Chapter 6 - Who or What is God?

 Notice that I didn't just say who is God, but also what is God.  Most people assume that God is a person and is like us.  Most of the early religions said that there were many gods, not just one.  As I said earlier, the Hindus believed there were many gods, not just Krishna.  And there were all of the Greek and Roman gods plus the Egyptian gods.

The idea that there is only one God of the universe came later with the three major world religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  These religions depict God as a man who looks and acts like us.  But God is all powerful in such a way that he personally created the entire universe and all of life  in the universe and judges us all to such a degree that he could sentence us to an eternity of punishment in a place called Hell or he could reward us with eternal peace and happiness. This judgment is supposedly done in a very short time frame - you get one lifetime no matter how long or short.  You could die at age  20 or 100.  God will judge you and pass sentence on you that will last forever.

Just think about how old the universe is and then how short a time we live.  In universal time, our short few years of our lives are but a blink of the eye, but in this blink, God judges us and determines our destiny for billions of years to come.  

Personally, I cannot believe that such a God exists.  Just think how cruel and unjust such a God would be.  Would any parent tell a child he had one day to prove himself and after that one day the parent would let the child live with them or the kid would be kicked out of the house and could never come back?

I also have trouble with the concept of one super-powerful person who controls the entire universe.  Does this make the rest of us his slaves?  How could one person be so powerful and the rest of us have hardly any power or say in the matter.  This seems like the ultimate dictator.  Wouldn't it be great to be the ruler of the universe?  

So, I can't believe such a dictator exists no matter how loving this one person is.  He couldn't be too loving if he casts millions of people into Hell for eternity.  I would never sentence anyone to such horrible punishment for such a long time, so why would a loving God do this?

All of this does not tell us who or what God is.  I said that God does exist but do we understand what the term God means?  With all the religions of the world trying to put their own spin on God, we could debate this term forever and not agree.  So, in the next chapter I will discuss options for the definition of God and you might not agree but it might make you think.