, writings some religions call scriptures or teachings, and principles.
We also have emotions, senses, even maybe sixth and seventh and spiritual senses, just as the great body of human religions and wisdom and distilled “truths” appear to believe and teach or have believed and taught through the test of time. And we have cause-and-effect, and rational thought and all of these things that our invented imaginary for the moment God would plausibly want us to use to do what He wants us to do.
Now there is also a being, or force, or set of necessary balances of the physics of our universe, or at least world as we know it, who really want just the opposite for humans. “He” doesn’t like God nor does he like his other creations. For whatever reason, he opposes the goals our loving Father in Heaven, as some fools address Him, wants for us. Of course this bad guy thingy personage or whatever he is, would do everything that he could possibly do to throw us off the true course that God wants us to follow. It would be very easy to determine within the framework of this fantasy drill we are doing for now, some things that Mr. bad-guy would use to trip us up.
Very easy. Just look around and use your creative and/or rational mental processes and emotions and all the tools mentioned previously—and you have an almost immediate imaginary for now eye-opening awakening. It’s easy. Right? What would the evil boogey-man, ole scratch, or whatever we are calling him-her-it today, DO to mess us up?
I don’t even have to list them, do I? Given the scenario I have placed out to follow for this just-for-fun drill it is pretty obvious what this devil would use.
Okay, hang on. I am almost done. Almost done with this silly little make-believe exercise. If you were God, given this foundation as an approach, who would you consider as doing your bidding? Who would you consider to be really trying to do what is right? And think for a moment, which of those people, groups, individuals, organizations, free-spirits and captive ones, would you consider to be honestly trying to do the right thing? If you were God, looking at the big picture with an eternal perspective and all (can’t get much bigger) would you approve of? Disapprove of? Reward? Fail to reward?
Or, maybe cause-and-effect would just take care of things and you wouldn’t have to judge or do anything. That would be neat. It wouldactually be brilliant. But of course, since you are God, you would necessarily be the very definition of brilliant I suppose. Maybe the eternal rules and immutable laws of the universe or world or whatever—would just let everyone “reap what they have sewn”.
Or you, God, since you are God, could just be extra-cliché and say, “Hey, folks, if the shoe fits, wear it.” Cool. That would be easy enough, and no one would, or at least, could, blame anyone but themselves. Ha! Even though they’d still try. They just couldn’t. I like that. What about them apples? Just for academic consideration?
That’s all. Over. Done. This make-believe drill is more or less finished. You can go on and on, and probably will—editing or excusing or changing the rules to suit you like so many people do to suit their own desires and make themselves feel comfortable or justified as necessary. Because it is absurd to think something as haphazard as the universe and the earth would do anything as orderly as to follow definite cause-and-effect patterns or laws. Right?
It is just silly to think that atoms or electrons or quarks, or matter or energy or life or physics or biology or mathematics or music or art, would. I mean, that’s just science and stuff. And it is far too predictable to be anything but make-believe. Stupid old Einstein and those guys, anyway. Huh, E=MC—oh, whatever. Energy can’t possibly be matter traveling at the speed of light squared. Who even understands that hogwash? There probably is not even a devil or a God. And for sure not a Heaven. Or Hell. Right?
But just imagine for a moment that there is.
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