Waiting in Baltimore

I read a post about atheism in another blog, which included Ricky Gervaise's explanation as to why he doesn't believe (check out TrickleDownBS link at the bottom right of my page).  It got me to thinking and I spewed this out --

I believe in the concept of God, the idea there is a driving force behind the universe, a forward motion for everything that adds up to a perfect reality. It's not an old man who looks like Charleton Heston wrapped in colorful robes, but an entity that sometimes, when I'm writing, I'm able to touch and channel flashes of it ideas into my work. To me, God is creation...and I mean that not only for the universe but for the characters who appear and lead me into the stories I'm given. That's the only way I can explain some of the places I've been taken in them, places I have never been, and why I'm compelled to build these fresh new worlds on paper and offer them...and fight for them and protect them. Most religions limit God to their viewpoints, when to me God can have no viewpoint so minimal as that of a human being's. To me, his or her or its or whatever's focus is the absolute truth that is existence and which we can never understand, because even the most open of us still tries to limit it. When I pray at night, I pray for the strength to keep chasing that truth, even though I know I will never capture it, not completely, not honestly. No man is capable. And yet, still I pray.


What's interesting is, I didn't think as I wrote it...but this is how I approach faith.  Not in a church, where it's all "my way or the highway" thinking, but in writing and art.  I honestly despise most religions because of how 90% of the time they're misused to force others to do what they want them to do or die (be they Christian, Jew, Buddhist or Muslim).  I agree completely with the teachings of Christ in Matthew, chapters 5-7.  I appreciate the poetry of the Psalms, Proverbs and Song of Solomon, but the rest of the Bible is nothing but an historical reference book that includes more sex, violence, incest, double-dealing and evil than anything by Jackie Collins or Judith Krantz...and I'm fairly certain that for me, when I die it will mean going to sleep for the last time.


I'd like to believe in more -- I think it's only human nature to do that -- but I just cannot limit the concept of creation to something so inane as a human depiction of a divine creator.  And yet...I could be wrong.  I'm not THAT arrogant to think my way is right and no one else's can be taken seriously.  But I do wish the people who call themselves Christian would actually ACT like Christians and not Paulists (who reconfigured Jesus' words into his own sick agenda) or Old Testamenters out to ram their views down everyone else's throat.


And that's my Christmas thought for the year...especially since my flight's about to be called.